Melbourne International Comedy Festival review

It’s not the catchiest title ever bestowed upon a comedy show, but Why Is My Bag All Wet? sums up the sort of relatable everyday chaos that befalls Anne Edmonds. The leaky water bottle marks her out as the sort of hapless idiot we can all identify with.

This is her first comedy festival show in four years, thanks to the pandemic – which helped her ‘trap’ Welsh stand-up Lloyd Langford to be her husband – and the small matter of becoming a mum at the age of 43. Taking ultimate responsibility for a helpless life when she can barely take care of herself is an underpinning theme of the show. But it also seems that little Gwen came along at the right time.

For behind the observational comedy about soft play areas and the disposable underwear at the beauticians, this a show of hidden depths as Edmonds interrogates the decisions she previously made in her life – was spending her 30s being up for a laugh really enough? – and opens up about her mental health.  

But it’s never addressed in a heavy way, that’s not the daffy Eddo brand. She dismisses what were clearly major depressive incidents with a maniacal chuckle, acting them out in hilariously accurate detail that turns the misery on its head. Her physicality alone alchemises pain into laughs.

On top of that, she’s a natural raconteur: frank, self-deprecating and with an acute sense of what words and intonation will evoke the funniest version of the images she’s conjuring up.

There are tales of serving the tyrant in the high chair and how being a sturdy mum is an asset. Some routines are inventively surreal – such as the nicknames she gives to her stove’s burners – but then plenty in her real life is strange enough, such as the quest she had to endure to buy baby equipment while in Edinburgh for the Fringe.

Her showstopper routine is both bizarre and horrific, the ultimate humiliation that puts all the other demeaning incidents she has told us in perspective. She didn’t want to share it, but felt she’d have her comedian’s licence revoked if she didn’t. No danger of that, as whatever else Edmonds struggles with, she’s a natural at stand-up, making the art look effortless.

• Anne Edmonds: Why Is My Bag All Wet? is on at the Comedy Theatre at 4pm on April 15, 16, 22 and 23.

Review date: 11 Apr 2023
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Melbourne International Comedy Festival