Melbourne International Comedy Festival review by Steve Bennett

Sitcom Theme Song Singalong And Trivia won’t be getting many demands for refunds for misleading advertising. For that is exactly what it delivers, with the late-night audience jollied into joining in with some of the corniest comedy themes of all time, interspersed with fragments of information about the shows.

Another reason for not wanting your money back is that you can easily walk away with more than the ticket price in Chupa Chups, as they are thrown around like... well, candy... to reward participation and obscure comedy knowledge.

Hosts Bert Goldsmith and Rosie Vernel do a solid job in getting the audience on side. They could have gone down a more ostentatiously cheesy route, but they seem to have respect for even the dodgiest examples of the genre. Well, except Two And A Half Men – that is rightly denigrated.

The charm is low-tech. Graphics are made not in Photoshop, but Microsoft Paint, there’s no PowerPoint, just Goldsmith zipping around his desktop to find the next video file. And the biggest laughs come when his laptop flashes up a low-battery warning.

There’s a bit of a jar when dry trivia is shoehorned into the knockabout feel of the rest of the proceedings, which generally exude an atmosphere of good-natured celebration. The show’s never going to win awards for artistic endeavour, but it’s a fun end-of-night outlet, especially if you’re in good voice, and know ALL the lyrics to Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air.

Review date: 6 Apr 2014
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett