Melbourne International Comedy Festival review

You could read Emma Holland’s Don’t Touch My Trinkets as a thoughtful treatise about ethics and exploitation in art, as encapsulated by a landmark court case involving New York street photographer Philip-Lorca diCorcia. 

Or you could – just as accurately – read it as a big daft muckabout, spanning goofy physical tomfoolery, a stupidly provocative analysis of Mario Kart characters and entertaining stand-up stories about the likes of the sexist Uber driver she encountered.

It’s testament to Holland’s creative skill that she can let the two levels coexist so easily, and to her puckish performance talents that she holds it all together so effortlessly. Her persona is partly petty and self-centred, but with a strong sense of silliness – like a child, essentially. 

Thus a highfalutin discussion about the portrayal of angels in art quickly descends into her re-living a rivalry from her days in the primary school choir that hurts to this day. The eight-year-old who wronged her over a certain Robbie Williams track is still a ‘conniving bitch’ in the eyes of the adult comedian.

To represent this story, Holland presents a painting of an angel, one of four artworks in the gallery she’s curated  to signify key stories – a neat touch that gives the show a distinctive visual style.

Art forms the basis for many routines, with the comic offering a ridiculous, sometimes disturbing, take on subjects from the Capitoline Wolf – the sculpture representing Rome’s origin story – to paintings created by elephants.

But the crux of the show is whether she has the right to talk about other people in her stand-up. That schoolgirl, that Uber driver, never consented to this. The diCorcia case resolved that the artist had the legal right to photograph people in public, but the ethical right is a greyer area, which Holland doesn’t intend to resolve. 

That makes this delightful hour sound weightier than it is. The ridiculous opening scene that has her dashing back and forth across the stage, apropos of nothing else in the hour, is probably more indicative of Holland’s silly style. Her stories are often interrupted by quick gags that burst into the narrative like intrusive thoughts. A turtle-based one-liner that flashed on screens is one of the best single jokes of the festival so far.

Smart and silly in equal measure, Holland’s show is a fine example of the art of comedy.

Review date: 10 Apr 2025
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Melbourne International Comedy Festival