Melbourne International Comedy Festival review

Tom Ballard isn’t the first stand-up to write a play set in the green room of a comedy club, and he won’t be the last.

But while there are some decent gags in JKS: A Comedy(?), the dramatic element is a prosecution of the tediously repeated debate about offence in comedy that offers nothing new.

Ballard plays Alex, who represents the woke side of the argument – a gay comic whose work is defined by the homophobic gags he heard in his youth, and who insists comics should be careful not to punch down or contribute to intolerance in wider society.

Jase (Kevin Hofbauer) trades in dubious material about paedophiles and argues that nothing is off limits – that they are just jokes, not meant to be taken seriously by very definition.

Their arguments – triggered by the death of a fictional old-school Aussie comedy legend in the offensive mould of Rodney Rude –  follow the expected path, often going around in circles arguing the same point.

When Jase says ‘it’s like talking to Twitter’, it’s rather too on the nose. As it is when Bev Killick’s Chrissy – a battle-hardened circuit veteran who’s seen it all – comments sarcastically: ‘There’s nothing people like more than comedians talking about comedy.’

A couple of things shake things up: that Jase is a person of colour but also that he gets riled about the jokes about having a small dick, the ceaseless repetition of the same gag having a similar effect on him as the gay slurs had on Alex. Plus Alex has not exactly got a spotless record when it comes to his old material, either.

However these elements are not enough to break the feeling comedy nerds will have heard all this before, while laypeople will either not care or have their existing view reinforced.

The cast is completed by the underused Lauren Bonner as Bree – an up-and-comer prone to bombing, but not really a character that needs to exist here – and the delightful Tiana Hogben as May, a clown whose impish interjections defuse the tension and whose style perhaps represents the future of comedy: silly and inoffensive, unconcerned with bigger questions of bad taste. 

While waiting to go on stage, she’s also filling in a website’s Q&A,  putting the questions about comic inspirations or good and bad gigs to her fellow comedians, providing prompts for them to flesh out their backstories.

While the quintet are bantering, the mood is fun – though some will bristle at the use of the r-word as a lighthearted insult, as is intended. If the script here sometimes feels like it’s comprised of chunks of stand-up material, it’s safe to assume that’s not unheard of for backstage badinage, while the team work well as an ensemble, perhaps because the dynamic is so familiar to them. 

But with so little new to say, JKS seems like a futile exercise.

Review date: 19 Apr 2026
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Melbourne International Comedy Festival