Melbourne International Comedy Festival review

Bart Freebairn’s inventive and slightly surreal opening gag might well be worth the admission price alone – unless, like one hapless punter tonight, it sails over your head.

He calls the exquisite one-liner an orphan as it doesn’t otherwise fit naturally into the rest of the show, even though it’s not an hour that needs a strong structure or theme.

It broadly falls into three sections: about our obsession with online reviews, his trip to entertain the troops in the Middle East, and how he took a perverse pleasure when an annoying woman ruined a screening of Avengers: Infinity War.

This later routine requires the audience to buy into his notion that the interruption could almost be seen as some situational performance art, a case he doesn’t quite make convincingly enough, even though the story is robustly told.

Similarly when hipster cafe pretensions are mocked as he describes a very elaborate hot chocolate ‘experience’, you get the feeling it hasn’t been exaggerated for comic effect. It’s a solid segment, but doesn’t soar.

Yet there are plenty of other examples of routines based on a bright idea, such as how sea travel has transformed over the centuries from perilous exploration to bland cruise vacations, that do sparkle. 

Whatever the pros and cons of each premise, Freebairn is a comic who (almost) always has a focus on the next joke, striving to squeeze in proper punchlines whenever he can. The majority of them hit the mark, too, and the few duds quickly forgotten.

Strong writing and the gag-driven ethos more than compensate for a more workmanlike delivery and prove you don’t need gimmicks to sustain an hour if you’ve got the jokes.

Review date: 31 Mar 2019
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Melbourne International Comedy Festival