Melbourne International Comedy Festival review

As an exercise during their latest show mocking corporate gobbledegook, the Wankernomics duo get their audience to create a meaningless mission statement for what their fictional company does. 

The result is some vacuous word salad about providing best-in-class 360-degree value-added blue sky solutions for engaged stakeholders, going forward – or something.

Although some of the buzzwords used had previously been seeded by James Schloeffel and Charles Firth, the fact the audience generate this so effortlessly shows just how easy it is to mock this nonsense. 

That simplicity is both the appeal and the flaw of the Wankernomics formula. The audience are clearly well-versed in the bullshit, and it seems cathartic to laugh at all the acronyms and bombast that they have to endure daily from managers hoping to sound important and conceal their  shortcomings.

Most amusingly – or depressingly –  after spending the best part of an hour spouting garbage, the pair reveal real advice provided by expensive management consultants to be no less ridiculously meaningless than their supposed parody. 

Just Touching Base takes the format of – what else – a meeting. It’s an ‘all-hands’ pow-wow to address an existential threat to the company. One reckless employee has undermined the entire corporate strategy by sending succinct emails and answering questions unambiguously. Such maverick behaviour must be stamped out.

There are some amusing set pieces, starting with the jargon yes pair spout being translated onto the big screen to reveal what it really means – though the answer is usually ‘nothing’. That everyone knows this hasn’t stopped the insidious spread of obfuscating language across business.

While we in the room are the bulk of the workforce, others are dialling in on Microsoft Teams, while the whole process is interrupted by notifications ping up on screen, including an excellent topical gag.

The pair are engaging hosts, convincing as confident but know-nothing executives, with frictionless banter between them.  There’s pleasing attention to detail, from the cheesy stock photos and music to a convoluted tangle of a diagram summarising what’s been said. 

But however they frame it, the gags about bullshit verbiage and infinite pointless meetings are pretty commonplace and soon wear thin. That ultimately leads to one inescapable conclusion: could this whole show not just  have been an email?

Review date: 21 Apr 2025
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Melbourne International Comedy Festival