By Adam Rafferty
Winner of Best Newcomer at last year’s Melbourne International Comedy Festival, Noah Szto’s very funny routine on this year’s Gala show contained (I’m guessing) excerpts from that previous show. Because Med School contains less of the ‘getting to know you’ shtick that featured and killed there and instead replaces it with a cabaret-style musical comedy routine, full of wonderfully entertaining songs, written with brilliantly witty lyrics by the doctor-cum-comedian.
Right from the first moments, Szto is singing and ‘tap dancing’ his way around the stage to fun and jazzy ditties, accompanied by well executed audio visuals (shout out to the theatre tech operating this complicated show). Through song, he tells tales of how he went from getting 99.9 in his year twelve exams, to barely scraping his way through medical school, providing loads of hilarious stories as we hear how he stumbled his way through placements, operating theatre observations and bumbled consultations where, for example, he questioned a lesbian couple as to what their contraceptive plans where.
While the progression of the story via song and dance is certainly entertaining enough, Szto has the comedic instincts to know that alone isn’t quite enough, and through a denouement that would be worthy of an Australia’s Got Talent routine, he shocks, amazes and somewhat repulses the audience with an ENT ending that no one was asking for. And as if that wasn’t enough, then he provides a finale worthy of a Thunder from Down Under audition with a dirty doctor theme!
Szto is so clearly a singer, songwriter, musician, comedian and performer of the highest calibre, it’s almost disappointing to hear that he did eventually overcome all his med school failings and become a working doctor (that’s not really a spoiler). If only we didn’t need great doctors as much as we need great Aussie comedy newcomers like this guy. May his boundless energy allow him to keep doing both so well.
Image: Ian Laidlaw
