Review by Steve Bennett

If Laura Hughes thinks this is a great show, she must be living on another planet.

Turns out, according to her clunkily executed premise, that she has been. She, and indeed the audience, are an advance party from Zarbungia, preparing for an alien invasion of the Earth. As our shuttle approaches, we are briefed on the workings of the strange species that dominates the planet.

It’s a reasonably promising idea, but Hughes uses it as a lumbering device on which to hang some truly bland observational comedy along the lines of: ‘What’s the deal with shaking hands, isn’t that weird?’, described in tedious detail.

Her PowerPoint illustrated reflections are obvious and superficial, almost never going beyond pointing out obvious facts such as teenage girls like saying ‘like’ a lot or that Facebook is full of inane comments. We shall mention neither pots not kettles here.

This material isn’t so much half-baked as still raw, with the feel of having been dashed off in an afternoon, then glued haphazardly to the the structure she came up with. In the section about jobs,for instance, she imagines hers is a ‘televisionary’ watching TV and writing into the broadcasters to tell them what the are doing wrong. For instance, she suggests Masterchef would be better if they were all... wait for it... on drugs! It’s a long way round for a lame, uninspired routine.

There are a lot of wordy explanations. ‘"I like your jacket.’ That’s a compliment. Compliments are a good way of... blah, blah blah.’ Of course she undermines such a remedial-level definition in the end, but there’s a lot of dead wood in the set-ups.

Many gags – not least the whole alien thing – are forced. For example the Zarbungian commander wants a ‘one-prong’ attack on Earth, which she considers such a great double entendre that it’s worth several mentions, even though it barely works as innuendo.

Chuck in a drama-school-quality Will Smith rap and a spoof charity video (a rare highlight, though still overstretched) and you have an impression of a comic throwing everything she’s got into a hour, and it still falling short because she’s really only got ten minutes. Plus she’s neither a good enough actress to make us buy into the low-tech sci-fi theme, nor a natural enough stand-up to sell her weak ideas, even though she’s not without charm.

On the basis of this debut, 2011 Raw new act finalist Hughes is yet not set to stun.

Review date: 6 Apr 2013
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Melbourne International Comedy Festival