Melbourne International Comedy Festival review

Comedy’s roots lie in the jester whose abject status allowed him to reveal unspoken truths. So it’s apt that half of Greg Larsen’s show has him explore what a miserable grub he is, while the rest exposes the capitalist-led technological dystopia modern life is fast becoming.

Wearing a silvery cape and proclaiming himself ‘the last true comedian and prophet of the apocalypse’, he believes we are all being gaslit by the global industrial complex. Reality has become warped yet we all happily accept it. ‘I’m not insane,’ he doggedly insists. ‘And I’ve got a manifesto to prove it!’

This takes the form of a series of diary entries – Unrelenting Ultra-Violence has no greater structure than this – to make his point. He starts with the 2017 story in which the Australian media had to pretend that Health Minister Greg Hunt’s excuse that he liked an explicit porn tweet because he was ‘hacked’ was in any way credible. 

It might be an easy incident to mock, but the indignant rage Larsen throws at it, his unwavering support of honest porn purveyors, and his perfectly judged timing –simply adding ‘…and Sport’ to Hunt’s government brief becomes a joke in his delivery – makes the routine dance. Incidentally, to this day there is no mention of the story on Hunt’s Wikipedia page…

Larsen’s angrily cynical point of view having been firmly established, he goes on to rage against real estate agents, those who overlook Michael Jackson’s heinous crimes, tech companies making life needlessly worse and – the big one – the urban myth of the cum pizza.

A standout routine revolves around babies being a side-effect of sex – again the simplicity of the concept does nothing to convey Larsen’s full-on discussion of it. However his takedown of Grandpa Joe from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory goes on way too long, even if that was certainly the comedic point.

Though he commands the room by his physical and performance heft, Larsen’s status as a visionary prophet is constantly undermined by his own slovenly, disconcerting behaviour as a man in the swampy pits of society, graphically described in a swirl of self-flagellation. The only consolation is that there are always people more squalid than him to look down on, whether customers of seedy massage parlours or public defecators. 

At least there’s an honesty about their base behaviour, compared to those who wage wars and keep humanity down via the supposed civility of capitalism. That’s the underlying message that powers his fury – though you’d be forgiven for being too distracted laughing at the cum jokes to care about that.

• Greg Larsen: Unrelenting Ultra-Violence is on at Coopers Inn at 9.20pm until Sunday.

Review date: 2 Apr 2026
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Melbourne International Comedy Festival