Gossip | MICF 2026

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https://www.comedyfestival.com.au/browse-shows/gossip/?return=%2Fbrowse-shows%2F

Date Reviewed: 30/03/2026

I have developed a great deal of affection for the Motley Bauhaus and the small, passionate audience it has built simply through persistently existing. The crowd that filled Gossip quickly were enthusiastic supporters of Banister-Jones or simply the very idea of Gossip.

The premise of the show is simple but also has quite a bit of depth beneath the surface. Banister-Jones contends Gossip to be more like academic research rather than an hour of raw stand-up. Now, don’t get me wrong, there are jokes in the show, but the work functions more like a series of monologues broken up with songs and humour.

I don’t think a show like Gossip should have a narrative through line, besides the person performing it. Banister-Jones brings a lively and intelligent voice into the space. Her sometimes honest and emotional energy drives the whole show forward like a train gently turning a sharp curve. Only towards the end of Gossip do you suspect there is going to be no quick and easy answer. But that simply isn’t the point of the show.

The show is an interesting experiment. There are some things about Gossip that rubbed me the wrong way, but that could simply be my personal biases coming out or the fact I came straight from work and was exhausted. Using theatre, musical, and lecturing techniques to build an exploration of the concept of ‘gossip’ and its connective tissues in our society. How gossip has been interpreted and evaluated over time by society. Gossip is a deeply intelligent study of gossip with clever jokes woven in for good measure.

Banister-Jones asks her audience to ponder if gossip makes her a bad person. How we may view gossip in society. Who tells us how we should feel about gossip’s influence on us all.

To demonstrate her opinions, Banister-Jones employs gentle, intelligent, and generally inoffensive humour and music. A favourite song for me would have to be “Local Man”. It really is a great song and it came at just the right moment in the show. There is a raw honesty to the show, a slapdash and frenetic energy that unifies all the disparate monologues, jokes, and songs.

I really enjoyed Abigail Banister-Jones’s work in Gossip and would recommend it to anybody interested in it on the surface level; they will not be disappointed. The show is a real thinker when it wants to be and bloody entertaining regardless the whole way through.

Reviewed by Nicolas