THE SHOWS
BAD DANDY
are gay, straight, trans or bi, it’s not an issue – everyone is accepted.”
JACK DEE: LIVE
FABIAN LAPHAM & THE ACTUAL MUSICIANS Simba’s birth, there’s a film noir one, there’s a man’s eulogy for his father, there’s a Meatloafian love ballad, there’s a more grounded love song for my girlfriend Kelly, there’s a Twilight Zone-y one, a time-travel one, and a story from the perspective of a five-year-old kid who’s had too much sugar.”
Treleaven began his career as a very different kind of performer; after getting the sack from working in a flan factory he trained in circus arts and was a juggler for years before picking up the mic. “The way it influenced my stand-up stuff was that everyone in the circus was very edgy, the fringe of the fringe of the fringe; doing shows in their underpants and yelling into a lightbulb, that kind of thing.”
omedian Asher Treleaven is no stranger to the clash of civilisations. Growing up in outback Australia until the age of ten, before moving to Byron Bay with his hippie parents, the self-described dandy loves nothing more than poking fun at Australian mainstream culture.“I had a confused upbringing. I spent the first half of my childhood hanging out with dudes whose pastimes were things like ‘meat’. But when we moved to Byron Bay it was all about patchouli and feminism,” he says.
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“Australia is an extremely macho culture. I guess my comedy keeps on coming back to that even though I live in Melbourne, an arty city where everyone is having a latte. Australia is still a really dudeheavy culture. Like, too dude-heavy. Dudes are arseholes, and it’s funny to make fun of them. I’m an arsehole. White middle-class guys, I mean, come on – we deserve everything we get.” So what’s the opposite of the Aussie dude? The dandy, of course. “For me, a modern dandy is someone who is well-dressed, who loves the arts, and who exists in a fluidly sexual world, where it doesn’t really matter if you
A huge fan of Barry Humphries and Robin Williams, Treleaven describes his comedy as powered by “socially responsible dick-jokes”. He is keen to maintain the distinction between his comedy and the kind of left-wing political commentary that is just, well, a bit ranty. “I’m left leaning but I’m not anti-immunisation crazy left-wing. I’m not like, [into putting] alfoil on my head,” he laughs. “The best socio-political comedians are the ones who can fold the research into the material, and it’s funny, it’s a joke, and you don’t really know that you’re getting a political message. It’s wrapped up in a bundle rather than jabbed in your face by a guy wearing a black t-shirt, screaming about how Monsanto is ruining the world… You’re not a nuclear physicist, you’re just a comedian. Relax buddy.” Treleaven describes his name as “Jewish at the front, Cornish at the back”though he’s neither of those things. “I wish, I wish! That’d be awesome! Two subcultures that have been discriminated against for ages... I feel like I would love that, just to be part of the team,” he laughs. “But I’m just another middle-class white dude with a Jewish-Cornish name.” Sarah Braybrooke WHEN & WHERE: Thursday 28 March to Sunday 21 April, Vic’s Bar
50 SHADES OF GRAVËY art to another level. “Instead of being a musical play like The Ghosts That Rocked Me, 50 Shades Of Gravëy breaks down the fourth wall and brings the audience a spectacular rock’n’roll concert that will have you in stitches.” Part comedy festival, part music festival, Varley sums up the concept simply: “the show will be primarily original songs with hilarious character-building banter in between.”
ith an umlaut in their name and a font that’s industrial flicker outshines Anvil, you’d be forgiven for thinking Gravëy were a power-metal band. For the recently resurrected rock troupe, whose past setlists have included Britney Spears and Lisa ‘Left Eye’ Lopes covers, their influences are as elaborate as their carcrash-surviving back story. “Fundamentally we all just love music,” says Steve Varley, aka guitarist Richie Page. “My personal influences stem from ‘90s grunge rock and ‘70s and ‘80s power rock like Pearl Jam and Queen. Jake [The Captain] has barely heard any Pearl Jam and doesn’t think too much of Queen, preferring less mainstream bands and some old-school classics like David Bowie. Kate [Penny] is Billy Joel’s biggest fan and Figgers [Lucky John] has basically moulded his life to be the next Dave Grohl,” he says.
