By Vincent Coleman
Victoria Healy is a female comedian. There is an awful stereotype around female comedians, that being that they are either a) not funny, or b) they are funny, at the expense of their own dignity. Personally, I disagree with both of these sentiments. Women can be, and often are, funny as fuck. Anyone can be funny with or without the use of self-deprecation, or with it for that matter, so long as they own it.
Victoria Healy can be pretty funny, just not all of the time. Being a comedian is a hard job, and to an extent, a comedy show is only as good as it’s audience. Victoria Healy’s audience were lovely, which is what I think was the very problem she faced – they were too nice. Elderly people, seeing a reasonably priced show while the sun was still up, they were very polite, which is not what a comedian needs. A comedian needs a crowd they can get theirs claws into, wise-cracking smart-arses to be taken down a peg, people that you can feel comfortable having a go at and getting involved in the show.
With a lukewarm crowd that risked offence, Healy kept pulling her punchlines, apologising for jokes about giving hand jobs in takeaway restrooms and the ins and outs of her own rather personal anatomy. It felt like she was almost begging for a heckler in the room, something to spice up an otherwise bland performance on a bare stage without the glitz and glamour of the larger and more colourful stages in the Garden.
My only real note of disappointment is the misleading show title and description – “Victoria Healy’s Anatomy – Blood and guts. Skin and bones. The space between your ears.” While the show did focus on Healy and her squeamishness regarding the human body, there was less blood and guts than I was hoping for, and the campness of topics like medieval torture felt out of sync with the rest of the show. It’s a shame, you could see that she was a genuinely funny person drowning in a crowd of polite indifference. Put her in any of the pubs just a few hundred metres down Rundle Street and it would have been a very different performance.
Is Victoria Healy funny? Probably. Is Victoria Healy’s Anatomy funny? Not really. It could be, provided the room actually has people who are alive in it.
Krystoff Rating : 2.5 K
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