Show reviewed: 18/03/26

Show rating: It wasn’t easy, 4.5 stars!

Courtney Maldo’s one woman show, Gender Drugs & Rock ‘N’ Roll is a a wake up call and an invitation to action for those who identify women everywhere, because it is a time for feminine rage and to stick it to the man! Maldo is an English expat now Aussie by way of Perth. She is an emerging talent blazing her way into stardom in the Australian stand-up comedy scene. In just four years of performing stand up, she’s been a RAW Comedy state finalist twice. she’s performed in three different countries and three states of Australia. Courtney hails from a theatre/trivia background with a love of music that is absolutely present in this show as she is a born performer.

Courtney has a fierce and commanding stage presence, (it’s not just her height or those fabulous boots!) and from the minute she takes a stage, she demands the audience’s attention. Maldo has made no secret that she is a trans woman (male to female transition.) I first saw her appear in The Big Naked Comedy Show describing the fact that if I die at home alone, it’ll only take about three days before my cats eat my face. Good to know that they have excellent taste because my eyes are my best feature!

Gender Drugs & Rock ‘N’ Roll is partly about gender and gender drugs, with the part of the title “gender drugs” (without a comma) very much being a deliberate choice to make it a single subject besides the rock and roll. Maldo lays it all out, the good, the bad and the ugly for us, it is hilariously funny at times and very thought provoking at others. Her humour is candid, defiant and I’d like to say subversively come except Maldo is entirely open about her rebellion against systems of oppression. She an outspoken advocate and is a force of nature that clears the way for every woman living in times these with her comedic voice.

We learn from Maldo that rock and roll is a way of life, a mindset that she adopted in order to survive in a world that is not built for her. Comedy is a place of creative resistance where the arts are used by her to challenge political injustice, social norms, and tyrannical power structures. Maldo much explains the transitioning process in detail through its ups and downs and is adeptly able to communicate how the sex change drugs work in a medical/biological way; but she also delivers with it a scathing social commentary that looks at how repressive ideologies are first applied to minorities, as in her words, “…they come for the trans canary in the coal mine first.”

This is an ongoing theme I’ve found at this particular Adelaide Fringe Festival, that artistic expression is being used to pushback as non-violent activism and promoting social change. Maldo is both mad and sad at way things are; she talks about her visitation to a rage room in Melbourne (a space where people are able to express their anger in a controlled environment where they smash and break random objects) and in it, finding a thing of beauty that she took away as her trophy for being a woman who is surviving in a hostile world. She is worth listening to and one to watch as an emerging powerhouse as a female comedian in a male dominated industry. If the hat maketh the man, watch your fedoras boys, because Cyclone Courtney is about to blow you away!