Melbourne International Comedy Festival review

I’d hate to suggest that Fully Charged rein in their enthusiasm and energy, but while these young Melbourne-based sketch performers show a lot of promise, they also have a habit of careering gleefully into the self-indulgent.

Egged on by an over-appreciative opening night audience, it sometimes feels that some of their skits are in-jokes being played up for their mates. They’d do well to get an independent director to scythe through these excess and bring out the talents that are clearly there.

Tellingly, the best idea – a louche French bedbug flirtatiously prowling the audience with insouciance until he’s reprimanded and acts like a scolded child – is also the most low-key. 

Yet their verve is infections when focussed, such as in daft dance moves that might give RayGun a run (or kangaroo hop) for her money. And their essential silliness is very appealing, too.

The premise of the show is that sketch comedy is boring and the world is doomed, so if they can fix the former, they’ll save humanity. Like most of their work, it’s best not think too much about the logic of that. Likewise, the titular Business and Pleasure doesn’t mean much but inform their uniform - white shirt and tie up top mean business, jorts below for pleasure.

There’s also a juvenile streak to their humour that often works to their advantage, a pant-shitting quickie being a case in point. They similarly induce in a three-part sketch based on snake puns, revelling in the cheesiness, especially of the painfully laboured final gag.

But in longer scenes, similarly forced events can grate. It’s usually a sign of not knowing where a sketches is going when a character suddenly flips and aggressively pulls out a gun, and so it proves here. 

Most sketches could be halved. Emotional self-defence is a neat idea, for example, but doesn’t need to be played out several different ways, and bad meditation tapes is not an original idea. However, Jesus as the ultimate nepo baby cleverly expands on the premise, rather than just repeating it.

It all ends​ with an interminable deathbed sketch reintroducing every previous idea, a clumsy, overlong idea that is so convinced a callback is as good as a joke that it smashes 20 of them together artlessly, but with a self-congratulatory vim.

However, for all the patchiness, the performers are all charismatic and playful, and seem capable of more if they could just find more focus. 

Review date: 7 Apr 2025
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Melbourne International Comedy Festival