After Sophie Smyth’s show The Subplot, I went onto another Melbourne comic; Kate Dehnert. Her show ‘Echo’ is described as 1/3 play, 1/3 stand-up, 1/3 rave, which I was not aware of going in – I asked to review it after seeing it recommended by fellow Aussie Felicity Ward. I became aware of the rave element immediately, as the stage pulses with different coloured lights and Kate launches into a fast-paced anecdote set to thumping music about her long-term boyfriend managing to avoid yet another wedding they’ve been invited to. With animation and fury, she details how this is just a strand of a web of dysfunction, with him leaving her for another younger comic.
Her visceral rage is brilliantly realised by her speed of delivery and the backing beats, taking us through his conflicted emotions (she venomously snaps, ‘who the fuck thinks about their nobility?!’) from a break-up which was not only fully his decision but which he doesn’t feel the devastation of. The beats function as fuel and reflects the relentless pace at which she was hit by an emotional avalanche, and it’s a testament to her skill that she more than matches their momentum.
The knock-on effects of the seperation are huge; she has to rethink everything she had planned about her future, from her career to where she lives, while reckoning with the time she has lost and worrying that she’s done so much meditation to try and cope that she will enter a ‘trance state and go braindead.’ We veer between normal stand-up and sections set to music, with varying levels of surrealness and rage. Her nadir and the narrative peak is brilliantly realised, but she stays long enough for us to see the aftermath too, attempting to heal and managing a brilliantly surreal section about being on the apps. Throughout, she manages the tone brilliantly, mixing self-deprecation, emotional brutality and pithy wit – a true masterpiece of the genre and a must-see.
Kate Dehnert: Echo is on at Baby Grand at Pleasance Courtyard (7.05pm) until the 30th August