MICF 2025 Review - REFUSED CLASSIFICATION Review

David Griffiths reviews Refused Classification at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Okay, So now I want to tell you about one
of the best shows I have seen in theater in
a long, long time. This is a show called Refused
Classification and it is on now as part of the
Melbourne International Comedy Festival. In fact, it's heading into its
last week right now, so go along and check it
out if you can. It's been put together by Zachary

(00:25):
Ruin and Alexi Tolerpapaulis, and this is an absolutely amazing show.
So what it basically does is it goes back and
looks at what happened between Margaret Pomerantz, David Stratton and
their show at the time and a little movie called
Ken Park. Now, for some clarification, Ken Park was a

(00:47):
movie by Larry Clark, the guy who did Kids and
Bully and films like that. It was refused classification in Australia,
which meant that it couldn't even be screened at the
Sydney International Film Festival. Angry at that decision, Margaret Pomerance
decided to with another small group of people hold a

(01:08):
screening in Sydney and the result was the police showed up.
People like Fred Nile were really really annoyed, and it
really kind of sparked a debate about art and classification
in Australia, especially considering that the things that they were
labeling can park with were not true. So it was

(01:32):
it was an interesting time. But this is what Alexei
and Zachary put together here is almost like a documentary
on stage with comedic effect. The pair at times played
different characters from Margaret and David right through to the

(01:54):
police Fred Nile, for example, and those impersonations are absolutely brilliant.
What makes this so great, though, is this is a
show that not only makes you laugh, but you also
learned from it and you go away thinking and talking
about it as well, because there is there's so much
in this show that you take on board. But it's

(02:19):
funny like we live in a time these days where
a lot of comedians around the world are actually quite
often the most hard hitting when it comes to news stories.
And I'm thinking of people like John Oliver and his
name's gone out of my head at the moment, But
the Sydney comedian here in Australia who had his house

(02:40):
firebombs because of the things that he had revealed about
politicians and crime bosses and stuff like that. It is
a strange time, but it works. What these guys do
work so well, and that's exactly the case here for
Zachary and Alexi. This show works because they've done their research,

(03:02):
they know their topic. You can tell these guys a
film fans. One of them says during the show about
how he grew up watching Margaret and David and stuff
like that. But you can tell through the film references
and even like Margaret's love of fast and Furious movies
and things like that, that these two are film lovers

(03:25):
and their film nerds, and that comes together so well
for this show. Like me being a film nerd myself,
I just absolutely loved this show. It entertained me, it
made me laugh. I learned stuff from it, and you
never really know what's going to happen next. These guys
use the multimedia technology for this show really really well.

(03:53):
Things pop up behind them on the screen. Love the
parts where they actually go and read from the classification
report into ken Park. But look, this is just an
absolutely amazing show. I wasn't sure what to expect. I
did not know how a comedic documentary could come together

(04:15):
live on stage, but it does do that. Like I said,
refused Classifications still has a few shows left at the
Melbourne International Comedy Festival, and if you do. If you
miss it there, then definitely go and see it when
it comes to a city near you, because this is
one of the best shows I have seen in years.

(04:37):
Like I said, it entertained, it made me laugh. I
learned something from it and it raises some really really
good points. I think that's the good part about this
is that you learn about some things that are very
very controversial in Australia and still art to it today.
But look, I just want to congratulate these two guys.

(04:58):
This is one of the best shows I have seen
in a long long time. Congratulations and for the listeners
out there, go along and see Refuse Classification because this
is an absolute comedic masterpiece.