Review by Steve Bennett

Somewhere beneath Genevieve Fricker’s aloof, whimsical hipster facade there’s an interesting back-story gnawing to get out. But it’s buried deep behind a performance that’s chronically reluctant to express any sort of emotion.

And a few more punchlines would help, too.

With typical ironic detachment, this quirkily winsome 23-year-old tells us: ‘I’m pretty deep with my feelings and shit,’ but she never really shows us this in any of these gentle meanders around her life. Incidents are relayed without embellishment or drama; a matter-of-fact manner that has little resonance. She tells us she had teenage breakdown with the same casual tone you might tell someone you’re nipping out for a pint of milk.

It’s odd that she is so emotionally superficial, as in one sense she’s not ashamed to share her humiliations, such as bad dates, vaginal waxing gone awry and the unpleasant incident which gives the show its title, in sometimes graphic detail. But there’s more to storytelling that simply relating what happened – and in a delivery that’s almost apologetically low-key, to boot.

Yet there is something there; the idea of presenting an image of a together, functional person to the world while being a ‘disappointment’ is interesting, but not really explored. No one says comedy HAS to expose the comic’s inner psyche, but that seems to be her intent... and you can’t do that from behind a wall.

Her tone can also sometimes be strangely downbeat, but without proper comic payoff, even of the dark kind. It’s an issue that kicks in right from the start: Of the two imaginary stories in her pre-amble; one involves a boy dying; the second a dog dying – and both are just casually morbid.

Over the ensuing 55 minutes, there is a scattering of decent one-liners, but too scarce to build any momentum, while the anecdotes are interspersed with short, sweetly droll songs, which nonetheless suffer the same detachment that hampers her stand-up. And do we need another girl comic with a guitar, singing an apparent love song which eventually reveals her to be a stalker?

Fricker’s definitely an act who needs to develop more confidence and insight to hold an hour. But we can leave the summary to herself. In one story, she recalls an awkward date in which she was ‘just filling the silence with words’. Couldn’t have described this show better myself.

Review date: 18 Apr 2013
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Melbourne International Comedy Festival