Melbourne International Comedy Festival review

Ross Purdy performs in a pink balaclava, and he’s right not to want to show his face for this late-night mess of aggressively impenetrable anti-comedy.

While he berates bland, hack comedians for their generic but relatable material about the like of share houses and dating apps, you won’t find him pandering to the audience with anything as crass as something they might enjoy.

Instead, it’s an incoherent, shouty brain dump of nonsensical wordplay; cheap, confusing, headache-inducing videos;  what could generously be called a Godfather spoof, largely involving delivering fake punches to an audience member; a puppet tumour and fair bit of weird ranting.

Occasionally the audience is allowed the briefest of glimpses of a satirical point he might be trying to get at, such as the tyranny of the masses, but it’s buried under a bamboozling deluge of non-sequiturs.  And it’s all delivered with little connection to the room, Purdy’s clearly doing this entirely for himself and in the unlikely event someone else gets on board, that’s a bonus.

Most of the laughs he got on this night were from the drunk sections of the audience making up their own jokes about the half-naked man on stage blustering at them. Most of the sober punters wisely made for the door before the end.

•  Ross Purdy: Hey Hey It's Doomsday! is at Bard’s Bard's Apothecary at 10.30pm tonight and tomorrow and April 20 and 21.

Review date: 13 Apr 2022
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Melbourne International Comedy Festival