Nina Conti - Complete And Utter Conti

The Sunday Age

Sunday April 6, 2008

John Bailey

NINA CONTI - COMPLETE AND UTTER CONTI

Melbourne Town Hall. Until April 13. $27/$22. Tel: 1300 660 013

Ventriloquist acts are up there with Benny Hill and playing the spoons as entertainment best left in the creaky corners of yesteryear. Or so I thought until British comedian and ventriloquist Nina Conti proved me wrong by stuffing my preconceptions where they belong. Yes, her act contains the expected hand-up-the-arse jokes and plenty of smutty innuendo from the mouths of innocent-seeming dolls, but beyond this you'll find the kind of sophisticated intelligence that can virtually reinvent the genre. Conti's chief foil is a melancholic monkey so disillusioned by his lot as a puppet that he engineers a subtle scheme to reverse the balance of power. By the show's conclusion, Conti and her antagonist have deconstructed the very fundaments of ventriloquism while delivering near-constant laughs (and a surprising, disarming moment of genuine pathos). Be assured, this is no children's show - it's both thoroughly filthy and full of the kind of complexity that would rush over most kids' heads. For any self-respecting adult looking for comedy that's truly outside the norm, however, this is unmissable stuff.

© 2008 The Sunday Age

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