Anne Edmonds: That's Eddotainment!

4 March 2016 | 8:40 pm | Madeleine Laing

"She's endearingly, sometimes shockingly, real."

Melbourne comedian Anne Edmonds takes the bad or uncomfortable or shameful parts of herself and makes them funny, and there's a lot of times when the scandalised or uncomfortable laughter of the crowd comes from recognising those parts in ourselves. Some of the biggest laughs come from little throwaway despairing phrases she tosses off at the end of jokes — her storytelling is not effortless, but it's confident and unaffected. She's endearingly, sometimes shockingly, real.

To call Edmonds a physical comic would be wrong — she's not rolling around on the stage or acting out stories with huge character — but her face is so wonderfully expressive and watchable that the set still feels dynamic and visual.

This is the first show of the festival, so Edmonds is occasionally plagued by little misphrases and wandering thoughts, but because of the content of the set — hilarious sexual disappointments and fuck-ups — this probably makes it work better than if she did a completely polished, showy performance.

The theme of the set is about trying to get everyone to like you all the time — "going for 100%". Edmonds, like all of us, knows this is impossible. But from the way she gets the crowd on her side from the very first story (that culminates in an image of a sperm headbutting a pea in her stomach that's worth the price of admission alone), it seems like tonight she might have gotten pretty bloody close.

Don't miss a beat with our FREE daily newsletter