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Returning to the Melbourne International Comedy Festival after the success of last year’s The Ghosts That Rocked Me, Varley, a member of the Aardvark Anonymous creative team, says the band’s latest incarnation takes performance
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Leading up to their performances at Word Warehouse, the four-piece have been busy rehearsing, recording and even releasing a film clip. “We have spent some time in the studio and we have recorded two of our upcoming songs which we plan to release in the lead up to the show,” says Varley. “The title song, 50 Shades Of Gravëy, can already be found on YouTube accompanied with a very literal Google images interpretation of the lyrics.”
fter a six-year absence from stand-up, British comic Jack Dee has the microphone back in his hand, and you’d be forgiven for thinking he almost sounds happy. The Englishman made a name for himself as a kind of comedy curmudgeon in the 1990s, when he got his break and his own TV show. Television has kept him off the stage for the best part of the last six years, too, as he wrote and starred in four series of his popular sitcom Lead Balloon. But Dee says he’s lately been feeling the need to get in front of live audiences.
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“I’ve been doing a lot of writing and acting over the last six years and as much as I’ve enjoyed that, I’ve been getting twitchy to get on stage again,” he says. “I started doing a little tour of small market towns in Wales, Cornwall, Devon, across to Ireland, and godknows-where. I just started getting a feel for being on stage again and enjoying it for its own sake, really. ” He last toured Australia doing standup in 1995, but Dee says his comic
“…WE TRY TO BE AS WHILE SEXY AS POSSIBLEST E PERFORMING ON AG AND READING THE BOOK MAY HAVE HELPED WITH THAT.” voice hasn’t changed. “As before, I think the main thrust of my material is a rolling review of my life,” he says. “But as well as that, I’m trying to bring in philosophically where I’m at and how I’ve changed. It can include thoughts about religion and politics and conspiracy theories and how that’s affected me. I’ve never sat down and thought, ‘I’m going to write a show now and the entire theme of it’s going to be electricity’. It’s just always been, ‘okay, I’m going to be with the audience for a couple of hours and we’re going to hopefully have fun talking’. It’s good to walk away from stand-up for a while until you’re brimming over with material and hungry for it again.”
Possessing a title that plays on EL James’s erotic romance novel, Varley, who describes the show as pornography for the ears, admits that reading the raunchy book became a requirement before attending band rehearsals. “The title started as a bit of a joke and then we really liked the ring of it so we kept it without any real intention of using the book in the show. When we brought in Claire Frost, our director, her first command was that if that was going to be the title then we all had to read the book. We ended up getting some really great material from the book and have written a song dedicated to it, which shares its name with the title of the show. Other than that we try to be as sexy as possible while performing on stage and reading the book may have helped with that,” he laughs.
Besides Lead Balloon, the other side-project that’s sucked up a lot of Dee’s time was writing his 2009 autobiography, Thanks For Nothing. It covers the first 25 years of his life, until he first started stand-up – some difficult years in which he battled depression and alcoholism. Dee says he is mostly pleased with the result – even if he feels he may have shied away from some hard truths. “I did evade the darker stuff in favour of writing about the more entertaining stuff,” he says. “As much as people enjoyed it, I’m not sure it’s a great document of what I did in my life. It’s more of a flight of fantasy, a lot of it, and what I learnt from that is that I’m much more honest about myself on stage than I could ever be in a book.”
Brendan Hitchens
Baz McAlister
WHEN & WHERE: Thursday 28 March to Sunday 14 April, Word Warehouse
WHEN & WHERE: Thursday 18 to Saturday 20 April, Town Hall
ccording to Fabian Lapham’s Comedy Festival webpage, his up-coming festival show is best described as “an exciting fusion of stand-up, sketch and storytelling, told with eclectic characters, crafty wordplay and infectious rock and roll”. When free from the confines of a press pack, however, he likes to spruik his show in the following way: “Hey arseholes. My show’s the tits. Come watch it an’ shit.”
