Review by Nione Meakin

‘I’ve got a bitch face,’ Jennifer Carnovale announces with a sigh. ‘If I’m not smiling, I look like I want to punch you’" She’s doing herself a disservice – one thing this comic really has going for her is a natural likeability.

A 28-year-old Hungarian-Italian-Aussie (the blurb describes this as character comedy but god knows where the distinctions occur), her CV includes call centre worker, school teacher and shop manager. She hasn’t been in the UK long enough to quite get to grips with the British and much of the show revolves around the observation of minor cultural differences. It’s not strong but it’s pleasant enough – the sort of conversation that might while away half an hour on holiday.

She loses her thread quite a bit in a bizarre segment imagining China introducing pole-dancing as an Olympic sport and then goes totally off-piste with a rambling stream-of-consciousness about hormones in chicken, the main gist of which is that some toddlers have bigger breasts than she does, but that’s not why she hates kids.

There’s something quite intriguing about Carnavale when she goes weird – not least because these moments tend to come after she’s said something exceptionally banal. There’s a nice juxtaposition between her confident, calm delivery and the gibberish coming out of her mouth that could perhaps be exploited were she more aware of it. As it is, she seems as surprised as her audience by what she’s saying and to have even less idea where it’s going.

By the time she starts griping about people asking her to spell her name – she thinks it’s them having a pop, which seems pretty paranoid – I had started to wonder whether this was nerves, a lack of material or that Carnovale just inhabits a different planet to the rest of us.

As a show, this is unremarkable and the idea it's character comedy is outright preposterous. But there are enough off-kilter lines and peculiar observation to suggest Carnavale might at some point become a more interesting prospect.

Review date: 11 Aug 2012
Reviewed by: Nione Meakin
Reviewed at: xxxxLaughing Horse @ The Free Sisters