If you found yourself adrift at Trades Hall in a silly mood, keen to get aboard a very physical form of character comedy loaded with audience participation, then Mel McGlensey is Motorboat is the Fringe craft for you.
Originally from the USA, McGlensey is a 2024 Golden Gibbo Nominee. Through the magic of Fringe, her Motorboat character is a boat-woman hybrid. A sailor’s outfit transforms parts of her body – including the ample cleavage of some promo shots – into nautical equipment. These would feature prominently over the voyage.
Motorboat chatted with the audience to find out what kind of boats we were. A good deal of this banter could be swirled back into the show later, earning good laughs.
The story here is that Motorboat doesn’t like being stuck with us in the dock as she’s never been out to “the big blue”. But Captain Daddy (voiced by Conk Dariol, also helming the sound desk) wants to keep Motorboat safe and forbids her from exploring the wild open seas. Yet sometimes a boat has to chart their own course if they want to learn more about the world, and themselves.
The energetic adventures in clowning that followed, regularly improvised around audience input, often provided good payoffs. There was also fun to be had in one-upmanship between Dariol and McGlensey. You wouldn’t call this subtle comedy as the language could get salty at times. Also, overuse of some sequences caused them to become somewhat waterlogged.
Yet McGlensey’s lively performance gives the show a buoyancy that explains the success of earlier seasons, as shown by awards like Best Comedy at 2024 Adelaide Fringe. Batten down your hatches – a jiggly jaunt with this Motorboat will surely take you to some less-visited islands of the Melbourne Fringe archipelago.
Mel McGlensey is MOTORBOAT
Festival Hub: Trades Hall – Archive Room, Corner Lygon and Victoria Streets, Carlton
Performance: Thursday 10 October 2024
Season continues until 13 October 2024
Information and Bookings: www.melbournefringe.com.au
Image: Mel McGlensey – photo by Nick Robertson Photography
Review: Jason Whyte