Gather round – award-winning NZ stand-up Melanie Bracewell is back with a brand-new show, and her storytelling skills are just as sharp as ever.
Melanie has been a consistently impressive, go-to act for Comedy Festival season. Her previous show, ‘A Little Treat’, was her first on the other side of an ADHD diagnosis, and leaned into the chaos. ‘Dilly Dallying’ feels like a natural extension of this – the comedian armed with yet another brilliantly haywire hour of jokes so cringe that they’re brilliant, and so stupid that they’re impressively intelligent.
She’s become somewhat of a master of this: her stand-up, while genuinely engaging and distinctly well thought-out, is simultaneously super easy to digest. . . Making for a jaunty, colourful night of dilly-dallying.
This time around, Melanie is engaged. We get to hear the story of the proposal, but it’s never that simple. Before we get there, we’re regaled with tales of boyfriends past, the horrors of bin day, and the hack of lying about your age at the pharmacy. . . Among much more.
It’s super fun to watch a comedian who lives for the laughter of her audience. Every so often, Mel will pause to observe a reaction to a joke – perhaps, for example, because it’s a particularly daggy pun – and this genuinely adds to the experience as a viewer. Not to mention that she goes to real effort to deliver the LOLs: Audiences can expect a pretty classic setup, but those who’ve been in the audience of a Melanie show before know that she’s always got something a little different up her sleeve, somewhere along the way.
This is part of what makes Melanie so exciting. Her love of the craft, paired with her willingness to stray – be it ever so slightly – from its path, for the sake of creating shows that feel fresh, interesting, and loaded with brand-new material every time.
