Kitty Flanagan Live
Seeing Kitty Flanagan live is a very different experience from seeing her on television. The personas of the much put-upon, slightly bewildered solicitor in Fisk, or the essentially stupid but arrogant bureaucrat of Utopia are absent.
Instead, a small figure in baggy pants on the Athenaeum stage is warm, friendly, confiding, almost one of us, a chronicler of so-called ‘ordinary’ everyday life. (Of course, that might be yet another persona…) She welcomes latecomers, pointing out empty seats, but gets a touch waspish when one woman explains, ‘Traffic.’ ‘Hmm – traffic,’ Flanagan murmurs, almost an aside, ‘that’s good – I’m going to use that one…’
But there are revelations aplenty about ‘ordinary’ life – angles and aspects you hadn’t thought of, but which immediately strike you as true. There are flashes of genuine exasperation – and you know what she means. There’s the occasional sharp sting too in her observations. Having recently moved from Sydney to Melbourne, she tells us she loves Melbourne, though she does wonder at that brown sewer that runs through It – and that people sit beside it, having drinks… As for her snarky take on the sex scandals of NRL players – that’s where bemused irritation turns into a flash of impatient anger – but is still very funny – followed by some cogent advice for the lads.
There’s the dentist who diagnoses the need for a lot of work at a huge fee, but who refuses anaesthetics – preferring instead ‘breathing and visualisation’. There’s the visit to the hospital where Flanagan is forced to strip naked, wear one of those all open at the back gowns, and then traverse long bum-freezing distances for a consultation with her doctor in his three-piece suit. Groans of recognition on that one! And nice comic timing as Flanagan delays telling us, oh, yes, by the way, everything was all right.
Flanagan’s Mum recently visited from Sydney. She’s great, her mind intact… rational and comprehensible 90% of the time. But 10% apparently controlled by a monkey Flanagan and her sister Penny call ‘Coco’. Coco can suddenly, without warning, take over. Bizarre things are done and said, including breathtaking but innocent rudeness, and the heavy use of emojis.
Penny, incidentally, comes on with her guitar and the duo sing ‘A Love Song to Underpants’ about the changing needs of the older person in the knickers department. Pants get bigger and bigger, and G-strings, silk and synthetics are no more. Flanagan, well aware that she will become a ‘senior’ herself before too long, takes a passing swipe at that demographic too with some very snitty but accurate observations.
She turns out to be a brilliant mimic. Who knows why mimicry is so delightful, if not magical when a different voice suddenly issues from a performer. There’s the irritatingly ‘woke’ voice of that dentist. Crusty seniors. Or her new Melbourne neighbour who pops over from across the road to welcome her to the street – but does so in a ‘rich woman’s voice’! Flanagan does the voice. The entire audience gets it. Disconcerting. Surely the woman is putting it on? How exhausting. Every morning the woman has to remind herself to put on the voice – and there’s always the risk that, in moments of stress, the real voice will be revealed… The names of the woman’s children get another laugh.
Apart from those NRL players, Flanagan’s material can seem, on the surface, pretty mild, unstartling and unlikely to offend. Underneath, however, there’s a touch of that thing that drives the best comedy: anger. Things could be better, so there’s an implicit plea for patience, tolerance and that old thing ‘common sense’. At the end, your jaw and midriff are aching because you’ve been laughing for a solid hour, and you love Kitty Flanagan.
Michael Brindley
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