As someone who likes her comedy feminist, queer and independent, Zoë Coombs Marr fingers all the boxes. Agony! Misery! is as close to traditional stand-up as she’s likely to get as her surreal mind map leaves everyone pondering things they may never have thought about. I’ve also now heard enough dick jokes this festival. I never thought I’d write that about Coombs Marr.
The further she moves away from her award-winning, critic-wordgasm-explosion character Dave-the-dud-stand-up, the closer we get to seeing the real Coombs Marr. Or is Zoë the 30-something lesbian comic, in black Snuggle Pot and Cuddle Pie trackie pants, another character?
The real Zoë question is one of the many joys of Agony! Misery!. To be recognised as one of the smartest, brain-twisting, genre-breaking comedians ever, she had to perform as a bloke. In her sold-out-everywhere show Trigger Warning, Dave discovered that his inner clown was Zoë the cranky lesbian, who went on to make Bossy Bottom (which can still be seen on Amazon Prime; it’s brilliant). The Zoë in Agony! Misery! is still cranky and still treats her audience as an amorphous mass (who she loves), but she’s more introspective as she wonders why her 13th birthday in 1997 at band camp was so wonderful – and no it wasn’t like THAT, but it did involve fingering.
As she shares that story, she also wonders if she’s being too niche. As if niche could ever be Sondheim’s Into the Woods, dick jokes, lesbian puns, gaze/gays confusion, veganism, and a long-form joke about being too niche. I couldn’t have been the only person wanting her to sing all of the witch’s rap and share a plant-based recipe with ALL the greens.
Maybe 1997 was so relevant because it was a significant year in Australian comedy. As Coombs Marr explains, it was the year Puppetry of the Penis first exposed itself. It was also the last show she saw in 2020, and, having moved to Melbourne at the same time, she may have had too much time to think about why the penis hamburger has remained popular art for 24 years. Puppetry of the Penis has been to Broadway and been around longer than many festival performers – whose parents might have even been on puppetry dates. Who would have guessed that live temporary dick craft wasn’t too niche and would become a cultural norm?
It’s a lot to take in. I’m also sure that I’m not the only one now imagining two naked men in capes singing the prince duet from Into the Woods – “Agony, misery, though it’s different for each” – as they origami their dicks into love hearts.