Melbourne International Comedy Festival review

It’s been six years since Kura Forrester won the Billy T Award for the best emerging comedian in New Zealand, and she’s since been on her local version of Taskmaster – but only now is she making her Melbourne comedy festival debut. 

With that experience, it’s no wonder that she seems so at home on the stage, assured and in control without imposing her confidence on us. She has an easy mates-hanging-out-together manner and a background in acting that lifts her character act-outs.

The show is a relatively straightforward update on her life as a 40-year-old single woman having misadventures on the dating apps, getting the cutest cavachon dog and buying a house, despite being financially illiterate. It is also a celebration of friends, ‘here if you need’ in the words familiar from any netball team, as she derives a Zen philosophy from the schoolgirl sport.

She runs us through her pals who have her back, from overachiever Ria, the anxious-but loyal Sasha, unreliable wild child Jess and the super-organised Bubbles. Forrester knows there are people like this in the audience, for who else organised the group tickets?

Relatability is the watchword throughout. Even if you don’t have first-hand experience, her description of the losers she matches with on Tinder is very vivid. Forrester can be graphic in her routines about sex – or the wooziest scenes in Saltburn that she wound up watching with her mother – but delivered with a smile and a disarming matter-of-fact manner. 

Along the way, she chats about moody teens, gossiping in WhatsApp groups, causing chaos on the management group of her property, and a flick of her mixed Maori-English heritage, though this is not a show about Forrester’s identity beyond being very engaging chatterbox.

This is not stand-up that revolves around punchlines, rather a naturally warm wit who’s a pleasure to spend an hour with. And the only message - to live your life optimistically and unapologetically – comes entirely from Forrester leading by example.

Review date: 20 Apr 2025
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Melbourne International Comedy Festival