Melbourne International Comedy Festival review

A stone’s throw from Fountain Gate, the shopping centre around which sitcom duo Kath and Kim oriented their lives, character comedian Alanah Parkin is having a garage sale. Within this brilliantly mundane conceit, the comic unearths a treasure trove of increasingly surreal characters.

Parkin begins the show as Denise, a suburban housewife sharing a good deal of Kath Day-Night’s DNA. She’s severe, has a rocky relationship with her grown-up children and loves aerobics. Denise invites the audience to peruse her once-precious wares while complaining of her husband Greg’s unwillingness to help with the garage sale, a necessary step in their planned relocation to a retirement village. 

But Greg’s got gripes of his own. When he’s not lecturing youthful passers-by on the transcendent merits of the VCR, he’s busy protecting his bounty of Christina Aguilera merchandise from Denise’s greedy mitts. Greg is less Kel Day-Night, more Phil Olivetti, the bumbling former policeman who fancies himself a local legend in Chris Lilley’s We Can Be Heroes, projecting a sense of blokey self-worth untroubled by his total lack of value to society. 

While Parkin’s regular switching between these two main characters – and the plethora of others who attend the garage sale – is greatly assisted by costume changes, their mastery of vocal craft helps to create a cast of easily distinguishable characters. Across their many transformations, Parkin travels to the antipodes of the human vocal range, sprinkling in a variety of accents as well as a show-stopping musical number for good measure.

Parkin might have benefited from relying more on their vocal talent and less on costume, for each time they depart the stage to change outfits, there is an inevitable drop in energy. Although Parkin does their best to minimise the impact of their time in the wings –  by hitting play on one of Greg’s prized video tapes or airing an entire scene’s worth of dialogue exclusively through sound design – the overall effect is one of inconsistency. Any swell in momentum built by Parkin’s impressive character work is swiftly undercut with a lull as they disappear offstage.

Parkin is at their best when they let their absurdist imaginings loose on Denise and Greg’s humdrum existence. Against the show’s hyperrealistic set design, its more incongruous characters thrive. For all its structural problems, bursts of Parkin’s absurdism shine through Garage Sale’s uneven framework, providing an exciting glimpse at a promising young performer. 

• Alanah Parkin’s Garage Sale is on at The Motley Bauhaus at 5.45pm until April 5.

Review date: 2 Apr 2026
Reviewed by: Anna Stewart