Melbourne International Comedy Festival: The local superstars

In her first stand-up hour since 2018, Celia Pacquola serves up a hilarious whirlwind tour of the past five years: lockdowns, a new relationship, a haunted house, butt-masks (yes, things got weird during covid), and the arrival of her daughter. With the regal Comedy Theatre in Melbourne as her backdrop, Pacquola kicks off with a “you’re welcome” for the early 6.30pm start time; she’s in her 40s now and in genial Celia fashion, appreciates that people prefer to be in pyjamas by 9pm.  

The show picks up from where her 2018 set (All Talk) left off, with a palpable sense of urgency as Pacquola swiftly revisits the #MeToo movement and her personal mental health issues – both thankfully now “solved.” She rewinds to 2020, a year that Pacquola anticipated as “her year,” only to be marked by the global pandemic and, in her opinion, an equally newsworthy story: the year she won Dancing with the Stars. Thus begins the prelude of her adventures as a self-proclaimed “fun mum.” 

Here, Pacquola flaunts her trademark candour and quirkiness, regaling the crowd with flawed logic like a kicking system that dictates her meat consumption and the finding and returning of a lost cat. The decisively delirious tone of the set underscores her ill-preparedness for navigating parent groups, arguments with her smart home, and the moral quandaries of parenting.

There’s a begrudging yet good-humoured intertwining of Pacquola’s dismissal from Bluey, having been initially offered the role of Chilli, now famously voiced by Melanie Zanetti, prompting raucous laughter from the audience. Pacquola’s adept interaction with her audience arrives in all of the right places with jests about “walk outs” following a series of birthing anecdotes, and the allocation of laugh-based gold stars.

While the energy and laughs taper towards the end, Pacquola reels the audience back in with clever callbacks to earlier jokes. The climax arrives with a comical showdown against Google Home, set to Vengaboys’ ‘Boom, Boom, Boom, Boom!!’ This leads to a protracted conclusion where Pacquola shares the difficulty of wrapping this particular set, ultimately offering a wholesome reflection on beginnings rather than endings. Despite the slightly clumsy finale, a couple of surprises in the ‘post-credits’ almost make up for it.  

Pacquola effortlessly blends freudenfreude, self-deprecating silliness, and genuine warmth (despite what the Bluey team said), to create an intimacy hard to achieve in large venues. I’m As Surprised as You Are truly feels like a long overdue catch-up with friends – a delightful pre-dinner treat that will keep you smiling until bedtime. 

I'm As Surprised As You Are is playing at the Comedy Theatre until April 7 – find out more and get tickets here.

Want more? Check out who else is performing at the 2024 Melbourne International Comedy Festival.

Anne Edmonds is one of the country's most fearless and revered stand-up comedians. She is no stranger to accolades, and they include five Most Outstanding Show Award nominations, the Director’s Choice and the peer-voted Piece Of Wood Award at Melbourne International Comedy Festival as well as a Best Comedy Performer nomination at the Helpmann Awards. Now, she's bringing her acclaimed show Why Is My Bag All Wet back for another season for the 2024 edition of MICF. Keep reading for our 2023 review.

Is there anything better, more life-affirming even, than seeing a comedian who is at the absolute top of their game? After seeing Anne Edmonds in full flight at the Comedy Theatre as part of the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, probably not.

The much-loved entertainer (perhaps best known for her alter ego, the slightly unhinged, sarong-wearing Helen Bidou) dances on stage with a swagger and a smile that is instantly infectious. She’s already laughing at the fact that so many of us would be here at 4pm on a Saturday arvo: “Ooh, the matinee crowd”. 

There’s the obligatory warm-up chat that touches on Covid (“did you know there are still anti-vaxxers around – it’s cute!”), before she launches into the main premise of her show: why is her bag all wet? Thanks to a show of hands, it’s clear this is a universally shared phenomenon, and Edmonds labels the few who have never had the misfortune of a leaky water bottle dripping in their bag as “sociopaths” who must be in cahoots with Frank Green.

From there, Edmonds dives into her life as an older mum (or a late-in-life mum aka a LILM, which she repeats over and over in an increasingly hysterical voice) and jokes about “trapping” her partner – fellow comedian and Welshman Lloyd Langford – in the country during the pandemic, then conveniently falling pregnant. 

The trials and tribulations of motherhood are an ongoing theme across the hour-long set, with Edmonds regaling us with a horror story about destroying her daughter Gwen’s birth certificate via – you guessed it – a leaky water bottle in her bag. She also talks about filling Gwen’s head with parental propaganda (“you’ve got the hottest mum in Australia”), close mother-daughter relationships giving her the ick (“no thank you, not for me”) and the intoxicating allure of the indoor play centre – where the inevitable bout of gastro is worth it just to score “ten minutes of beautiful, uninterrupted scrolling”.

But it’s when Edmonds (quite literally) throws herself into more physical skits or adopts different personas that she transcends from highly amusing to hilariously deranged in the best way possible. Her reenactment of one of her favourite pastimes – “sliding down the wall crying” – hits a little too close to home for many in the crowd, who by this stage are cry-laughing at its accuracy. Then a story about the time she travelled to Edinburgh for the Fringe Festival and needed to buy a high chair off Facebook Marketplace, only to be confronted by a hag-like Scottish woman screaming, “I canae find the tray” is enough to keep those waterworks flowing.

But the show reaches its crescendo when Edmonds divulges the time she shit her pants (yes, really) in a two-storey Coles Local. The unfortunate tale is a gold medal-worthy finish by any standards. Still, after an audience member dares question Edmonds’ claim that only a city like Sydney would be home to a split-level supermarket, she savagely shut him down by yelling, “don’t mansplain Coles to me”. Chef’s kiss, no notes – let that be a lesson for hecklers.

The juxtaposition of Edmonds is intriguing: she’s as relatable as she is outrageous, and her particular brand of comedy swings from almost sincere to full-blown acts of insanity. But above all, she’s just really, really funny – what more could you want than that?

Love to laugh? Check out these regular comedy nights in Melbourne.