Felicity Ward: The Iceberg

Felicity Ward is a credit to Australia at a time when we don’t have a lot of things going for us, as she so rightly points out in her juggernaut of a show, The Iceberg. Ward will pull you in with her wonderful, self-effacing charm, joking about cricket crowd songs and why male streakers are funnier than their female counterparts, but once she has you (and she will get you, her effervescence is impossible to resist) she brings home the big issues. Over the course of the show we found ourselves laughing at Australia’s immigration policy, institutionalised sexism, breast cancer scares and the undercurrent of depression and anxiety (The Blues Brothers, as she likes to call them) that can drag people out of their depth. Ward’s greatest strength is that she addresses these issues with smart, sharp sarcasm and a keen sense of irony that gives equal emphasis to the grim reality and the absurdity that these issues still exist in 2015. Quite simply, Ward is an incredibly intelligent woman who has crafted an incredibly intelligent show. Iceberg is a thoroughly entertaining, thoroughly relatable collection of observations about our often astounding world, which she manages to tie together in the most surprising and satisfying finale we have seen in a comedy performance. Go and see Felicity Ward.