Melbourne International Comedy Festival review

After making an unconventional entrance, Rob Caruana takes to the stage in his usual black suit and tie… and with his left hand heavily bandaged. It’s the result, he explains though the morphine, of a stunt that went badly wrong on a previous evening.

For this affably mercurial comedian has given new meaning to the stand-up’s adage of ‘commit to the bit’ – with his ‘bits’ not conventional routines but madcap physical endeavours undertaken with little concern for his own safety. 

No wonder that the medical treatment to his hand is the second consecutive year he’s wound up in a Melbourne hospital. In 2018 he was bitten by a rat during the climax to one show, which involved him diving into the Yarra river every night.

Turning his back on consequence gives Caruana’s comedy a wonderfully anarchic feel that continues even when he’s not putting his wellbeing on the line. 

He romps through a loosely formed show, chucking out puns willy-nilly and producing props at every turn. That he hasn’t always quite figured out how to deploy the various artefacts that have caught his eye isn’t so important, as he can always get laughs from just mucking about with them. 

A ouija board, a ventriloquist’s dummy and a Howard Keel LP are among the items that make an appearance this hour, as he explores, with little discipline but lots of daft bonhomie, the sort of things that give us nightmares. He doesn’t have the greatest gags in the world, but that’s far less important than his devil-may-care attitude that’s joyfully infectious.

There’s no air of sophistication to Caruana, which is his absolute strength. He is always the silliest person in the room, which also translates to being the most reckless. Such unpredictably fills his show with a frisson, to be diffused with a daft gag or heightened with the occasional threat of danger as his fretful fiancée Luce, who’s also his tech, looks on through her fingers.

But ultimately Nightmare Comedy is a refreshing hour of stupid, playful fun. Go see it before the run gets cancelled due to a dumb injury.

Review date: 2 Apr 2019
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett