Melbourne International Comedy Festival review by Annette Slattery

Rose Callaghan and Mates does what it says on the tin. Callaghan delivers three sets of material interspersed by two sets from guest comedians.

As Callaghan starts her first set she immediately seems to be ticking of bullet points from the ‘So you want to be a comedian?’ handbook. She covers all the classics: being a kidult, being single, couples, internet dating, drinking and drugs, nightclubs, twerking and share houses; without managing to bring a new idea to any of them.

Condescendingly, the 31-year-old Callaghan also stops to explain terms like Tinder, for the benefit, she says, of the ‘older people’. Callaghan lacks professionalism, stylistically sounding more like she’s having a conversation in a pub rather than delivering a set of comedy. Of the two good lines she managed, she mangled the second. So in her favour, she did make me smile once.

She also seems to have developed the unsettling habit of making unrelenting eye-contact with the ceiling. The combination of banal material and bad delivery made this experience simply tedious.

So it was a breath of fresh air to see Bart Freebairn hit the stage. Bart delivers a polished set about Australian attitudes to sport and the Aussie accent. This material, while not revolutionary, has some nice moments. When he moves onto the subject of animals, though, he hits some really silly and funny highs to bring home a short, but sweet set.

The other guest was Simon Taylor, an Australian comedian who is apparently a Hollywood comedian now. He started his set with a rather good callback to Callaghan’s twerking material, surpassing the original, but the quality fell away after that. He delivers some gags about air stewards and Aussie catchphrases in an amiable manner but none of it sets the world on fire.

Ultimately though, the worst thing about this hour was Rose Callaghan. Each time the guests brought the quality of the show back up to a tolerable, even enjoyable, standard, things ground back to a halt with the reappearance of our host. At least she has mates.

Review date: 3 Apr 2014
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett