When comics say humour is a combination of tragedy plus time, they usually mean the past; smart Canadian-born Dr Pam looks forward to a future tragedy of the environmental kind and still makes it funny.
Her trick is working through the medium of Kim Kardashian. If over-consumption is the disease that threatens to kill planet Earth, then Kim K is its cover girl, muse, and prime suspect rolled into one.
With her apparent 'Too Much is Never Enough' ethos, she's also obligingly easy to laugh at. Gold-plated toilet? I'll take four, please. World's most expensive bed, costing $240,000? Well, might as well buy five more. And so it goes on.
As well as the material consumption, Dr Pam also explores the media coverage the Kardashian crew commandeer – and suggests a couple of alternative issues that probably deserve it more.
It does take Dr Pam, who is a real medical doctor from Brisbane, a little while to get stuck into this material – she kicks off on a tangent that includes a bit of a bio and some Differences Between Canada and Australia that is fun but a bit off topic at times.
But once she gets stuck into Kim, it's on for young and old.
And she doesn't need to make stuff up to enhance the ridicule; the facts are funny enough on their own, although her delivery helps keep the audience from sinking into a pit of despair and the craziness of the world.
Some hard-biting images of the damage we're doing to our home do still the laughter for a while, but Dr Pam rescues us at the end with some uplifting hope for the future.
This is the third season Dr Pam has delivered this talk – with its accompanying power-point presentation it really is more of An Inconvenient Truth with silliness, puns, and pretty pictures than a stand-up routine – and it sold out in its previous two incarnations. She plans to retire the show after this short (four-day) run.
The Highlander Bar – a revamped former warehouse – works well as a venue, with food and drink available in the hunting-lodge-style bar downstairs, and the upstairs theatre room well soundproofed. It's running four events a night, from 6pm to 11pm, until the end of the festival.
2015 Melbourne International Comedy Festival
Kim Kardashian is Bad for the Environment
Dr. Pam
Venue: Highlander Bar | 11a Highlander Lane, Melbourne
Dates: 8 – 11 April 2015
Tickets: $20 – $15
Bookings: www.moshtix.com
Suitable for audiences 16+
Melbourne Reviews
Kim Kardashian is Bad for the Environment | Dr Pam
- Details
- Jane Canaway
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