Justin Kennedy is something of a comedy livewire: animated and physical, he brings an engaging vibrancy to his stand-up.

It serves him well in this, his third Melbourne show, in which he explores the ideas of the subconscious self. Here he makes real those nagging voices in your head telling you too late that you’ve forgotten your keys, compelling you to do something entirely out of character or playing bad pop songs on your internal iPod.

So once the basic differences between Jungian and Freudian philosophies are explained – oh yes, there’s meat on these bones – it’s on to the more straightforward fun of trying to work out why your mind plays such tricks on you.

At first, Kennedy does this as a straight monologue, enjoyable and pacy, in which he imagines what that mischievous id is plotting. But then, the subconscious becomes an actual character – and an inexplicably French one at that.

It’s here the wheels start to wobble. It feels as if he runs out of ideas halfway through the show, so starts repeating them – slightly differently – to make up the time. After that comes some completely unrelated material grafted awkwardly on. How we got on to dinosaurs, I’m still not sure. But there are plenty of laughs to be had before he runs out of momentum. Aside from the innate likeability, Kennedy proves himself a witty, breezily conversational comic. For a man only three years into his stand-up career this show, although flawed, demonstrates a whole heap of potential. And it’s not the voices telling me to say that …

Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Melbourne, April 2005