Bob Franklin: An Hour's Too Long For Stand-Up | Review by Steve Bennett at the Melbourne Comedy Festival

Bob Franklin: An Hour's Too Long For Stand-Up

Note: This review is from 2017

Review by Steve Bennett at the Melbourne Comedy Festival

Bob Franklin is a comedian who’s saying what we are all thinking, in the title at least.  And the entirety of his show’s description in the all-important festival programme reads: ‘You will be shortchanged.’

It’s a perfect encapsulation of his dry, downbeat style – as well as his economy with words. About 85 per cent of his shtick is lowering the expectations set by the clever punchlines of the other 15 per cent.

He delights in wrong-footing the audience, playing with their assumptions of where a joke is going, and indeed of how comedy normally functions. Though ‘delights’ is probably too upbeat a term for such a deadpan performer. Let’s say ‘gets a sadistic pleasure from’ instead.

Like many a comedian, he has a love of horror fiction, which he indulges with macabre tales of the terrors that this basement venue has witnessed over the years. However, they are only mildly funny, and not nearly as unexpected as the best of his punchlines.

At his finest, the manipulative, surprising jokes of this comedy stalwart and sometime TV performer strike a note of similarities with fellow Brit Simon Munnery. But, the low energy, monotone performance eventually takes its toll, and the title becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Until then, there are certainly enough distinctive and inventive one-liners, delivered with a sinister and inscrutable curl of the lip, to show why Franklin is such a respected comic on the Melbourne scene.

Review date: 4 Apr 2017
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett

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