Jennifer Wong: Ouch And Other Words
Live Review
Melbourne International Comedy Festival

The big revelation in Jennifer Wong’s show is that she’s 31 years old. For she is as shy and unassertive as the most self-conscious teenager, afraid even of using the phone.

This debut show feels like the highlight of a High School public-speaking symposium. By those standards you’d pat her on the head and congratulate her for overcoming her nerves to orate a fluid narrative that holds the attention.

But on comedy terms, that is the very least you expect, and this is far too mild a monologue to make any impact beyond: ‘Well, she’s quite sweet’.

Timid, bookish, quiet, polite – these are the sort of adjectives she attaches to herself, but not necessarily what you want in a stand-up. Her stories are sometimes quite interesting, such as when she talks about depression and the bizarre anti-racism poster she spies for post office workers, but there’s no oomph to the delivery. But the ‘quite’ is significant.

She can write eloquently and with a pleasant whimsy, and there’s more than the occasional wry turn of phrase, but that is a different skill set to natural funny bones. Delicate gentility is not enough.