Justin Hamilton: The Goodbye Guy
Live Review
Melbourne International Comedy Festival

Festival stalwart Justin Hamilton can usually be relied on to do something a little different with his annual stand-up show, and this year is no exception.

At the heart of The Goodbye Guy are comedy staples such as the reaction to a friend’s ugly baby, raucous tales of practical jokes comedians play on the road, and awkward blind dates – all of which are expertly told by the affable Hamilton, who has an ear for a funny phrase.

But all of this is structured around a through-story. As the show begins, Hamilton is tapping away at the comedy blog, Come Ride My Column, which he began 18 years ago as a hobby, and now his bread and butter.

But the host website has a new editor, a successful comic ‘extremely popular with those who don’t know him’; a shark-eyed man with firm ideas but bland sensibilities and a strangely weak sense of humour. It means the job is becoming increasingly less fun, but it’s Hammo’s only regular source of income. Dare he jack it in and plunge into the unknown?

This is a fiction, but it’s hard not to see analogies with the comedy world at large, where mass media makes millionaires of the marketable, while leaving much better comics in relative obscurity.

In retrospect, it’s hard to recall quite how this narrative segued so easily into Hamilton’s unrelated stand-up routines, but he’s such a smooth operator you don’t see the joins at the time. The importance of creative expression is one consistent theme, though, whether it be cautionary tales about stifling a child’s imagination or a comic being unbowed by critics shouting ‘offensive!’ without heed to context.

Yes, there are weak points – not least coming off-mike to tell offensive bar jokes he would, naturally, never dare say on stage, which is definitely a case of having his cake and eating it – yet there’s a smartness to his positive, if sometimes deliberately ambiguous, message which makes the show more than the sum of its parts.

Even the high concept pinning this altogether has a flaw, in that a crucial poignancy comes from a sudden, almost deux-ex-machina revelation, rather than something more organic. But even so, it adds to the central question about weighing the safety of the unsatisfactory but safe known against the scary potential of the unknown.

Its another layer to what is a richer, more complex offering than most festival fare. While there are funnier shows on offer, this one could leave a more lingering impression.