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Review: How Not to Run a Music Festival at The Laugh Resort

How Not to Run a Music Festival at The Laugh Resort at The Shoe Bar & Cafe
Sunday, January 19, 2025

Tess Birch accidentally ran a boutique music festival a few hours out of Melbourne six times in an eight-year period, and the lawyer turned her experiences into this hilarious show.

When new boyfriend Jared suggested his “awesome” business idea in 2016, little did Tess know that the Loch Hart Festival would consume her life for the next eight years as they wrestled with finding a suitable site for the event, wrangling the endless morass of official permits, finding an alternative site, marketing, infrastructure, negotiating artist riders, and the relentless headaches of trying to sell tickets—especially through a global pandemic and its ongoing issues.

Endearingly naïve, oblivious, and at times grossly incompetent, Tess readily admits their approach was to make it up as they went along, barely scraping through as a result. Yet, against all reason, they kept on doing it, with the most recent and final (probably) event occurring just a couple of weeks ago.

The oft-clueless couple were forced to cope with drug-dealing guests of one of the bands, a missing vegan food truck worker who wasn’t really missing at all, a catastrophic storm, and much, much more. Birch presents it all in such an endearing, self-deprecating way that not only is it impossible not to laugh hysterically, but also impossible not to care deeply about the ongoing trials and tribulations from event to event.

We’re not so invested, mind you, that we didn’t sort of regret the 2025 event going so smoothly rather than supplying more hilarity to fuel this wonderfully funny show!

SHANE PINNEGAR

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