Last year I called Rose Matafeo the most exciting young comic in the country. She still is.
At the festival's opening gala this year (viewable online), the international comedians outshone the locals by quite some margin, with a few notable exceptions. Matafeo was definitely one of them.
Her new show Pizza Party is a wonderful collection of jokes about living in today's world, told in her understated and hilarious style. With pop culture references to things like Dragonball Z and '80s movie Mannequin along with a critique of the Coffee Club TV ad, it's very much what fans have come to expect from a Matafeo show.
Yes, there are some new impressions. Jill from Home Improvement is sadly gone along with Sylvester Stallone receiving a food order he didn't actually make. Thankfully, they're replaced by worthy successors, including Audrey Hepburn as a difficult flatmate and 'the worst dude in the world'.
Although each of Rose's stand-up performances have included a lot of confessions and observations about herself, Pizza Party is the most personal yet. She talks about her body, her family's wealth, which of Marvel's Avengers she is most aroused by, being a brown girl in a white school and the way she wants to eventually die, among other things.
Most personal of all, she even shows us what her Google Chrome tabs are. And eats dinner while performing, I guess that's pretty personal too. None of this stuff is even remotely heavy, however, nor is it boring or self-indulgent. It's all funny and as it's presented with Matafeo's endearingly geeky style, it's constantly entertaining.
I laughed harder during last year's The Rose Matafeo Variety Hour than I did in Pizza Party. But while I think Matafeo's last festival effort was better than this year's, as a comic she is undoubtedly a better performer and it's a joy to see her already considerable talents improve. The way she handles unexpected happenings and interacts with the crowd is particularly impressive.
Probably the best gag of the whole show is the theatrical final moment, which I just loved.
Matafeo is performing as part of a few other shows in the festival in addition to Pizza Party and I'm looking forward to checking those out too.
3 News
source: newshub archive
