Laura Davis: Cake In The Rain (MICF)

What do you do when you feel like you're losing your grip? How about when someone is literally peeling it away from you, finger by finger, as happened to Laura Davis one faithful tram ride? When all bets are off, Davis suggests you don’t make eye contact. With a mic in hand, however, she's perfectly comfortable, using the space and audience as naturally as breathing.

Which is just as well. There’s nowhere to hide on Fort Delta's boxy basement stage and in stark contrast to some of the flashier entrances of the comedy festival, Laura Davis stands by her mic stand and watches the crowd file in while cycling through tracks on her iPod. She mentions one reason she picked the venue was because it doesn't book through Ticketek and gets a round of applause for saving everyone in the room eight bucks a head.

From there Davis uses fast food to disprove the fear of death, boils heartbreak down to one bleak phrase and punctures Australia's smug political opinion of itself with a couple sentences and an impression of the snottiest kid on the playground. A good comedian shifts the familiar on its axis, revealing hidden, inherent truths. Davis spins the whole thing on her finger like a stand-up Globetrotter. It's pointless to try and guess where she's headed, and Davis regularly leads the crowd toward a conclusion only to yank the rug out. It's comedy that's borderline miraculous; at times it feels like she's has managed to tie your shoelaces together while you’re looking right at them.

Talent and technique aren't everything though, and the real power in Davis' routine is the open, honest place that it comes from. At one point Davis tells us she isn't quite sure yet if this next bit is "a joke or a secret” and that could almost be the byline for Cake In The Rain. It makes for a cathartic journey, one that leaves you with sore cheeks and a warm heart.

All combined, Davis operates like an obsidian scalpel, peerlessly sharp, but fundamentally fragile, paring infinitely complex emotions and issues down to their dark, hilarious cores in deft strokes. Don't expect any cheap tropes or easy jokes from Cake In The Rain. Just vital, deeply intelligent comedy from a total pro.

Laura Davis presents Cake In The Rain till 22 Apr at Fort Delta, part of the Melbourne International Comedy Festival.