Melbourne International Comedy Festival review by Steve Bennett

Sonia Di Lorio proclaims her debut show to be ‘a very personal story’. But it’s also a very common one, of teenage awkwardness and a more recent heartbreak, that in the bigger scheme of things is pretty inconsequential. When, as a comic turning 30, your big story is seeing a boy you went on a couple of dates with go home with someone else, it makes for a flimsy hour.

Nonetheless, Di Lorio tries to make the most out of it, structuring the story nicely (no doubt with the help of director Geraldine Hickey) and playing up quirks such as the way she seeks solace in nachos after each romantic knockback.

She certainly endears herself to the audience. Few could not be charmed by the adorable video she shows at the start of herself as a timorous child at kindergarten, aimed at illustrating the chronic shyness that besets her to this day. Her private Catholic schooling did nothing to bring her out of her shell, it will not surprise you to learn, nor make her any more comfortable around boys.

Performing comedy, despite the irony of being in the spotlight, gives her the artificial, controlled conversation in which she feels safer. And on stage, she’s personable and self-effacing, using the audience as a collective shoulder to cry on but with enough control of the situation that we, too, feel in secure hands.

Anyone whose reticence has cost them a possible romantic encounter will identify with her stories, which should be a sizeable demographic, but the anecdotes need more than the occasional wry observations to lift them beyond the likeable and into a strong comic routine.

All the audience really have to take away from the hour is that ‘she seems nice’. And that, unfortunately, is not really enough.

Review date: 15 Apr 2014
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett