All posts tagged: festivals

For the Love of Books

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If, like us, you love losing yourself in a good book and currently own too many books to fit into your existing shelf space, there is a gorgeous little event coming up in Melbourne for Bibliophile’s just like you. Find yourself purposely lost down the rabbit hole of rare, old books, breathing in the musty scent of a thousand stories, at the sixth annual Melbourne Rare Book Fair presented by the Australian and New Zealand Association of Antiquarian Book Sellers. This Melbourne event, which runs during the first week of July offers lectures, presentations, exhibitions, readings, tours and more, all free and all about books. The 2017 lineup also includes a new addition of 3 programs specifically designed for kids including a school holiday book-making workshop, an illuminated manuscript calligraphy art lesson and a museum drawing studio session. There are quite a lot of events during Melbourne Rare Book week, but our program highlights include: Readings from Jane Austen To commemorate the 200th anniversary of the death of Jane Austin, Sydney author Susannah Fullerton, and …

2017 Melbourne Cabaret Festival

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Dolly Diamond, Melbourne’s undisputed Queen of Cabaret has taken the reins of this year’s Melbourne Cabaret Festival, in her role of Artistic Director to bring together ten Australian premiere shows as well as some of the best new talent. Now in it’s eighth year, Melbourne Cabaret Festival returns to Chapel Off Chapel with two weeks of fabulous entertainment.  “At last I can reveal the fabulous line-up for this year’s Melbourne Cabaret Festival”, says Dolly Diamond, Artistic Director, Melbourne Cabaret Festival.  “It’s full of homegrown Australian talent with a huge amount of new works being presented. It was important for me this year to draw on the talented artists who live and work in Australia, just as I do. I’m a great admirer of artists working all around the world but I felt it was time to focus on the performers who are the backbone of Australian cabaret.”  “I believe we have put together a program that audiences will really enjoy and for me that’s what cabaret is all about. I’m looking forward to seeing you all at Chapel Off Chapel when …

MICF Review: Nikki Britton is Romanticide

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We recently head along to check out super face-paced, anti-romance comedy – Nikki Britton is Romanticide as part of the Melbourne International Comedy Festival. From the moment we arrived, we were hit with hilarious, laugh out loud comedy from a lady that says everything we are all thinking as she shares her own true stories about dating, single life, getting older and the mysteries behind life. Every single girl within the room caught themselves out nodding along as her continuous comment “This doesn’t happen to normal people” reminds them of their your own cringe-worthy stories. Being that they are all her own true stories, it does get emotional at times as she describes a heart-break and unbroken hope for true love but always lifts the crowds moods quickly in her hysterical fashion even if that does involve acting out seeing her ex and then falling into a tower of Tim-tams, which quickly melted under her. Nikki tied her performance together with a continuous reference to the two characters that she is in life – a …

MICF Review: Burn the Witch

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Last week we checked out Melbourne International Comedy Festival show Burn the Witch on it’s opening night at the Butterfly Club, a tale set in a small English Village in the 1650’s, a village which keeps experiencing the mysterious disappearance of their children. Witchhunter General Dunlop and his comical, cockney assistant, Jennifer are engaged to get to the bottom of the conundrum and take the audience on a whodunnit style journey to get there. Written by and starring Martin Dunlop and Bec Petraitis, Burn the Witch has a great story to tell, a story that unfolds naturally for the audience with intelligent jokes, ironic humor and energy in abundance. The acting was brilliant, both Martin and Bec really engaged with the audience, and continued to hit the mark with their constant, sometimes dark, humour. For us, the speed of the execution was the only let down, particularly at the 10pm timeslot, the narrative moved from scene to scene at lightening fast pace, which made it a little hard to follow. And did they end up …

MICF Review: Songs in the Key of Awesomesause

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Matt Kilpa’s Melbourne International Comedy Festival show starts with an introduction song which instantly makes us think of the Mighty Boosh, and it’s a great way to describe Songs in the Key of Awesomesauce, sort of inspired by Flight of the Conchords, throw in a touch of the Boosh-style quirky delivery – and mix it with some cool, original material, for 45 minutes of laughs. One man, a guitar, and a bunch of funny songs. Matt’s debut solo show show is pretty fast paced, the songs are nice and short, just long enough to be punchy, but not too long that the audience drifts off, as he very easily moves to the next subject matter. Our personal favourites were the initial workings of his ‘Captain Planet the Musical’ project, where everyone knows that Planeteer Ma’Ti has the lamest power – the power of heart, a topic that any kid that grew up in the 90’s knows about, a parody set to the Dolly Parton classic, Jolene (about a certain red-haired politician), and a song about …

MICF Review: Just Like Buddah

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Last week we were invited along to check out Anthony Jeannot’s 2017 Melbourne International Comedy festival show – Just Like Buddah. In a way there were elements taken from last year’s show – Rage Against the Manchild, signature elements which sort of set Anthony apart from his fellow performers like his entrance.. he doesn’t really have one, this year, just popping up randomly from the back row to introduce himself. There also was plenty of his usual self deprecating, sweet style of humour, but this year the delivery was injected with a lot more confidence, so the show was sharper, more on point. Some of the jokes from last year were reworked into the new show, but the fresh material in Just Like Buddha takes the audience though trips to Sweden (and other types of trips), Anthony’s date with a Doomsday prepper, and the perils of trying to meditate with an over excited, anxious mind. All the kind of interesting, engaging tales that seem far out, but are relatable enough that the audience always has …

MICF Review: No Tips For Keith Cheng?

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Guest reviewer: Shannon Murphy On Wednesday night, we were invited to check out Keith Cheng’s debut Melbourne International Comedy Festival show “No Tips For Keith Cheng?”. This culturally diverse show was MC’d by Melbourne’s own Damian Cosgriff, whose punny goodness and one liners warmed up the crowd, before support act, Singaporean import, Wei got the show rolling. Our introduction to our main act advises that Hong Kong born Keith, has been a regular on the Brisbane comedy scene and his talents have previously seen him as a Finalist (2012) and Runner Up (2013) in the Queensland division of Australian’s biggest open mic comedy competition, Triple J’s Raw Comedy.  Keith’s arrival to the stage was facilitated via a fist bump with the MC, with Cheng confessing it’ll be the only time he gets to successfully punch a white guy. Cheng pushes the envelope on taste with his self proclaimed “Terrible Jokes of The Night”, a title that says it all and garners gasps, chuckles and full out laughter from the audience.  A walk out at this …