Melbourne International Comedy Festival review

Bits Akimbo are loud, brash and dumb, happy to base a sketch around dry-humping a baseball cap, for instance. Their audience absolutely love them.

But I did not.

Max Paton, Katie Currie and Douglas Rintoul must be doing something right to elicit such raucous reaction for their late-night show Get In The Boot, but I have never felt at such odds with an otherwise hysterical room since seeing the abysmal Mrs Brown’s Boys live.

The biggest reaction here came to a pun based around that ‘phishing’ sounds like ‘fishing’ – of course it does, since the neologism derives from online fraudsters fishing for information. But it was greeted as if it was comedy dynamite, exploded for the first time.

The trio are undoubtedly committed performers, throwing everything into each dumb scene, and there’s a certain pantomime fun to be had if you can get on board. Subtlety is cast aside as every line is shouted, every crass joke written large, every accent and gesture exaggerated ridiculously. It feels like a student revue in all the worst ways, and many skits end with sex or death as the troupe back themselves into a corner, leaving limited ways to up the stakes.

It’s as if they’ve seen Aunty Donna – an influence they acknowledge – and embraced all the cocksureness and only a tiny fraction of the invention. I’d make an exception for a literal slapstick routine based on staged punches, which was imaginative and tightly performed, and a couple of other lines of the hour that were surprisingly witty rather than just brash.

But these only exposed the wilfully one-dimensional nature of the rest of their sketches, featuring the likes of sexually creepy grandads, big-titted mermaids and over-amorous giraffes. None of the performers’ personalities shines through, as in the best over-the-top absurdity – instead it’s all shallow, cartoonish nonsense that didn’t connect with me at all.

But if you’re on their wavelength, you might just love them. Might.

• Bits Akimbo: Get In The Boot is on at The Butterfly Club at 10pm until August 13.

Review date: 5 Apr 2023
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Melbourne International Comedy Festival