Melbourne International Comedy Festival review by Steve Bennett

Penny Greenhalgh’s gauche physicality and ironically cheesy crowdwork are certainly fun, but she’s treading old ground in this Melbourne debut, and treading pretty lightly too.

The over-familiar premise is that she should really be performing in the Rod Laver Arena, the only venue big enough to contain her multi-threat talent. But while she’s stuck in this broom closet of a space, she’ll just have to give us an idea of the spectacular she planned, talking us through her entrance via giant mechanical swan, but giving a more practical demonstration of the ice-dance routine, with the aid of a game audience member and a lax attitude to occupational health and safety.

There’s also a halftime play, 51 Shades Of Grey, enacted with the help of another victim, and Greenhalgh in the guise of Linda, a prim cardigan-wearing friend of her mother. But it was the volunteer’s rendition of an orgasm that upstaged the chaste eroticism.

Greenhalgh is a few years too late boarding the anti-comedy bandwagon, and her opening salvo of pub jokes with no punchlines felt tired and lazy – a cop-out in place of writing a real gag. However a grotesque character with the most gruesome comedy teeth was far more successful, thanks to being so extravagantly exaggerated.

Her willingness to look the dork is her second greatest asset after a general sense of fun that pervades her mucking about, even attempting a delightfully chaotic crowd-surf. By the time it comes to recreating her orchestra-and-pyrotechnics finale everyone’s having a good time. It’s not great comedy, but it is a laugh…

Review date: 9 Apr 2015
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Melbourne International Comedy Festival