Work In Progress

Increasingly the Fringe has become a testing ground for the Melbourne International Comedy Festival with big names experimenting with new material in smaller venues and a traditionally more forgiving audience. This trend provides Fringe audiences a great opportunity to see fresh shows in intimate venues.

MELBOURNE FRINGE 2009

xTrades Hall , The Old Council Chambers
Mark Watson
Tuesday, September 22, 2009 

Increasingly the Fringe has become a testing ground for the Melbourne International Comedy Festival with big names experimenting with new material in smaller venues and a traditionally more forgiving audience. This trend provides Fringe audiences a great opportunity to see fresh shows in intimate venues.

When I saw Mark Watson at the Comedy Festival earlier this year it was at a packed Town Hall theatre from the dizzy heights of the stalls. This Fringe run sold out, but each audience was one-tenth of the size. This friendly atmosphere added hugely to my enjoyment of Watson’s conversational and observational style.

 In Work in Progress,  we see Watson starting from scratch. He is developing a new show that will eventually return to Melbourne in 2010.

He is charming and witty, yet as he advises the audience at this stage, he is aiming not so much for humour, but accuracy. He tackles what seems to be a common theme for 30-something male stand-ups; that of facing up to impending fatherhood, and interweaves the minutiae of a travelling comic’s life with puns and curious surreal asides. The small audience was responsive and Watson was even able to ask for feedback on new jokes.

As a comic and a performer Watson is afraid of the mediocre. Here he has scaled back his show to its bare bones and offering a wonderful hour of funny and accurate laughs.

Season Closed