deanne smith get into it: review

As part of the  Sydney Comedy Festival, I was privileged to catch Canadian-American comedy act DeAnne Smith for her one-off Sydney show, Get Into It, on Thursday night. It’s a shame that she’s already come and gone from Sydney, considering she clearly belongs here.

DeAnne is a lesbian and let the audience know this from the get-go. She was quite excited to see that the majority of the audience was lesbian (which was not far from the truth, save for my friend and I), and bounced off well with the raucous laughter that followed from every lesbian joke she made. DeAnne is a comedian that balances her previously written show off what the audience gives her on any particular night, and it’s clear that she’s incredibly good at doing this. This made the show feel instantly unique.

My incredibly straight friend and I still had much to laugh at though. From DeAnne’s total inconsideration for performing the show ‘correctly’ because it was indeed her only night in Sydney and she didn’t care about reviews (it’s OK DeAnne, I’d write you a good review either way), to her fluid story-telling about her peculiar life as a comedian, lesbian, lover of Mexican mimes, and of her prowess in making social situations turn utterly awkward.

She asks us if we know the stereotype that comedians are anxious, socially awkward, a little bit nuts. We all answer with a hearty ‘yes!’ But then she turns this on its head. What is wrong with us, the audience? Why do we like laughing at people who have a hard time dealing with most ‘normal’ things? There must be something seriously wrong with us, surely. Maybe we are the ones who are not socially adept. Maybe, just maybe, DeAnne is really on to something. But in saying that, it’s always been much easier to laugh at someone else than it is to laugh at ourself.

A lot of DeAnne’s show hit me quite close to home. I recently had a break up and have gone through a hard time, just like her. As dark as some of her jokes were, she has an overly positive outlook on life, repeatedly telling us that ‘nothing matters at all.’ The positivity here is that you don’t need to stress out because it doesn’t really matter. Thank you DeAnne for uplifting me a little bit there.

DeAnne stopped in Adelaide, Melbourne, and then in Sydney, and now she’s headed back to Canada for a slew of shows. If you missed her in Oz, and want to see her in action anyway you can check out her videos on her website. She has promised to return to Sydney to plan a lesbian party, full out water balloons and jelly wrestling. As far as other comedy shows go, who knows, maybe we can convince her to do one again. Or maybe not. It doesn’t really matter, does it?