Review: Mel McGlensey is MOTORBOAT at The Pleasure Garden
Mel McGlensey is MOTORBOAT at The Parlour at The Pleasure Garden
Wednesday, February 5, 2025
What happens when you put a “part boat, part woman, full clown” on the Perth Fringe World stage for the first time? You get a fifty-five-minute hilarious nautical show that doesn’t shy away from, well, motorboating.
Mel McGlensey is MOTORBOAT, McGlensey’s debut clown show, is a wild mix of physical comedy, sexual innuendo, and sexual innuendo about boats. The skit is drawn from McGlensey’s experience studying at a French clown school, École Philippe Gaulier, in 2023, and it isn’t surprising that the show won the Best Comedy Award at Adelaide Fringe last year. McGlensey stands out with her scandalous blue sailor costume, charming American accent, and refreshing bout of confidence that draws smiles on all the audience’s faces.
McGlensey delivers hilarious tales of her life and desires as a ‘motorboat’ at sea with a naive, childlike persona. Don’t be fooled, though—there’s certainly a reason the show is adults only. McGlensey ramps up the heat with suggestive body movements, cheeky slivers of skin, and one-liners about starting her own ‘motor.’ However, she makes sure her show is as equally entertaining and silly as it is raunchy, with her penchant for breaking character in fits of giggles and extended silences having the audience rolling over with laughter.
The show is driven by audience participation, and that’s what makes it a standout in the endless sea of comedy shows, with McGlensey encouraging audience members to join in on the joke. In one instance, McGlensey called on two lucky women in the front row to read from a physical motorboat manual to help fix her ‘broken motor’ (you can just guess what that innuendo means). In another, an older man was called onstage to assume the role of the boat police, reading lines from a script with a startling enthusiasm that had McGlensey joking that he must have attended acting school. Each show is different from the next, with McGlensey’s interactions with the crowd a sure highlight.
It seemed unnecessary to include the audience Q&A segment, however, as it felt out of place compared to the show’s other unscripted segments that had a greater purpose, such as egging on McGlensey and contributing to the comedic narrative.
Overall, McGlensey captivates the crowd with this nautical comedic bit, eliciting raucous laughter whilst delving into aspects of female pleasure and sexuality in an outrageously creative manner. It’ll be exciting to see what McGlensey does next on stage. A definite crowd-pleaser, the show is perfect for, as McGlensey herself says, those wondering what motorboating actually is.
NATASHA PAUL