Review by Steve Bennett

Joel Creasey is certainly an energetic, enthusiastic and engaging personality. But it’s a personality that’s so familiar that it blends into a decades-old spectrum of other breathlessly camp, motormouth comedians with gushing delivery and drama-queen reactions.

He has perfected the unthreatening ‘gay best friend’ appeal, with the audience loving him for gossiping indiscreetly about his life and supposed secrets – even though he’s so keen to be centre of attention, you know he’ll blab these to anyone. And the big secrets are only fear of nudity and feet, anyway.

It’s hard to talk about Creasey without invoking gay stereotypes, as he’s such a living cliche he can puff his chest out, put his arms wide, throw his head back and flutter his eyelids and not seem at all affected. He hates sport but loves Xena The Warrior Princess, Judy Garland, Abba, Geri Halliwell, Celine Dion and Lady Gaga. Quelle surprise.

No doubt these obsessions are important to him, but it doesn’t make him all that interesting. There’s an appealingly arch delivery to his stories of childhood humiliations and the blossoming of his theatrical ambitions – but sometimes the comedy is entirely in the tone of voice, as there is very little substance to the tales.

A couple of more recent, more impactful, anecdotes buck that trend of superficiality: a minor run-in with the Sydney Swans footy club in an airport lounge which overturned years of playing second fiddle to the school jocks, and a more serious incident involving a mob of homophobic morons in a small country town. Such stories rely on more than his love of showing off and predictable list of gay icons, and so have wider appeal, without sacrificing the personal.

The boy’s only just turned 21, though, and as he racks up more life experiences, it can only broaden his inspiration so it matches his free-flowing, animated and amiable performance.

Review date: 18 Apr 2012
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett