Melbourne International Comedy Festival review by Steve Bennett

Rod Quantock is to the Melbourne comedy festival what the ravens are to the Tower Of London. With 45 years on the city’s comedy scene, which he pretty much founded, he may not cause the festival to crumble if he left, but it would certainly feel very different.

Such longevity – and on a moderate level of success that’s kept his gigs intimate – gives his show the feel of catching up with an old mate, with a relaxed two-way warmth between performer and like-minded audience. The informality lends a certain looseness to the hour, too – it’s not driven by finely-honed routines or big killer punchlines, but a messy meander around his thoughts and stories. That he writes key points on a blackboard behind him only emphasises the ‘mad professor’ vibe. Mad, but passionate.

What’s got his goat in 2014 is pretty much the same goat-abductor of previous years; the folly of those who deny climate change for financial gain. But if there’s one single take-away message from Peak-A-Boo, it’s that commentator Andrew Bolt is a prick.

The enmity between the pair is visceral; much of it dating back to the S11 blockade of 2000, when police and anti-capitalist protesters clashed. Quantock was one of those who received compensation for his treatment at the hands of riot cops, but was vilified by the right-wing press. His retelling of the incident and the smear campaign it triggered isn’t really the stuff of comedy, but it’s engagingly retold.

The agenda of some to the right of Quantock - about 98 per cent of the caucus – is amusing in itself, and he only has to read incredulously from a manifesto corporate Australia wants to introduce to get laughs from its selfish brutality.

By way of preamble to this, we get apolitical recollections of his schooldays, and some great tales of his anarchic bus tours, when he would create amazing, spontaneous flashmob moments long before the word ever existed. I say ‘apolitical’, these tours tend to demonstrate the same socialist ideals about the power of collective community as protests do – albeit for fun rather than change.

That same sense of community pervades his show; for all the awful things Quantock describes in the world, the underlying idea is that most people are decent – just like you. Except Andrew Bolt, obviously. He’s a prick.

Review date: 1 Apr 2014
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett