Melbourne comedy festival review by Steve Bennett

Holy Mary, mother of God – this batshit hour of bizarre physical comedy makes blasphemy a blast.

French clown school Ecole Phillipe Gaulier has become a production line of physical comedians, and Nadia Collins has certainly picked up some over-familiar habits – if you’ll excuse the nun pun – from it. But her stroke of sacrilegious genius was making her clown alter-ego the Virgin Mary, exploring the Nativity story in outlandish, sometimes visceral, absurdity.

Even as we file in, the themes of sin and penance are strong. She fires spitballs at the arriving audience, only to look contrite, seeking forgiveness in prayer the moment she’s stayed.

Collins gets us used to the heavy audience participation on which the show depends by parodying the tropes of religious ceremony, having us stand, pray and sit as she wordlessly commands. Her expressive eyes sometimes imploring, sometimes judgemental, manipulate us to do her bidding, and we quickly comply. After communion, the story proper begins – all told without her saying a thing.

Prompted by a phone call from God, she becomes impregnated from a one-night stand with a Joseph lookalike, a moment recreated in microscopic biological detail… though that’s nothing as compared to the birth itself. However, with apologies owed to Rosemary’s Baby, it seems the infant is not the Messiah we were expecting.

If you’re going to hell, you might as well go all-in, and Collins certainly commits everything to her exaggerated physical comedy, expressing the full gamut of emotions in bold brush strokes of ridiculous melodrama. The staging is fittingly ridiculous and eccentric, with daft props called into service for every outrageous scene, ranging from a crime caper-style car chase to a bloody denouement. 

Virgin Bloody Mary is certainly a wild ride, but Collins’ exuberant devotion to the insane path she set out on will win her many disciples. And that’s gospel.

Review date: 9 Apr 2018
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Melbourne International Comedy Festival