Melbourne International Comedy Festival review by Steve Bennett

Damien Power’s assured performance – and a memorable finale when he stripped naked – won his staunchly anti-capitalist diatribe a nomination for best newcomer at last year’s festival.

Making his return, he’s kept both his politics and his penis to himself. What is exposed are the shortcomings in his writing.

He still has that bold, articulate delivery, lending impetus to whatever he says. But beyond the hyperbole, there’s little of note to this tale of him having a child, having cold feet about his relationship with his son’s mother, and then reconciling, even given the fact that the story spans two continents.

Keit is his ‘crazy’ girlfriend’s name, the Estonian version of Kate rather than a misspelled Keith, as you might have thought. Power ramps up the personality quirks of the members of both families: his dad’s anger-management issues born of frustration, his brother Will’s odd career as a professional indy-car racer, and his gun-toting brother-in-law doing little to alleviate the stereotypes of aggressively macho East Europeans.

None of it’s quite interesting enough, however, despite Power’s best window-dressing to try to make it so. The anecdotes tend to be a little long-winded and unambitious and for all his slick presentation, lack the emotional pull or real sense of jeopardy to make us care much about their outcomes.

Some of the asides hinting at more socially astute material – such as the average Ocker’s opinion of what it means to be Australian – hold a little more interesting. But even then, not always. It’s not new to notice that corporations can be more powerful than governments, so Power is rather stating the obvious in raising the issue with little embellishment.

Speaking of which, reading out the terrifying potential side-effects listed on pharmaceutical drugs is very old hat, too.

Maybe this is simply difficult second album syndrome, but Power seems to have suppressed, rather than nurtured, many of the things that made him interesting 12 months ago. He’s in danger of becoming become just another comic trying to make the narrative of his life seem worthy enough to retell, whether it actually is or not.

Review date: 6 Apr 2014
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett