Marathon, not a Sprint

Last night me and Georgie were planning on sneaking into Town Hall and catching some international stand ups with our artist passes but instead we took the night off. Marathon not a sprint etc etc etc. Chloe Petts (my icon, my fave, my god) can wait for another day.

But! I still have two shows I caught on Tuesday that I have to tell you about.

First up there was Mel McGlensey’s Normal which was at the Chinese Museum at the ungodly hour of 6:30pm (alternative comedy flourishes in darkness). But despite the sun peaking in through the blacked out windows, I had a great time.

This show is an absurd exploration of what 'normal' means, and it's real weird (don't let the title fool you lol). Mel has been trapped inside some sort of digital prison where she'll only be allowed out if she can perform normality, but the twist is that we—the audience—are the arbiters of normality.

This is achieved through a custom built bit of software which monitors the volume of the audience when we get polled on which bits Mel has to do, and does the math on how normal her bits are on average. Great clowning aside, it is so cool to see artists make work which blurs the boundary of game/performance, especially as playfully as this one does.

You’re reading Gag City, a limited run newsletter chronicling my time at the 2026 Melbourne International Comedy Festival. Sign up for newsletters sent daily-ish during the festival, and never again once it ends.

Subscribe for free

There's heaps of audience participation. I liked it, but then again I'm the sort of person to jump if a clown pretending to be a big tittied dinosaur tells me to (a real bit). Mel is an excellent host too, and despite the fact that we were an audience of seven people she never made us feel under pressure to participate.

I had the super fun job of throwing a flag on stage when she got too weird but I think I was probably the wrong person for that job—I can take a lot of weirdness so I didn't end up flagging the show as too weird until almost the end. Oopsies x

Keith Gow (icon, star, critic extraordinaire) reviewed the show positively and described it as:

sort of a commentary on artificial intelligence and its ability to turn all of human knowledge and art into slop.

I think the show absolutely can lend itself to a reading like that (the whole problem with AI art is how it averages everything out) but to me it read more meaningfully as a commentary on masking and neurodivergence: the insane amount of labour that goes into performing normality and the way it never really works anyways. I'm not certain that that was the intention of the work (I asked Mel if she had ADHD in the middle of the show's built in Q&A and the answer was no), but it's certainly what I'll be taking from it.

Regardless of what it was 'about,' this is a stellar work of genre-bending alternative comedy which bristles with so much humour, charisma, and care. If game design, immersive performance, or clown is up your alley, then you should catch this.

From there, me and my show partner for the day (hello Geo Valentine, love of my life—everyone should check out his Depop where he's raising funds for his cat's medical bills) wandered up to Trades Hall and planted ourselves firmly in the courtyard where I saw so many familiar internet-strangers and friends wander by (hello Jade, I was glad to hear you enjoyed your shows).

We were watching Tricksy Collins' Assigned Magician at Birth which was the first show of the festival I put in my calendar and wowee maybe it is the best thing I have seen at the festival thus far? High praise but Tricksy's blend of magic, standup, clown, puppetry, and rap is exhilarating and demands to be seen.

For full context, I saw this show at Fringe in 2024 and since then Tricksy's face has decorated the back of my laptop so I wasn't coming to this work unawares. I'm glad to say Tricky has managed to level up this show and it absolutely is churning with punchlines, punch ups, and pure adrenaline (a crazyyyyy adjective for a comedy show but the finale is like....... 🤯🤯🤯). Tricksy has a control of pace and vibe that is gagging to witness and not a single second of her time on stage is wasted, nor is any moment predictable.

Tricksy is a comedian by trade, but had been a practicing magician for years before she picked up a microphone. This is her attempt to bring those two practices together and it lands perfectly as she tells an earnest and vulnerable story about the toll transphobia takes on people. The way magic underscores the emotional beats of the story is unlike anything I've seen before and entirely effective at keeping the stakes high (there is a terrifying trick with sewing needles which you just need to see and talk to me about please).

Tricksy's show makes some big points about the transphobic and fascist rot at the centre of our world which I could re-state here but I think sometimes when we talk about queer artists we spend too much time talking about why it's morally important to see their work, rather than why their work is fundamentally better than anything else going on (read: the cishets are boring).

So, I'll leave the politics for Tricksy and just say that friends, you need to see this show. It's unlike anything else at MICF, and one of the most exciting things I've seen in this festival. Tricksy is a joy to witness and the way she blends the tragedy and magic of her life together makes for one of the most formally inventive hours at the festival. Genuinely remarkable. Closes this week. Run, and tell me what you think!

Tonight I'm catching three shows which should be pretty damn fun. Can't wait to check in with you tomorrow with some reflections from them. Talk soon x