Supper Room, Melbourne Town Hall, March 28 until April 7, 2013
Melbourne International Comedy Festival
Star rating:****
Reviewer: Kate Herbert
This review also published on line in Herald Sun on April 1
"Outrageously funny, smutty routine about the
trials of being a woman of a certain age."
Jenny Eclair shocks the pants off the bloke
in the front row and even scares some of the women of a certain age who chortle
at her wicked jokes about sex, ageing, hot flushes, stress incontinence and
being ticked off at just about everything.
‘Lower your expectations’, she quips, then
proceeds to babble at a bruising pace with her gravelly voice, near hysterical
delivery, occasional startling shouts, and unsavoury, hilarious material
liberally littered with expletives and gob-smacking brazenness.
As she slouches across the stage or perches
on her comfy armchair, she laments the horrors of ageing, visiting the doctor
to discover her weight is too high, her blood pressure is through the roof and
her drinking is killing her.
She elicits hoots, groans and gasps from the
audience as she complains about body hair (she brings new meaning to the term
‘comb-over’), extols the virtues of sensible clothing and revels in her
newfound anti-social behaviour.
Her intolerance of toddlers got one of the
biggest laughs and united the entire audience – even that bloke in the front
row – and her rules to maintain a relationship for 30 years are a riot.
The mischievous Eclair knows she is
outrageous, so she gives us a ‘safe word’ to call out if she goes too far. Of
course nobody does because, by the encore, we are stunned into gaping
incredulity by her stories of ageing disgracefully.
By Kate Herbert
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