Presented by alist.com.au
Reviewed 1 Mar 2018
Your mum and dad loves Kitty Flanagan. I’m basing this on the fact that nearly everybody surrounding me at Thursday night’s show looked like they could be my parents. Couples with some disposable income having a cheeky night on the town.
And I can see the appeal. In the 70 minutes of Smashing, Flanagan says she is going to overcome her fear of publically talking about sex, but she doesn’t go about it graphically—she does it brilliantly. The Gen X way, shirking the subject with grossed-out reactions and tight-lippedness. In the best way possible, Flanagan reminds you of your mum—angry when she can’t fix your problems and absolutely 100% attentive to everything going on around her. For instance, her observations about sex, computers and why you should be wary of them are hysterical, bordering on paranoid.
Here are some of the topics Flanagan gets through in her show. Sex. Reality TV. Cleaners. Porn. Honey where there shouldn’t be honey. Cirque du Soleil—and on that, who bloody well knew Flanagan could sing? She rattles through all of the above with a kind of rambling precision, each story flowing organically into the other with no clear path. It is, as Flanagan puts it, a “journey”, of the wanky and hilarious variety.
Kitty Flanagan is stupidly funny and incredibly charming to boot. A must see show.
Reviewed by CJ McLean
Twitter: @cjmclean_
Rating out of 5: 4.5
Venue: The Royalty Theatre
Season: Now until March 18th
Duration: 70mins
Tickets: $45
Bookings: https://adelaidefringe.com.au/fringetix/kitty-flanagan-smashing-af2018