Melbourne International Comedy Festival review

Mike McLeish played Paul Keating in Keating! The Musical which stormed this festival 20 years ago. But don’t expect the same from this super-mild slice of low-impact musical comedy.

The two-decade career in stage musicals that followed Keating!’s success got in the way of his real dreams, he says, so now he’s going back to his roots. And the result is this gentle anthology of untamed songs  dangerously close to the bland.

Breaking from tradition, he *starts* with a curtain call - a sly way of generating unearned applause as he demonstrates the various ways actors can acknowledge ovations. It’s very theatre in-jokey, and moderately funny, which is the best level the next hour ever reaches.

Clad in a rakish neckerchief, McLeish is affably unassuming, reassuringly calm and a tad self-deprecating. He prides himself on his relatability, with his tracks inspired by the everyday: Gatorade ad slogans, encountering an aggressive driver, studying on Duolingo, spotting a stray pubic hair,  and how having sex in middle-age requires negotiating various aches and pains. 

They make for pleasant ditties, sweet to a fault, and generally optimistic – the very-nearly-50-year-old is even looking forward to ageing.  But the ideas behind his comedy are fundamentally unexciting and he rarely takes his lyrics into unexpected direction.

There are smiles galore, but no guffaws, and the content, however charming, will have slipped through your brain by the time you’ve descended the stairs back into the street.

Review date: 18 Apr 2025
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Melbourne International Comedy Festival