Short Bus to Wrongtown - Comedy gig

There are occasions when coarse, sexist material can be
terribly funny. This was not one of them.

Clare Turner is the highlight of Short Bus.

Genre - Comedy
Location - The Cue
Address - 277
Brunswick St, Fitzroy
Date - 27 September 2006 to 14 October 2006
Tickets - $5
Online Bookings - www.melbournefringe.com.au

The chairs are far more comfortable at Cue. I'm not at all certain how to
describe my lack of ease with the performance itself. Perhaps an emailed, Great job, team! might begin to convey this displeasure.

Short Bus conductors Ben Hodson and Paul Jones seem like such nice boys. This makes their cheerless, pointless comic clutter all the more inscrutable.

There are occasions in which a cool distance can refocus coarse, sexist things to make them terribly funny. This was not one of them. I waited for mortified laughter or incensed shock. Instead, I felt dull nausea as a conservative litany of misogynist jokes were poorly refigured as irony.

From deep within their stale discomfort, each comedian revealed a glimmer of hope. When these boys manufacture material that emits a faint whiff of humanity, they may very well be worth a look.

Clare Turner, by contrast, is a highly evolved vulgarian. A resolute Pippi Longstocking with the errant tongue of Joan Rivers, Turner is legitimately funny and odd. It was, at last, a relief to find a comic at ease with her strangeness.

This review was by Helen Razer in the Age. And she is a bit old and not funny so maybe this gig is worthwhile.