She needs better source material for her shows
Rogers’ show is a whirlwind of funny, bad dancing, Aussie references, audience participation andher shouting ‘Amen,’ but she’s got a few, tired jokes and references that she keeps pulling back to and unfortunately, they’re just not funny. At all. And so, the longer the night goes on and she refers back to a foundation of unimpressive material, the feeling in the room is one of tiredness.
Rogers is incredibly dynamic with her facial expressions – she reminds me a lot of Kath and Kim – and these are probably the highlight of the show. She has bundles of enthusiasm and energy but I feel like her jokes and quips lack any form of creativity, it’s all stuff I feel like I’ve seen or heard before. It’s bog-standard Aussie female comic: complain a bit about *insert small area or town in Australia that she grew up in*, talk about being lonely, complain about Fringe venue/cost, make some jokes about sexism that are more offensive than funny, reference how much Aussies looooove to drink. And do it all whilst wearing something a bit OTT and laughing at yourself.
She launches into various tirades about 90s music and Whoopi Goldberg movies, whilst teaching us all what it means to be sassy. Some of her interaction with the audience are really funny but that seemed to be more down to the audience member, although I can’t fault her bubbliness and ability to charm everyone in the room throughout the performance. The show is ‘inspired by a healthy obsession with RuPaul and Whoopi,’ but I didn’t really get that much from her about either obsession, and I’m a big RuPaul fan myself.
The lowest point for me, however, was when Rogers touched on a fairly emotionally stressful topic, sexual assault and sexist language towards women. She opened up and I felt like we were seeing behind her act, only for her to then make a lewd joke out of the whole scenario which made me physically cringe, it wasn’t funny, it wasn’t clever, it wasn’t anything that darker humour is meant to be. The execution was so poor here that it just came off as offensive.
Kaitlyn Rogers has the potential to be a great comic, but she needs better source material for her shows, and needs to focus on building up her own comic personality rather than relying on trying to be like every other Aussie female comic. She needs to feel her audience, understand when her jokes are not being understood – and cut her losses.
