Review by Steve Bennett at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival

Festival debutant Jared Jekyll is great at rapping and beatboxing, OK at magic – but when it comes to comedy… let’s just charitably say he needs more work.

The title falsely suggests a cavalcade of puns, when it’s only one element of a mish-mash across the genres. There is some wordplay, but it’s mostly uncomplex, nothing that’ll really surprise. A string of bad jokes on a bird theme has some cheesy charm for sheer commitment, but he’s not often than emu-sing. An early pun about ‘destroying a pussy’ – spoiler alert: it’s a cat – sets the mood ahead of a song filled with similarly cheap gags. 

He banters with the audience a bit – and tonight they came off as funnier than him in every exchange. For when he goes off-script he tends to gabble, grasping too desperately for anything, symptomatic of a lack of polish that undermines rather than enhances the hour. Across the board, his delivery feels too hard, not quite aggressive but a fairly charm-free, battering-ram approach.

There are a few anecdotes in the mix, too, and again they’re fairly weak, There was that time he got a casting because he was short, fat, bearded and not very attractive. That’s pretty much the full story.

Jekyll’s variety elements – doing tricks, showing off his hip-hop flow, or mucking about with loops and sampling have some entertainment value – but the comedy elements let him down, and the loose, scattergun approach seems panicky, throwing enough skits in the hope some sticks. Not enough does.

Review date: 17 Apr 2017
Reviewed by: