Melbourne International Comedy Festival review by Steve Bennett

Stella Young has built her comedy on sarcastically mocking the patronising, often crass, attitudes of the liberal classes to her disability. It means she will be never be at a loss for material.

Provocatively using ‘crip’ in the title indicates how little time she has for the PC attitudes that tiptoe around the subject, and often make it worse. Young sums it up in a nutshell by mentioning one woman who became flustered because she couldn’t remember if she was ‘supposed’ to stand up or sit down when talking to someone in a wheelchair. Such an attitude – when alleged etiquette handed down from on high proves an embarrassing hinderance to communication – is the No 1 target here.

Young has no such problems in being direct from the get-go, when she smartly turns the marginalisation of the disabled on its head, by lumping all the ‘norms’ or ‘able bods’ in the audience together as one single group who she can talk down to.

Her sardonic attacks on the clumsily well-meaning reach a peak when she reads from Who Cares About Disabled People?, which you may know from online lists such as The Creepiest Children’s Books Ever. It’s a guide which manages to be horrifically offensive in its woeful attempts to destigmatise disability.

Occasionally she gets more overtly political with her humour, especially when it comes to Peter Singer, a professor who has argued a case for selectively killing disabled babies rarely voiced since the Nazis. Getting laughs from such a bleak subject is well-nigh impossible, so Young contents herself with supportive applause instead.

Young, who has brittle bones and a medical but not ‘culturally recognised’ form of dwarfism, is already a relatively familiar face on Australian TV, and she shares a few wry comments about covering the London Paralympics, as well as her take on the Oscar Pistorius trial.

It’s around this point the show starts to lose some of the impressive impetus that got it off to such a strong start. While Young is right to aim to broaden her scope, the material about her overly-frank mother reeling off unusual sexual practices is a relatively cheap way to get laughs. A couple of embarrassing stories at her own expense, such as the one time she did need the help of a well-meaning stranger in a supermarket, are sold but lack the snap of her opening gambits.

But at her best, Young wraps sharp, acidic barbs in an admirable, no-nonsense confidence that connects well with an audience. With her certainty of purpose, this is an assured debut.

Review date: 17 Apr 2014
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett