Melbourne comedy festival review by Steve Bennett

Not that you’d be able to tell from the title, but Show Pony pivots on the result of November’s plebiscite. But If you think this means Nath Valvo’s excitable stand-up is about to take a political turn, you’ll have another think coming.

For minutes after marriage equality was confirmed, the boyish comic received a text from his mum asking: ‘When?’, immediately subjecting him to the same nagging many an unmarried woman receives, a fact he wryly notes.

So this is an hour about relationships, both with his long-term partner Cody – a medic working on an Aids cure and triathlete in his downtime, a combo that even the most corny Hollywood scriptwriter would dismiss as too perfect - and with his family. 

His sexuality aside, this is the most traditional areas of stand-up. Boundaries are not being redefined and edges remain uncut, but Valvo serves this up with infectious, upbeat spirit and an occasionally snide sass.

At times he’s like David Attenborough, offering a behavioural commentary on the Rainbow Planet, such as describing how each friendship group can boast only one gay member and how same-sex weddings will lead to an arms race of spectacle, which he wants no part of.

He takes his inspiration from close to home, even if it means his parents don’t always come out great.  Mum Lynne, for instance, is depicted as an accidentally racist habitué of funerals – which seems to place her older than her 65 years. Valvo doesn’t entirely let himself off the hook, either, from cringing at his teenage self to expressing a dread of falling into cosmopolitan clichés of a thirtysomething urban lifestyle of yoga, brunches and night markets.

There are some flashes of camp filth – ‘this show shouldn’t be at 7pm!’ Valvo trills, but the tone is more cheeky than graphic. Yet there’s a cynic edge behind the vivacious performance.

He uses his space energetically, pacing the stage and emphasising his punchlines with short, dramatic moves, and occasionally bouncing material off a long-married couple in the front row to add a sprinkle of spontaneity. He gives off every sign of loving his audience, and the feeling is reciprocated.

The refrain of his mum’s question ‘when?’ recurs thought the show like a metronome, seemingly ticking towards an inevitable conclusion. But Valvo has a knack for pulling the rug out from under you, which he demonstrates her with the same light-touch flair with which he pulls off the entire hour.

Review date: 9 Apr 2018
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett