Melbourne comedy festival review by Steve Bennett

Originally set up as an online reaction to the hatred of vile far-right groups such as Reclaim Australia, True Australian Patriots has become THE cult hit of this year’s festival, and with damn good reason.

If there’s one thing Guy, Steve, and Les love more than their country, it’s keeping other people out of it. Especially ones who come spreading their halal. Wrapped head-to-toe in the Australian flag, they are uncompromising in their hatred of Muslims, Lefties and queue-jumpers.

But lest you think they are racists, they show their cultural sensibilities with a generic ‘Asian’ dance that’s the perfect level of watch-through-your-fingers cringe. 

The satire might seem as blunt as its targets, but scenes like this show an attention to awful detail that makes this trio more than knuckle-headed monsters. Witness, too, the PowerPoint showing symbols of Australian pride, made as perfectly amateurish as the real thing. 

The comics behind these grotesques, Anne Edmonds, Greg Larsen and Damien Power, also forget everything they know about stagecraft, as they stand in the wrong spots, blocking each other out, fumbling cues and tripping over themselves and their script. (Though Eddo’s fall during one dance bit was painfully unintentional). Yet it is also a masterclass in performance, engendering some empathy the pathetic lives of those driven to such hatred while mocking their ignorant anger.

For the show doesn’t quite unfold along the straightforward route you might expect, as an awkward love and power struggle develops between the three, playing out a bogan tragedy. You might even find yourself feeling sorry for these disenfranchised souls, bleeding-heart liberal that you are, as their failure to express themselves blights their already disappointing lives.

Yet for the delicacy of this interplay, there is absolutely nothing delicate about this rambunctious late-night performance, all three throwing their all into wildly inappropriate scenes that will stay in your memory longer that a refugee in an offshore processing centre. There’s a looseness to proceedings, too, which occasionally has them stifling giggles or goading each other on into more outrageousness, encouraging the audience to revel in the knockabout atmosphere.

Never has racism been so much fun.

Review date: 11 Apr 2016
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett