Review by Steve Bennett

For a show about loneliness, mortality and the futility of our brief existence, Look Out, It’s A Trap is remarkably jaunty.

Laura Davis has a vibrant, gushing style; so pleased that she has an audience with which to share her fears and insecurities that she bottles up in real life. She admits, with a candour that defines the show, that the stage is where she comes alive; where she can park her existential angst for an hour to share her thoughts with attentive strangers.

And, my, she has a lot of thoughts. This cathartic show is packed with ideas of what it’s like to be human, trapped (hence the title) in a disgusting ‘meat prison’. She’s had plenty of time to contemplate such philosophies, having spent four months manning a hot-dog van in an isolated Western Australia park, where customers rarely visited. It was also the place where she was to have the near-death experience that made her re-evaluate the fragility of life.

Personal anecdotes such as this paint a vivid picture of how she got to where she is, while figments of trivia and the occasional pun or homemade graph add other aspects to this lively, fast-moving hour, countering the weighty issues that underpin it.

She spends a bit too long explicitly setting up her concepts, themes and aims – almost 20 minutes in and she’s still at it – when, in fact, the impressive content speaks for itself. She starts from a familiar place for twentysomething comics, explaining how she’s an adult without maturity, but we quickly enter much more interesting areas.

For all the gravitas of her ideas, they are presented with such a light, warm touch that you can’t imagine her short of of friends, as she describes. But although the strength of her perky, engaging personality drives the hour; the writing boasts solid jokes and genuinely funny stories, too. There’s more going on here than meets the eye, so while she may consider comedy an ignoble artform, she is pretty damn good at it... and getting better by the year.

Review date: 16 Apr 2013
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Melbourne International Comedy Festival