Melbourne International Comedy Festival review

A cobra is the tough, wild and fearsome creature David Quirk would like to identify as. But, instead, he has to accept that he’s one of life’s betas.

His self-deprecating show starts with an indignant grumble about how he’s afforded neither the respect nor the rewards he deserves having been nominated for this festival’s biggest award two years ago. Not only does he have to hide behind a curtain as his audience files in, away from the stage, he has to make ends meet by working as a DoorDash delivery driver.  

By his own account, he’s always been a magnet for humiliation, whether inflicted by others or himself, since being bullied at school, where he’d also deliver the most cringe-inducing show-and-tell, unaware what a sad loser he was projecting himself to be. As an adult, he tells us of being subjected to a practical joke that derailed a hugely promising date, losing his virginity late, suffering chronic constipation.… Even doing comedy, something he is self-evidently very good at, he recalls a moment of profound poignancy in an earlier show being shattered by an ignorantly crude heckle.

With understated control of the room, Quirk’s expert at telling these often bleak and disarmingly honest, sad-sack stories, shot through with a grim, self-lacerating wit and the feeling that all these misfortunes are no more than he deserves.

Elsewhere, there’s a brilliantly inventive surprise to get audiences over the traditional 40-minute energy slump, and an hilarious, passionately embittered commentary on the manipulative, faux-matey corporate messaging that seeps into every corner of our lives. In his case, a simple ATM transaction drives him to indignant apoplexy as the thin edge of an oppressive dystopian future. ‘Just let it go…’ is not a maxim he lives his life by, as the myriad past mortifications he constantly relives attests.

All these stories are compellingly told by a natural raconteur you want to hear. Even if some anecdotes spin out into weird absurdities that the audience don’t entirely stay on board with, Quirk has the low-key charisma to keep them engaged.

Yet the tales never gel into a bigger, more satisfying whole. Themes overlap to give an occasional sense of structure, and of course they are linked by Quirk’s persona, always being on the back foot when it comes to whatever tribulation the universe, himself or other people are doling out. But there’s no sense the anecdotes are part of something bigger, and the abrupt conclusion of the show is particularly anticlimactic, however enjoyable the ride.

Review date: 3 Apr 2023
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Melbourne International Comedy Festival