The Comedy Zone is a showcase of talent from five of the best upcoming comedians from around Australia hand picked by the comedy festival. The show takes place in the decaying Old Council Chambers, with plaster and paint peeling from the walls. However, once the show is underway, it’s quick to forget about the slightly odd setting for this performance.

Opening The Comedy Zone was MC for the night, Daniel Connell. Hailing from the ACT, Connell was given the task to warm up the room. He mostly looked nervous, performing while latecomers arrived and climbed over each other to find the remaining seats. There were definitely some funny pieces, however delivery let him down until his final two stories, where he finally found his rhythm.

The second act of the night was Scooby-Doo sidekick lookalike Luke Heggie from New South Wales.The deadpan Heggie had a slow start, from what was starting to look like a bit of a difficult crowd. Heggie works from the style of comedy which focuses on short jokes for quick laughs, in a similar style to famous comics like Jimmy Carr. Even though one-liners deliver a constant stream of punchlines, it often seems more difficult for the comedian to win over a crowd with, but by half way through his set, the audience warmed to Heggie. The audience reacted best to the jokes of a low brow nature and hate of bad grammar

Queenslander Henry Stone followed up with his slacker humour. There probably wasn’t much in his set for anyone over the age of 30, focusing on subjects like flat life, Grand Theft Auto and rap music. Stone was the first of the performers to make interaction with the audience, and it paid off well, providing plenty of laughs. I suspect in a few years time, with a developed and polished act, Stone will be a festival must see.

Connell came back on and announced the video guest performer of the night, Jaydos. Known for YouTube video guides to music festivals. Jaydos provided a guide to the Melbourne International Comedy Festival as an interlude between the live acts.

Jennifer Wong, the only female comedian on the bill, shone on stage. Wong began by telling the audience about her shyness, and attempting to overcome it by taking a first aid course. Wong certainly didn’t look shy on stage. Her presence was strong, and she had a confident and polished delivery. Wong’s comedy career started with her first stand up performance six years ago and includes work as a writer for Good News Week. So it’s unsurprising she showed the talents of a more experienced performer on the stage.

The final performer was local act Ronnie Cheng. One thing was certain from the moment he stepped onto the stage, Cheng was the star of The Comedy Zone, with his in-your-face comedy, which showed a great deal of energy and enthusiasm. Baiting the audience with bombastic confidence, he tackled the most un-politically correct issues. If Cheng doesn’t make it big on the Australian comedy scene soon, there will be a whole room worth of people who saw this performance, who will be surprised.

For more info on the MICF, hit their website.

Read more Laneway reviews.

The Late Nite Impro gang

In one of the many nineteenth-century inspired parks skirting Melbourne’s CBD, you might find us. We are a normal looking bunch, not here to down some tinnies before a big night out on the town or to unlawfully lure possums out from their Moreton Bay Fig homes. We are just a regular bunch of people with a passion that can be exercised freely on a flat stage of lawn and a natural sun spotlight. We are improvisers.

Impro is free, and it is a gift to learn and to share. That is what our group is based upon. We meet once a week to Jam, which, in the music sense, is to come together to play and experiment. In an Impro Jam we play theatre games and dare one another to create risky and imaginative scenes.

Utter randomness is the key to our enthusiasm. Who thought that a clown from Preston and a video store clerk form Berwick would be conspiring to ruin a romantic first date atmosphere that two other improvisers have established in a scene? The game is Evil Twins, where at any point in the scene your ‘evil twin’ can step into your place and behave, well, quite evil. Cameron – the professional clown, steps into the place of his ‘good twin’ and begins to eat the table cloth. When they swap back, the ‘good twin’ must justify why he has a table cloth in his mouth. To the delight of us watching, the ‘good twin’ sweats and struggles to fabricate a reason.

If life is about the people who you meet, well, then I have met some corkers through impro. Melbourne is blessed with connections to the global impro community. It attracts people who can’t sit still, who need to make shit up and toy with one another’s brains mischievously. When Jens, a soap-opera writer and fellow improviser from Cologne Germany, was travelling Melbourne in late 2008 he contacted the Artistic Director of Impro Melbourne who put him in touch with the Impro Jam group. He dropped into one of our Jams and shared with us some exciting new games the Melbourne scene has never tried before. Now we truly have a global repertoire.

The Impro Jammers have one thing in common: we are part of a greater scene which is the Impro Melbourne community. They have welcomed, developed, and unleashed some of the biggest names in the comedy/theatre business to date. As proud as Impro Melbourne is with its past they are eagerly looking to their future. The primary focus of the company is to expand the awareness of impro, whether it is through the growing participation in workshops or attending the numerous shows held throughout the year.

Impro Melbourne barely takes a holiday. First up is the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, where Late Nite Impro has risen to “must-see” institution level. Then there is the always popular Celebrity Theatresports™. When winter rolls around, Impro Melbourne’s Cave Season offers a delightful Sunday night of entertainment in the heart of Brunswick to warm the soul. The company then rounds out the year with a number of experimental shows, called Unforseen Stories, at the Melbourne Fringe Festival in September and then their staple Theatresports™ season at Theatreworks. For more information, visit (http://www.impromelbourne.com.au)

Other impro companies performing through out Melbourne are The Crew (http://thecrew.com.au/) , and Playback Theatre (http://www.melbourneplayback.com.au/home.htm) , both who offer something different in the impro community in Melbourne.

As for the Jammers, we continue to perform all year round with no audience but with what we provide ourselves. But do we care? Is it for the adoration of the crowd? No, it’s the personal joy that thrives from a scene when you have been asked to make every sentence rhyme while spelling out the alphabet with your body.

You can find Impro Melbourne performing at Melbourne International Comedy Festival in Late Nite Impro http://www.comedyfestival.com.au/season/2009/show/late-nite-impro/  and Celebrity Theatresports http://www.comedyfestival.com.au/season/2009/show/celebrity-theatresports/ 

Impro Melbourne Alumni is also performing at MICF in Spontaneous Broadway http://www.comedyfestival.com.au/season/2009/show/spontaneous-broadway/