Lawrence Mooney in Like Literally takes to the stage cheerfully and confidently, like a comedian who has clearly done his 10,000 hours. One of my favourite Australian comedians, I would choose him if I was selecting an Australian ‘best of’ squad. He is a high calibre, highly refined and talented comedian.
He’s the kind of bloke that you recommend to your American housemate because she should take the opportunity to see something ‘homegrown’ whilst she’s in town for the Melbourne International Comedy Festival.
There were moments where I looked around at the audience and noticed that the entire crowd was thoroughly captivated by Mooney’s masterful storytelling. Mooney is the sort of comedian that you would expect to find at the pub, not necessarily doing a show — just relaxing, knocking back a pint and causing a couple of blokes standing nearby to wheeze with laughter and subtly spill their beers over the front of their pants to hide their pee stains.
Mooney mostly kept to his fantastic script but occasionally delved off, riffing on his famous impression of Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and taking questions from the audience. One of the highlights of this interesting little interlude was a dystopian future of a Australian politics where Tony Abbott had suffered a traumatic brain injury resulting in personality changes that had dramatically improved his popularity among the Australian people and increasing his intellect.
Mooney also skillfully engaged with audience members about occupations and urinary continence issues in a vaguely menacing yet charming way.
Mooney has been a stalwart of the Melbourne Comedy Festival scene in recent times and his humour is as sharp as it ever was. His standup is iconically Australian, decidedly middle-aged and suburban in its flavour — and terrifically delivered. I highly recommend this show.
– Rian
Rian is a TPO writer.
Lawrence Mooney – Like Literally runs most nights of the festival (except Mondays), 8pm (60mins) at the Athenaeum Theatre. Purchase tickets now.
The venue is accessible.
Read The Plus Ones’ guide to MICF 2017, and visit often to see all our reviews.
