Melbourne International Comedy Festival review by Steve Bennett

This is the show that Denise Scott’s whole career – indeed her whole life – has been building up to.

Autobiographical tales have been her bread and butter for a while, and writing her recent memoirs no doubt focussed her mind even more. But this frank trip down memory lane, from evocative reminiscences about her mother to entertaining tales of bringing up her own two children, may well be her funniest yet.

It certainly has a broad appeal, with the audience tonight ranging from families with twentysomething daughters to 90-year-old Noreen, who gamely endures material about misshapen uteri delivered up-close and personal. Scott has a masterly rapport with her audience, to the extent that they feel happy to open up like an Oprah interviewee and volunteer their secret parenting shame.

As well as playful audience interaction, Scott deploys a few small theatrical tricks to vary the tone of the show, the most memorable being her recreation of the uncertain walks to the toilet of new mums on the postnatal ward, an apparently old routine that shows off her gift for physical comedy. However, words are her forte and the short distractions are barely needed as the 90 minutes fly by in a blur of confessional yarns, all told with a constant teasing wit.

Scott accepts, if not celebrates, faults – both her own and others. There’s no real judgment when she tells of the time when nurses would smoke inside hospitals or when she would turn to drink to get her through the stresses of being a young mother, more a wistful nostalgia. She is a no-nonsense type of a woman, and admits she has no time for ‘all this self-esteem crap’.

The frankness is fun, and she tells her tales with a constant teasing wit and a deft use of language. In one routine recalling with horror the Women’s Weekly book of children’s birthday cakes – causing suppressed memories to surface around the auditorium – she declares frustratedly: ‘Do you know how difficult it is to make marzipan frolic?!’ which is such a beautifully funny phrase. Even moments laced with poignancy, such as Scott’s mother succumbing to Alzheimer’s, are treated with amusing irreverence.

The family stories are interweaved with anecdotes from the decades in comedy from which she acquired her considerable storytelling skills. She has frequently mentioned that he met her partner John when they were both clowns – him giving up a potentially lucrative medical career to be a street entertainer – while other tales here date from her time with the comedy troupe The Natural Normans and recalling a nightmarish gig in a rowdy nightclub.

But Mother Bare – and the way Scott’s children turned out in the end – is proof positive that all those years of hardship paid off in the end, for it’s impossible not to enjoy this deservedly Barry-nominated show.

Review date: 18 Apr 2014
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett