A Review of a Review of Eddie Ifft's show
This year's reviews of Melbourne International Comedy Festival shows have generally been of a much higher standard than usual.
This review of Eddie Ifft's show, however, is made up almost entirely of cheese-based metaphors. There doesn't appear to be a reason for this. The show isn't about cheese and the comedian's name isn't Gouda or Halloumi or Cheddar, so it seems the only reason the reviewer invokes cheese metaphors is so that she can refer to the show as 'putrid', to the content of the show as 'tainted', to the comedian as 'colossally rotten', and - somewhat bizarrely - so that she can threaten to notify the cheese police about a suspicious 'import'.
There is some analysis of the show's politics and of Ifft's ability to make his audience laugh buried between the allusions, but the furious rotten cheese theme is so central to the critical narrative that one would be forgiven for writing off this review as too angry, too obsessed with its own mode of delivery, and not interested enough in teasing out the concerns the reviewer had with the actual show.
I'm also taking off one star for "unleavened by the milk of human kindness". As a general rule, when even cheese metaphors are drifting off topic and encroaching on the milk metaphor genre I fear we are in danger of losing focus altogether.
Two stars.
