Zoë Coombs Marr brings Trigger Warning to Sydney

FRESH off her Barry Award and Golden Gibbo winning run at this year’s Melbourne International Comedy Festival (MICF), Zoë Coombs Marr is coming to Sydney for two shows before heading to the UK to dazzle international audiences.

Coombs Marr is best known for her unique brand of comedy but also a recent stunt she pulled alongside fellow comedian Rhys Nicholson, in which the two decided to marry each other rather than their own same-sex partners to protest the lack of marriage equality in Australia.

 “He’s actually coming over for dinner tonight,” she told Star Observer.

“Him and his actual fiancé, which I was pretty upset about.”

The comedian took out the top award at this year’s MICF with her show Trigger Warning, only a few years after winning best newcomer.

In Trigger Warning, Coombs Marr resurrects her much beloved character Dave, who in simple terms is a bogan prone to offending people with his misogyny and casual racism.

Dave has a special place in the heart of the comedian.

“I thought I was finished with him, but when I’m not doing him, I miss him,” she said.

“Typical old school misogynistic guy. In this current era, he would be experiencing a lot of backlash, he would have had a lot of Twitter hate.”

Trigger Warning starts with Dave facing a mountain of backlash from an online feminist forum after he decides to move to Paris to study the art of mime. Dave figures if he’s not speaking, he can’t be offending anyone.

Coombs Marr sees the parallels of Dave’s life with the recent controversy in the AFL where Eddie McGuire suggested drowning a female journalist.

“He’s really trying not to offend anyone, he’s trying so hard,” she said.

“You see him struggling to not offend anyone and he’s totally failing. I haven’t just created this from thin air. It’s what’s happening in the world.

“He (McGuire) didn’t get his sense of humour from nowhere, it’s because people laugh. It’s a thing that people are responsive to.

“People like Eddie I do have empathy for, he’s a dickhead and he’s an idiot and he’s saying things I don’t agree with. But I feel for him, he doesn’t get it, he thinks he was joking.”

Dave – the meat meat-headed standup with a low slung ponytail, stonewashed jeans and plenty of dick jokes – goes on a wild journey in Trigger Warning culminating in an epic on stage meltdown.

TRIGGER WARNING:
Venue: Giant Dwarf.
Address: 199 Cleveland Street, Redfern.
Dates:  Satursday July 16, and Friday July 22.
Bookings: giantdwarf.com.au.