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Lapham’s show, Fabian Lapham & The Actual Musicians – God Fights The Dinosaurs & 9 Other Stories That Will Awesome You In The Face, is his first solo appearance at the Comedy Festival (he does stress he has a backing band). Assuming we can take him for his word regarding the God Vs Dinosaur showdown, we ask Lapham for a synopsis of his nine other stories. Before adding a quick disclaimer that they will most likely change before the MICF Guide goes to print, he tells us: “There’s a Faustian tale about Elvis, one about an antelope from The Lion King who’s wondering why he’s at
Acting on the childhood dream of being a comedian, Lapham first started writing comedy at age 17. He went to film school, started making comedy films and doing that kicked off his sketch career. And to be honest, if his show is as eclectic as our interview he might be on to a good thing. So, will there be live betting on the God Vs Dinosaurs match? He craftily dodges the question by referring to an “after-show” consisting a Rabbi and cassowary fight. He is tight lipped on sharing too much information about it though; apparently the second rule of a Rabbi and cassowary fight is that “If this is your first Rabbi/ Cassowary Fight Club, you must bring a dip, a salad, or a light casserole”. And they’re not going to risk having to eat crap food by letting just anyone in. As to whom does he honestly prefer, God or the Dinosaurs? “To answer that might give away that story’s ending,” he says. However, he does give the impression that he may have a slightly unnatural obsession with the Dinosaurs. “I’m hosting a party for Jurassic Park’s 20th birthday,” he says. “I’m more excited about that than my own.” And being awesomed in the face? “It’s like getting bitch-slapped by Batman: hurts like hell, but you still get to touch Batman.” Benjamin Meyer WHEN & WHERE: Saturday 13 to Sunday 21 April, Northcote Town Hall
SOCIAL NEEDIA: THE EPIDEMIC Borensztajn isn’t taking a hard line with social media addicts in her show; it’s quite the opposite, in fact. Her show notes bear the caveat: “Please note: The use of Facebook, Twitter and Instagram throughout the show is not only permitted, it is encouraged. Doctor’s orders.”
elbourne’s Jordana Borensztajn has something many other comedians lack: a day job. This obviously puts her at a disadvantage when it comes to writing jokes about the Centrelink queue and subsisting on two-minute mi goreng noodles, but it has its benefits, too. Borensztajn has worked as a journalist for almost a decade – combining this with a comedy career by dint of little sleep, loads of adrenaline and a mild obsessiveness – and says her love of wordplay and observations of social media use combined to lead her to put on her Comedy Festival show, Social Needia.
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“I am totally addicted to social media and I’m well aware of how ‘unhealthy’ this obsession is,” she says. “I can’t tell you exactly how much time I spend on social networks because then it would be a permanent confession – IN PRINT – but let’s just say comedy is very therapeutic for me. I figure if I can make jokes about this addiction, which make me laugh, and make other people laugh, then that’s the best treatment available.”
“So many cinemas and live performances ‘ban’ the use of mobile phones, and nobody listens,” Borensztajn says. “People just go ahead and use them anyway. So I wanted to do the opposite; I opted for a non-conventional, tongue-in-cheek approach that embraces social media from the start. Nobody needs to hide their iPhone or BlackBerry through my performance; put it on your lap, wave it around, take pics, send tweets – whatever you want. If you use an Android though, ummm, you might want to hide that.” Aside from making a name for herself on the Australian comedy circuit, Borensztajn recently spent some time living in the US and took the opportunity to do stand-up at some of the country’s best-known comedy clubs. “It was so much fun,” she says. “I’ve performed in showcases at Carolines On Broadway, and at the New York Comedy Club – and I absolutely love New York. A lot of the processes and questions I ask myself are the same as they are here; who’s on before me? Who’s MCing? Will I remember all of my jokes? Honestly, the performances all feel similar because whether I’m at an Aussie club or an American club, the MC never knows how to properly pronounce my surname.” Baz McAlister WHEN & WHERE: Wednesday 27 March to Thursday 18 April, Loop