Dave Callan perfectly summed up presenting his show ♀(woman), “I’m unsure if I’m doing a show in the Comedy Section of Melbourne Fringe or I’m a Professor of Gender Studies” and that’s about how it felt being in the audience. If I didn’t have a beer in hand, I could have easily been back at University sitting through some kind of long winded lecture with jokes thrown in to keep you interested.
That’s not to say it wasn’t a good show, it was funny but it wasn’t “Dave Callan” funny. The concept was that he asked 100 woman 100 questions and then in seminar style with a Power Point presentation delivered the answers. I don’t know about you but I don’t really care that 6% of the woman that filled in his questionnaire were wearing a hat or that 28% of them had tried Zumba. Large parts of it just missed the mark.
There were some hilarious moments but all of the funny bits were supplied by the 100 women and even Dave said “you can’t make this shit up”. It’s a show that anyone could present given the list of results and a microphone. It’s hard to recommend that you throw your hard earned at going to see this show when you could sneak into a lecture with a beer and get the same experience. I’ve seen Dave Callan a few times before and he’s got far better material than this so in keeping with the University theme, for me, it’s a Pass but only just.
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