By Jessica Taurins
Jordan Raskopoulos is known to Zoomers as ‘that woman from Tik Tok’, Millennials as ‘that singer from The Axis of Awesome’, and Boomers probably as ‘that person who did weird shit on the Ronnie Johns Half Hour – so hopefully everyone knows her as someone fun, entertaining, and just a little bit unhinged.
Raskopoulos’ current Melbourne International Comedy Festival show ‘The Fool’ is a mixed media delight where she shows off every talent she has: singing, dancing, fanfiction writing, Ted Talk-ing, and costume creation. As a quintuple threat, she easily fills the hour of her show by shocking the audience into crying, laughing, and occasionally cry-laughing, which is the best kind of reaction to a comedian. Only once does she get distracted by someone cry-laughing in the front row, which is a testament to her professionalism as the poor girl was in hilari-sterics (hilarity hysterics, of course) listening to Raskopoulos’ story.
Some of Raskopoulos’ work has been previously seen on her Tik Tok or on video streaming website Twitch.tv, but it really is better in real life. Her parody songs about her favourite late-night snack and her gender transition are an absolute joy to experience and sing along to (when invited) and have surely been stuck in audience members’ brains since they saw her.
In addition, she openly discusses her neurodivergence, and questions how her neurotypicals can live so differently – in clean, minimalist houses with no collections or ‘little piles’ to put away later anywhere. Painfully relatable, I had to physically recoil away from the story (a good thing) as it reminded me of all my own little piles of important papers I had sitting at home to clean up.
Raskopoulos’ fanfiction, while well-written, was the only element of her show that dragged a bit. I won’t spoil the ending – which is extremely amusing and wonderfully signposted during the story – but it took a little too long to get there. Unfortunate, as for the rest of the show time was flying, but with her final number immediately following she brought everyone back to life as the show was rounded out.
Jordan is a really wonderful performer and has remained so for all the time she’s been in the public comedy eye. Her performance windows at comedy festivals are typically short, but they’re definitely well worth the price of entry, and new audience members will definitely exit with a new earworm.
