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Abso­lute Mon­ster, guest reviewed by Lena Beets.

It’s quite hard to write a review for a com­edy show that has a medi­um to large bomb­shell admis­sion in the middle that changes the con­text of all the jokes told thus far, but I’ll try my best because Alice Snedden’s Abso­lute Mon­ster was great.

I’ve been a long time fan of Alice’s mainly through her pod­cast with Rose Matafeo, and her icon­ic web series Bad News (with the clas­sic ep where she essen­tially cap­tures Don Brash admit­ting he’s a white suprem­acist). Part of me was wor­ried about being famil­i­ar with a lot of the jokes as I have been listen­ing to her stor­ies and her work shop­ping jokes for years. How­ever what star­ted off as a famil­i­ar but still enjoy­able jaunt through her con­fid­ence, wit and irrev­er­ence was turned on its head in a way that was unex­pec­ted, chal­len­ging and, at times, tongue and cheek in the most delight­ful way.

Her admis­sion, which again I will keep under wraps, was one of those moments of vul­ner­ab­il­ity that was delivered with such ease and con­fid­ence that it’s not till later that you come to grasp the depth of what was being tackled.

Aside from the vul­ner­ab­il­ity she wove into this show, Alice’s con­fid­ence and strong sense of self worth are presen­ted in the fun­ni­est way- with no sheep­ish­ness. Instead the first half of the show was an hon­est admis­sion that she really did think she was amaz­ing and essen­tially good, at least up until recently. Even with her explor­a­tion of her mor­al flaws Alice did not fall into traps of unne­ces­sary self-fla­gel­la­tion or shame that would’ve made everything a lot less funny.

Alice Sned­den is not only an ex-law­yer who LIVED IN NEW YORK, she is a comedi­an with a heart at the peak of her powers – what more do you need to entice you?

Abso­lute Mon­ster is being per­formed at the Fringe Bar in Wel­ling­ton from now until Sat­urday. Get your tick­ets here.