I confess, I used to be sceptical about Wil Anderson. Never thought he was especially funny on Glass House, but The Gruen Transfer made me reconsider and now I’ve changed my mind completely. From the moment he comes on stage in thongs to teach new swears to kids, Wil Anderson is piss-funny. His performance has a vague theme organised around his theories on how to make the world a better place – he thinks maybe we could care less about money – but that’s just here to give a loose structure to the night so he can make callbacks to earlier jokes and tie things up neatly at the end. Mostly, he’s here to ramble. A bit about whales goes way off course when he realises his whale voice sounds like a drag queen and a joke about Japanese harpooning suddenly becomes a joke about gay sperm whales. He riffs off people in the audience too, and his ribbing of a group of 14-year-old boys in the front row ("When did you get your first mobile, 10? Fuck you! I had a tin can, string and no friends!") changes when 16-year-old girls come in late and take the seats next to them. Suddenly, it’s all high fives. All these digressions mean he starts motoring at 8.05 to get through the jokes he’s about to stop using because he’s just filmed a DVD and that only makes them funnier. Consider me converted.

JODY MACGREGOR

Anthony Menchetti is a self-described ‘vagina decliner’ from a very religious family – that’s comedy gold right there. Family conflict is a rich vein for the gags and so is the Bible. His routine goes beyond wacky Catholic dad jokes though, because after coming out to his parents they convinced him to go through gay conversion therapy. If you’re not familiar with gay conversion, it’s the idea that people can be de-homofied by the power of Jesus and some pictures of boobs. In America it leads to parents packing their kids off to ex-gay bootcamps, but in Perth things are a little more relaxed and it sounds more like a tea-and-biscuits Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. Menchetti’s story isn’t a sob story about the trauma inflicted by intolerant parents, and in fact his folks come off as well-meaning but hopelessly ignorant schmucks rather than actual villains. Menchetti makes excellent use of a variety of props during his performance, including a keyboard that he performs dinky little ditties on and a whiteboard of shame. He’s also aided by a dancer who removes an item of clothing each time he runs onto stage to boogie like a maniac before scurrying away. These diversions are a laugh, but the core story he tells is strong enough that even without them it would be worth hearing. The fact that it’s funny as hell just helps to sweeten the deal.

JODY MACGREGOR

IN STITCHES runs at QPAC until Saturday Jul 4. Bookings for remaining shows, including Fiona O’Loughlin, The Kransky Sisters and Justin Hamilton, can be made at www.institches.qpac.com.au

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