Troy Kinne

A cheeky, witty, relatable performance that lives up to its subtitle #nofilter.

Kinne shows mastery of his craft in a performance worthy of inclusion among the high calibre of comedians at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival. The show moves quickly with constant laughs. He’s straight to the point, recounting hilarious real-life stories without the boring details.

Just like his videos, Kinne’s live show is all about being a typical bloke trying to enjoy life. He takes the piss out of relatives, old girlfriends and himself. One of my favourite bits was the story of his sister-in-law challenging him to wax his bikini area, which resulted him passing out from the pain.

Kinne has an impressive comedic CV spanning over 15 years. In 2015, he was nominated for the “Most outstanding newcomer” Logie award for his TV show, KINNE on 7Mate. He has won numerous comedy awards and performed all over the globe. He also has many television, film and radio credits to his name.

Kinne’s experience and persistence has paid off. He proves himself to be just as funny live as he is in his videos. He includes one video in the show – a clever play-on-words showing how couples might say the same thing before and after having children but in very different tones. I did cringe a little when, as a segway to the video, he asked a recently-married couple in the front row if they had any children. This can be a difficult question for people having trouble conceiving, but I suppose a comedy festival is no place to be sensitive.

As a grand finale, we were treated to a rendition of his song, the “No rhyme rap”. This was not original content for the show and there were a few other jokes that I’d seen online already. Still there were enough original bits to make me feel like it was worth seeing him live. Overall the show went down well and kept the audience laughing and cheering right to the end.

Review by Sophia Dickinson