I was lucky enough to score a couple of tix to Sydney Comedy Festival’s Frocking Hilarious showcase at Town Hall last weekend. The show featured a butt-load of extremely talented female comics and all proceeds went to ActionAid, a charity which fights for women’s rights around the world. Not only was it for a good cause, but I think I laughed so hard I cracked a rib (that’s a thing that can happen, look it up).
Okay let’s start with Town Hall’s hostess with the mostest – Anne Edmonds. She’s rough, she’s raw. She says things ladies aren’t supposed to say and I am here for it. There’s too many jokes to mention so I’ll stick to just one. She described one of her old workmates as looking just like Princess Di “in the glory days, pre-car crash”.
Then we’ve got Becky Lucas, who is so beautiful I want to cry. If I’m honest, it doesn’t matter what comes out of her mouth, her whole being is funny. Her set came in hot with quips about white wine needing to be classified as a class A drug, not having time to take a backpack off before sex, and comparing male feminists to species that are introduced to get rid of pests, but become greater pests themselves. Her set has so much comedy per square inch, I think I missed half the jokes because by the time I finished laughing at one, she’d already fired off three more.
Okay be warned, I’m gonna talk about Nikki Britton for a while because I’m clinically obsessed with her. Nikki, if you’re reading this, I’m your biggest fan. My instagram is @courtneydutton. Please, I am begging you to slide into my DM’s. But back to the set – first, she talked about how happy she was to be performing for us, because it’s so good to spend a weekend not at someone else’s wedding. She’s got a buttload of anecdotes from attending other people’s weddings including; having a truffle dog eat out just the crotch (not the waistband) of her undies which she lost skinny dipping, not being able to get the smell of balls off your hands, and pretending to get full from just sniffing the croissants at the buffet breakfast in order to appear low maintenance to a boy she liked. She then launched into a bit about how we need to change the language surround female genitalia, because she’s heard too many men talk about how they touched a vagina when really, they “got labia majora at best”.
After the intermission, an 80-year-old lady came down the halls to Chamillionare’s ‘Ridin” on a mobility scooter, stopped when she saw someone holding a glass of wine, grabbed it off them and said “is this savvy-b?!” before downing it. She then rode off again to the bottom of the stage. There were approximately 5 steps to get to the stage and I was genuinely concerned about her ability to get up them. She did it though. Waddled the whole way, and through the whole set, and made me laugh harder than when I discovered Vine for the first time. It wasn’t until about 3/4 of the way through the set that I realised that it wasn’t actually an 80-odd year old woman, but a much younger woman in disguise. It wasn’t until I started to write this piece and googled it, that I realised that the much younger woman was actually Nikki Britton! Who I’d seen less than half an hour earlier! I tell you folks, this wasn’t just standup, it was 5-star character acting. I’ve got to stop talking about Nikki Britton before her publicist organises a restraining order against me, so I’ll move on (begrudgingly).
Okay, there were so many amazing female comics but you’re going to quit and read something else if I keep going on like this. So I’ll just say a couple more things. Cal Wilson is a beautiful angelic snow angel. Zoe Coombs Marr is so smart she should start wearing a lab coat in her sets to assert her cognitive dominance. Angela Dravid asked if dick is halal and I’m still not over it. Legit every act was incredible for me to go through it all would take a 5000 word thesis titled ‘Women Are Funny: A Epistemological Study on the History of Gendered Comedic Discourse’.
Sadly, the only performance of Frocking Hilarious is done for the year, but you can still catch plenty more Sydney Comedy Festival shows, head to http://www.sydneycomedyfest.com.au for more info!