Adam Hills’s Clown Heart

I have zero hesitation in making the statement that if there is any show you make the time for during this year’s Melbourne Comedy Festival, it will be to spend an hour at the Athenaeum with Adam Hills.

Like any comedian worth their weight, audience engagement was key for Clown Heart, and as Adam amassed an attack on audience members walking in late, the story steamrolled from there. He has clearly made this work well for himself during his 20 year career, as he later stated, ‘I’m not good at doing my rehearsed act, I’d rather just come out and have a chat to people.’

The room was filled with raucous laughter as Adam promptly stole the phone of an audience member and proceeded to send lude text messages to a friend of the person he stole the phone from…pretending to be this individuals wife. It couldn’t have been better scripted that this audience member was a church elder. Until the big boss of Victorian church elders turned out to be attending the show, too.

Adam’s show has a touch of sentiment in its title and message, as he touched on his father’s battle with cancer, his following work with Comic Relief and his adventures in nude with Stand Up to Cancer. He expresses his relationship with his father as constantly full of laughs, staking the claim that ‘we did not do sentiment, but by God we did silly.’

You’ll leave the Theatre lighter, happier and relaxed, laughing off any seriousness and thoroughly recommending this show to all you know. You might cop a bit of unexpected nudity, but it won’t matter, because you’ll be a clown heart…’taking the piss out of life at all times’.

See Adam’s Facebook page for more information on his work with Comic Relief.

Adam Hills’s Clown Heart
Athenaeum Theatre, 188 Collins Street, Melbourne
Tuesday March 31 – Sunday April 19
comedyfestival.com.au/2015/season/shows/clown-heart-adam-hills