We don’t think it’s a stretch to say that Kitty Flanagan is the queen of Australia’s comic royal family. Boomers through Millennials will remember her from the Full Frontal days, when there were only a handful of TV shows to choose from on any given night, and the prime-time sketch show was pretty much everyone’s go-to. Since all the way back then, Flanagan’s consistently held command of Australia’s television screens, including on The Weekly, as one of the key characters in Utopia, and most recently, starring in her own sitcom, Fisk (all on ABC TV). It’s no wonder, then, that there’s a fully packed-out, fully in-stitches crowd at Flanagan’s Enmore Theatre show for the Sydney Comedy Festival.
We did wonder how Flanagan’s droll performances in these painfully realist comedies (Fisk and Utopia) would convert to the live stage, where energy matters if you’re going to hold a crowd’s attention for an hour and a half. But like any strong monarch, she effortlessly rules the stage, leaving the audience bowing down to her comedic mastery.
Flanagan’s a household name because she stars in shows watched by the whole household, so I assumed it was safe to take my 11-year-old son along. (Something I wouldn’t feel comfortable doing with many of the other more ‘shock bait’ comics featured in this festival.) I assumed right. In this performance, Flanagan covers fairly ‘safe’ topics, the kind that pretty much everyone is going to be able to relate to: the Sydney vs Melbourne rivalry (now that she’s moved down there); whacko neighbours; dog park politics; old people’s texting habits; big underpants; farts. The sort of fair-game, crowd-pleasing stuff that’s going to make everyone from the age of nine to 99 laugh without too much wincing.
If you like comedy for the shock factor, you’re not going to get a whole lot of that from Kitty. What you will get is relatable, likeable charm and a regal performance, refined over the decades. Long live this queen.