Review by Steve Bennett

Most of the rest are presumably her listeners, again adding to an atmosphere of familiarity, which can make outsiders feel distinctly excluded. When she shares stories about her family, it’s likely that the majority of the audience personally know who she’s talking about.

Indeed, the only heckle she gets is when she’s corrected about an elderly relative’s age, while elsewhere she points out the brother who’s the subject of one embarrassing anecdote in the third row, and at another point, she pauses to hand back her Mix 101.1 security pass to the newsreader behind him.

But while McEncroe is open, personable and chatty, she can’t always bring the rest of us into her world. The descriptions of her father, an entertainingly grumpy doctor who calls traffic lights ‘meddling cunts’ and is prone to inappropriate banter, and mother, a strident feminist, are witty enough, but she somehow misses on building that vital connection that would make these tales resonate with the rest of us.

We similarly get the measure of her four siblings, but don’t really relate to them; and while she tosses out the occasional great line (and equally occasional terrible one) it’s not enough when we don’t much care for the characters she’s talking about.

Some of her anecdotes stand up as funny routines on their own, but others seem like family in-jokes that would be entertaining as radio-show banter, but haven’t yet been bashed into shape by the abrasive effectives of repeated comedy club outings.

But now she’s lost the day job, maybe she’ll have time to refine the routines so that even strangers can enjoy them.

Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Melbourne, April 2009

Review date: 1 Jan 2009
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett