Melbourne International Comedy Festival review

Tech issues blight Oliver Coleman’s show tonight. For starters, the intro track doesn’t play, thwarting the theatrical opening he had planned, a crucial section designed to establish the important themes about the human condition Neon sets out to tackle.

The snafu throws him, and he turns on the audience, especially when a man rolls his eyes at the error. It’s been a long festival, and the stress is clearly taking its toll on the increasingly tetchy comic. He has crafted a transcendent piece of comedy art, as significant as the Philip Glass compositions he planned to use as a backdrop, and no one’s taking him seriously.

Coleman addresses the audience like a disappointed schoolteacher ticking us off with a tone that ‘it’s your own time you’re wasting’ – and sometimes that tips over into a full-on harangue. He has earnest intentions and doesn’t want us to laugh at them, even if he is a comedian. Of course, forbidden laughter is all the sweeter, so we chuckle even more.

Gripes about the lot of the struggling artist spill out of him. Being such a significant talent is an emotional burden - and a physical one too. His constitution isn’t what it was, let’s just say. And it’s financially unrewarding, as he makes clear when he complains about his miserable share-house experience.  

All that suffering and still the audience don’t have the intelligence to appreciate his talent and vision. Pearls before swine and all that. So he rips out chunks of his planned script, dumbing it down as he struggles to get the show back on track.

Coleman’s an unusually inventive comedian; there’s plenty of evidence of that here, even if he’s disgruntled that the audience don’t recognise it. As he becomes increasingly bitter about his lot, his unravelling makes for a compelling spectacle with every chaotic development thwarting audience expectations. Meanwhile, his performance shows a bold commitment, albeit a commitment to rancour. 

Even if the conceit splutters out a little before the end of the hour, and a couple of strands aren’t up to the ambitions of the concept, the journey is a wonderfully wild one, and a break from the normal.

Wonder what we’d have seen had we not got off on the wrong foot?

• Oliver Coleman: Neon is on at Trades Hall at 9.10pm until Saturday (no show Wednesday) then 8.10pm on Sunday.

Review date: 18 Apr 2023
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Melbourne International Comedy Festival