Melbourne comedy festival review by Steve Bennett

Sean Patton’s show gets off to a modest start, a few local observations and comments on how badly imitated the Australian accent is. He empathises, given that his own New Orelean brogue is much-parodied, too.

But the soft opening is a Trojan horse for an hour of spellbinding storytelling which escalates with skilful restraint, moving smoothly up through the gears of dramatic jeopardy.

Topics that could be considered grubby comedy staples – sex noises and farting – yield to material about his flawed personality, from a humiliating story about wetting the bed to the frank admission that he’s dogged by OCD. And by that he’s keen to distinguish his debilitating anxiety disorder from someone trying to make their penchant for neatness seem exotic.

So far, so good, but when he moves into the physiological reasons for his neuroses, he becomes truly compelling. Laying his vulnerabilities out in the open makes him hugely sympathetic, a more complex character than the jovial schlub he initially projects.

His story has real drama, including his memories of Hurricane Katrina, which he releases with perfect restraint and timing. He always has the audience just where he wants us, controlling our emotions with a delicate finesse, knowing just when to hold the suspense and when to break it with a gag. For even at its most serious, Patton’s story is flecked with a dry, occasionally black, wit. 

Plus he folds those initial, relatable routines back into the mix, not as crass callback, but in a subtly satisfying way adding to the layers of the tale.

In tone and content, Patton creates an intimate atmosphere. At the risk of evoking the Louisiana stereotypes he hates, you can envisage him telling this story on the porch, nursing a bourbon as the sun sets on another humid day in the swamps.

Review date: 1 Apr 2018
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Melbourne International Comedy Festival