Melbourne International Comedy Festival review

Once a private school girl, always a private school girl…

In her solo festival debut, former Raw Comedy finalist Meg Jäger exudes a faux sense of superiority, acerbic and nonchalant. She makes smug assertions like: ‘Fleetwood Mac? Ever heard of them?’ and reframes her parents’ divorce as a step up the oh-so important social ladder into a two-home family.

And while she may be a history teacher now, she still talks with the gossipy energy of a high school girl spilling the tea on topics such as losing her virginity.

To say a comedian chats to the audience like old friends is a cliché, but Jäger has a very literal approach to that, trilling that it’s been too long since we caught up and introducing routines with phrases like: ‘I’m not an only child, did you guys know that?’

Maybe it’s part of her pleased-with-herself persona, but it’s certainly a ballsy move, just six minutes into your first ever festival show – and before anyone knows your abilities – to clap back at a review.  Jäger takes issue with the critic not liking the routine in which she mocks her ocker dad Paul, translating vernacular such as ‘how’s your bum for grubs?’ into more urbane language. 

It *is* a fairly straightforward routine, but works as she exaggerates for comic effect possible confusion over phrases likes: ‘If you’re pissing with the big dogs you’re going to get wet.’ Yet this one still becomes something of  a mantra of the show (and she has a great line about mantas, come to mention it).

Not just privately educated, she also has a Christian upbringing that gives her a ‘residual conservatism’ sexually. Even if she's happy to discuss the topic, she  can’t quite get her head around her more cosmopolitan friends’ looser attitude. Her own adventures on the dating apps teach her about men’s ‘quite darling’ obsession with war – often via Call Of Duty – and she shares a message exchange that goes in a very unexpected direction. 

Renaissance Woman is arbitrarily sliced into a five-act structure, which allows Jäger to project charmingly elaborate chapter headings onto her screen but otherwise serves little purpose. There’s no natural grouping of topics that can range from her pet dogs to he mum being quite the big cheese in the post offices of Queensland.

Four years into her comedy career and her material’s not all there, and this has the feeling of being a compilation of the long versions of every routine she’s ever written, going into more detail than what’s strictly needed for each punchline.

But she’s got a very engaging style and some wonderfully sardonic one-liners, which suggests Jäger will be pissing with the big dogs before too long.

Review date: 11 Apr 2025
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Melbourne International Comedy Festival