Comedy
Circus Theatre                                                  17 February 

Hickey strutted assuredly on stage and did a little victory lap that granted her the immediate likability that people either possess or don’t possess.

She was wearing a jacket that was so tasteless in its design it was captivating, and she amusingly capitalised on this by sarcastically muttering to the crowd, “look, I know you guys are jealous of this jacket, okay. But my face is up here, alright.” Although, not without some bright spots, I wish her set was as awe inspiring as that jacket was.

Hickey’s comedy style was played as a dead behind the eyes, droll woman who was simultaneously stumped and fascinated by the various absurdities of life. She would recount the minutia of  having a near fatal incident with bad ice cream when she was five years old, as she would with being disgruntled that the beer had run out at a party. Her tone was flat throughout both the vastly different stories because: no beer, nearly choking on a cheap piece of gummy ball–one’s the same as the other. Not surprisingly, these two stories were the best; they were punchy and hilariously dark.

Unfortunately, the rest of the set was problematic. Hickey’s monotonous tone didn’t mesh well  with the material. For example, the latter half of her set involved stories that would spiral off into tangents, and there were tangents within those tangents. Hickey was recounting an incident where she had a tense standoff with a lunatic at a bar, and the punchline of that story wasn’t reached until ten to fifteen minutes in, as Hickey went off many digressions. I was beginning to wonder whether she had just abandoned the lunatic at a bar story until she muttered the ending of it at the end of her set; an odd choice to be sure. I feel the rambling incoherent style of telling stories gels better with someone who has an unpredictable and manic disposition, and that’s not Hickey’s wheelhouse.

Though for what it’s worth, the crowd was very much into Hickey’s set, even the parts I didn’t like so much. The first half alone is worth a price of admission.

Listen out for the castenets… runs until Sunday the 22nd of February. You can find tickets via the Fringe World guide here.