Melbourne comedy festival review by Steve Bennett

There’s something of a cliché in comedy reviewing to describe a show as being like a chat with a mate down the pub. That’s the vibe Melburnian Rose Callaghan gives off too, though she rarely goes the extra mile to form those garrulous anecdotes into strong stand-up routines.

That the small venue was packed with family members added to the conversational atmosphere, as did her tendency to comment on every minor aspect of how the gig was going, and her more generally digressive style.

None of which should come as a surprise if you’ve read the blurb, which explains that Callaghan was diagnosed with ADHD, albeit very late in life. Indeed, at earlier festivals this show’s title was Attention Deficit… Ooh, A Pony! It must have been a relief to have a label for her unfocussed mind and impulsive behaviour. This sets up a couple of amusing stories, but she pads it out with too many uneventful tales of her past, that might lead to the viewer’s attention drifting, too. Pass the Ritalin. 

The bulk of this debut is not about her condition, but about dating. At last, the cry goes up, a single thirtysomething comedian unafraid of tackling this rarely-aired issue. She has one great line about the perfect Tinder profile, and a decent section about men’s underwear, but much of this is pedestrian. And I thought we’d moved on from speaking of women as left-on-the-shelf spinsters, but she makes much of how awful it is to be unattached at the ripe of age of 33.

Overall, she’s too light with the anecdotes, rarely stating more than what happened, or the observations she attaches to them. Case in point, how  Spanx amounts to false advertising that leads to a surprise when men get their date home. Older readers might remember a spate of similar routines when Wonderbras first came on the market.

Rose Before Hoes is pleasant enough, but has that unfortunately-familiar feeling of 15 minutes, tops, of serviceable material padded out to 50.

Review date: 10 Apr 2016
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett