Manfred Yon checks out an early preview of Laura Davis’ new show Ants Don’t Sleep, ahead of her Melbourne Comedy Festival season.
Laura Davis is a natural. A natural at nature. Ants Don’t Sleep is her first solo show, functioning as a tasting plate of sorts, carefully woven around a very specific theme. Not as specific as the sleeping patterns of insects, although that’s included, but a straggler’s guide to quite a few animals. And sometimes food (the two don’t meat…I mean meet… in the ways you might assume).
Laura is like the swot in your year four class whose spluttering enthusiasm for a class presentations have led to them going a little glitter pen happy on their poster. She has the homework to back it up too: she even has a Q + A about your favorite beasties. She’s no hippy, despite her clothes, but the bubbling and babbling insatiable eccentrics Wikipedia was designed for, that we the human animal should strive for.
None of this really tells if she’s funny or not. Let me assure you, she is. She has a self conscious but enthused act, gently told but sharply written. Observational and surreal. Whimsical and, if a heckler demands it, caustic. Laura squeezes ideas like old toothpaste tubes, each surprising extra dollop more satisfying then the next.
There were some bumpy bits, largely between bits, and tonight she’s not as punchy as I’d like (I am a sucker for the punch). Also as florid as Laura’s language is, like any good education (and it is extremely educational) we could use some decorations. Graphics, diagrams, impersonations: anything short of a live dissection would be nice. That said, this is an early-preview show and issues of patter and glitz are always the finishing touches.
Laura is not perfect, but lovingly home-made. She is the science girl who never grew up, a Petri Pan of the circuit. How much you enjoy the show may depend on how endearing (or, sheepishly, like-minded) you find her. And in her show Ants Don’t Sleep, she was queen.
Go. There’s a whole forgotten world for you to explore. Plus, Laura Davis is rather good.
To check out details of Laura’s coming festival season in Melbourne, go to the MICF website