Janet A McLeod’s Local Laughs has become a comedy institution in Melbourne. Presenting quality comedy all year round, it’s also a place where top comedians from Australia and around the world drop in for a surprise set. Local Laughs is a place where the punters are open minded and willing to let a performer try some new, risky material. In fact Tony Martin once said the audiences were just too relaxed on their couches to heckle, but I can assure Tony that the couches are not always that comfy! The audiences are certainly forgiving and don’t mind a comedian pulling a cheat sheet out of their pocket occasionally. For the past few weeks many comedians have been practicing bits of their festival shows at the Local including some ‘hush hush’ famous guests you may know from TV or radio.
Now the festival is upon us Local Laughs is packed with comedians at the top of their form, like racehorses at a Melbourne Cup, giving up their night of rest to give us a taste of their current show. You also get the occasional performer bragging that they aren’t doing a show this year. The main things you can be sure of at Local Laughs are consummate hosts, a nice mix of straight stand up, musical comedy, the odd curious act and an unusually high ratio of female comics for a Comedy Venue.
The first Comedy Festival Local Laughs was no exception. Hosted by probably the best comedy MC in Melbourne, Justin Hamilton injected the right amount of enthusiasm and kept the energy up with his outrageous tales which were cleverly inspired by each act. The six acts were made up of three males and three females. The first, Dave Jory, was a young comedian from Sydney with the old standard American stand-up style of ‘Bullshit – punch line, Bullshit – punch line.’ The punch line usually denoted the fact that the set-up was in fact fabricated. It’s all good natured though and fairly well done, but as he says in his Festival show advertising, ‘you won’t learn anything!’.
The next performer was Queenie van de Zandt in her persona of Jan van de Stool, International Music Therapist. She played the part straight and I could imagine that in a different pub venue an act like this, that is only a taste of her Festival show, might go down like a lead balloon. But here at The Local there is a lot of good will and the punters got into the spirit of her act, which was to send up self-help gurus. She was a woman with barely any singing skills teaching therapy through song and it was agreeably absurd.
Jess Moir is the sort of cute and peppy young female performer who can get away with saying some rather improper things about the Pope at Easter and slutty marsupials, but how could anyone possibly take offence? Her celebratory dance after getting away with a domestic violence joke because she is a woman was like a red rag to a bull for the following male acts! This included Harley Breen who was in tiptop thoroughbred mode, finishing the first bracket with a taste of his show “The Kingswood and I” in his warm lovable yobbo style.
The second half included the lethargic Damian Lawlar with his usual mix of whimsy and surreal storytelling from his black and red book. Then the fabulous Hannah Gadsby who is in peak form for the Comedy Festival, showing even more confidence and playfulness in her material than I enjoyed in January at the Hobart Comedy festival. The lovely West Australian Andrew Horabin finished the night eschewing his guitar and songs for a bit of stand-up and his crowd pleasing human rights violation race call.
Janet has promised us some more extra special guests in the coming weeks throughout the Festival, but this is a venue worth coming to on any night. Normally Local Laughs is at The Local in St Kilda, which is going through some renovations at the moment, so you can get all your Monday night laughs during The Festival at The Laundry in Fitzroy instead.
’Local Laughs’ happens every Monday. See their “MySpace Page”:http://www.myspace.com/stkildalocallaughs for full details and line ups.