Tom Ballard - Enough

Tom Ballard has had a difficult year. Since being axed from the ABC and having to re-relocate back to Melbourne, the comedian has come to a shocking discovery: the world is kind of fucked right now, isn’t it?

Enough does what it says on the tin and presents a disdain for the modern capitalist dystopia from an understandably disenfranchised young person. No, it’s not groundbreaking or even necessarily original stuff from Ballard, but it’s exactly why the show works. While comics all around the festival are mining the caves of negative gearing and millennial unemployment, few are capturing the anger and disillusion of a reluctant generation. Ballard expertly projects that raw anger felt by a huge chunk of the nation and indeed the world, weaving it into an hour of cathartic hilarity. At times, this becomes Ballard getting things off his chest for his own personal reasons, but hey, baby boomers have been doing that for years.

This show, and in fact this entire festival, seems to be a bit of a crossroad for Ballard. Between penning his own play for MICF (#KWANDA: A Play) and nabbing the incomparable Bob Franklin to direct Enough, the stand-up is channelling his resentment full throttle into his creative endeavours. He isn’t moving away from what he knows, politics and the modern era remain staples of both his festival shows, but he is doubling down hard on them. While he rarely seemed it in the past, the is no doubt that Ballard is completely unapologetic at this point, and this no-fucks-given attitude is hitting home for much of his audience.

Enough isn’t going to change the perspective of anyone who disagrees with Ballard, nor will it revolutionise his contemporaries, but for everyone fed up with ScoMo and gentrification, they’ll leave the show feeling a little bit lighter. Sometimes that’s enough.