Review by Steve Bennett at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival

New Yorker Eve Ellenbogen overestimates how fascinating her quirks and hang-ups are.

For much of this heavily-padded 45 minute debut is spent complaining about her single status, her father's bad parenting (with no sympathy for the fact he was a lone father) and the realities of owning a vagina, but without much of a punchline. In every routine, she spends a long time on the set-ups, keen to fill us in with all the details of her issues, but the rewards are scant.

It is remarkably dirty for a 6.30pm show, and while unabashed frankness can often be bold and transgressive, here it seems more shallow, an attempt to jolt the audience, but without strong jokes once she’s got their attention with the detailed talk of her fanny, porn or wanking.

A few ideas amuse, such as the suggestion that being in possession of one of the few IUD contraceptive devices given out under Obamacare might make her a future museum exhibit, but they are too spaced out between the self-obsessed waffle.

Grumbles about the inappropriate types of guy she's drawn to seem more suited for the psychiatrist’s couch than the comedy stage. The two are not mutually exclusive, as so many comedians have proved, but it all depends on the strength of the gag, which is missing here. Her ‘couldn’t give a fuck’ attitude only takes her so far, and then she’s left stranded.

Ellenbogen, who’s lived in Australia for the past 18 months and made the Victoria state finals of the Raw new act hunt last year, constantly complains that this busy Saturday night audience are not her crowd, being too middle-aged and too ‘coupley’, as if somehow that is their fault. We will never know if it was their conservatism or the comedian’s failings that stopped the laughs coming.

Trying to pick up the flagging energy, she constantly turns to compere-like conversations with the room, all of which go nowhere and arrest what little momentum she has. No doubt the dead-end chats will feature in her future complaints about bad audience members – even though none of the previous incidents she recounts tonight seems worthy of repeating.

Don’t Get Mad At Me, the title exhorts. Not mad, but how about disappointed?

Review date: 11 Apr 2017
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett