Review – Headliners (USA)
Venue: Melbourne Town Hall
Links: Buy Tickets
I do love a good stand up showcase. If it goes well, you find new comics to look out for. If it goes bad, you get to watch someone flounder and die on stage (don’t act like you don’t love it!), but not for so long that it gets weird, just long enough to see the panic before their time is up… wow, this review got dark fast.
The Headliners showcase presents three American Comedians, who each perform a relatively short set, and has a rotating lineup throughout the festival. While Michael Che, Iliza Shlesinger, and Pete Holmes were on the night I saw it, Eddie Pepitone, Brendon Walsh, Jessica Kirson, and James Adomain are all slated for a spot across it’s run.
Much to my joy, as much as I hyped the idea of watching comedians bomb live, Che, Shlesinger, and Holmes were all very entertaining and kept the somewhat lively crowd (and I don’t really mean that positively) engaged from start to finish.
The highlights of the show for me were Michael Che, whose soft-spoken, seemingly far too relaxed, delivery draws you in like friends talking casually, and Iliza Shlesinger’s ‘Kitten Paws‘, which are both adorable and terrifying in context.
The Headliners showcase is playing every day, except Mondays, until the 21st and you can check out who is performing on the show’s Comedy Festival listing.
If you have a penchant for American comedians then this is the show for you. The Headliners are an alternating line-up of stand-up comics from the USA, including Michael Che, Iliza Shlesinger, James Adomian, Eddie Pepitone, Brendon Walsh, Pete Holmes and Jessica Kirson. They are linked by a common thread of drawing Aussie audiences into their idiosyncratic lives as American citizens.
Three comedians performed on the evening that I went: Jessica Kirson, James Adomian, and Brendon Walsh, respectively. Kirson opened the show with a bang. Her vibrant personality and no holds barred, politically questionable anecdotes had me in stitches. Jews, Blacks, Asians, the old, and the young: no-one was off limits to Kirson. Her seemingly rubber face transformed to imitate people from all walks of her American life. Cynical, sarcastic and self-deprecating, Kirson was still, somewhat miraculously, warm and energetic, launching the show with versions of her young stoner-self along with semi-regular binge-eating jokes. Throughout her act she interacted with audience members, challenging them to respond without victimising them.
James Adomian had big shoes to fill after the Kirson explosion. He was funny and likable, but a lot of his material was hard to access for an Australian audience. Mostly he talked about his experiences as a gay man in America and did well-crafted impressions of characters that were unfamiliar to me as an Australian. Brendon Walsh ended the show with the most laid-back, chilled energy of the three. His “Peter Pan complex” cheekiness was catching, whining about his friends’ kill-joy wives and giving sex-toy descriptions.
Overall, a highly entertaining night with a good variety of good value performers.
