Melbourne International Comedy Festival review

By way of events that needn’t concern us, Nellie Lovett – the accomplice of Sweeney Todd who used the demon barber’s victims to fill her pies –  has wound up on the edge of Melbourne’s Queen Victoria Market, getting ready to reopen the old business 200 years on. And we’re all invited. 

Elliot Wood’s lusty portrayal of the sort of lunatic who would do such a thing is as maniacally unhinged as you’d hope. He’s as committed to the madness of his role as Mrs Lovett was to the madness of her cannibalistic endeavour. 

Full of Cockney ‘cor blimey’ mateyness, he uses the powerful force of his personality to enlist willing audience members to aid in the sloppy preparation of the pies. The help is needed because his actual assistant, named Kitchenette, is mute, unemotive and even more sinister than Lovett herself.

Meanwhile a ghostly apparition threatens to upend the already chaotic preparations before the arrival of tonight’s guest of honour, the Lord Mayor of Melbourne. To impress him, entertainment will be provided by a certain stalwart of Australian musical theatre – if she shows up – but not using songs from the Sweeney Todd musical, as Stephen Sondheim’s estate has slapped a ban on that. (For reals, Wood has the paperwork to prove it).

All this combines to make a messily entertaining romp, loosely performed but driven by Wood’s unflagging commitment to the insanity. And while it is the comedy of bedlam, Wood underpins the mayhem with a hurricane of proper gags – mainly corny – withering drag queen-style insults and dumb malapropisms galore. Yes, you will hear at least one ‘meat curtains’ gag. 

He’s a wildly physical performer, down to spinning atop the meat counter, and an outlandishly camp one. With star-quality comic intensity, he gives the darkly surreal shenanigans a compelling unpredictability, some of it genuinely spontaneous, as he hurtles through each hilariously scrappy set piece. It really is offally good fun. 

• Elliot Wood has completed his Melbourne run of Mrs Lovett’s Famous Meat Pies Grand Reopening Extravaganza.

Review date: 5 Apr 2026
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Melbourne International Comedy Festival