I entered the Motley Bauhaus to attend the comedy show Coco The Time-Travelling Tart at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival with high hopes. The promotion for the show promised a fabulous and unhinged night for history nerds—and after a long day of nodding along to droning and pedantic class discussions on historical theory, I selfishly hoped that the show would help me find the joy in history again and give me the strength to get through my honours year. Little did I know, I was in for a wild ride.

Coco The Time-Travelling Tart is the glamorous drag persona of British comedian Max Norman, who also hosts popular alternative art tours in museums across London. Over the course of an hour, we joined Coco’s quest to look for her lost earring, jumping through time and space whenever she hailed her time-travelling taxi. Like a more scandalous version of the Magic School Bus’ Ms Frizzle, Coco led us on a marvelous adventure, instructing us to “buckle our seatbelts” and put our hands in the air like one does on a rollercoaster while we were in her taxi. 

From the Elizabethan era to the Garden of Eden, we were introduced to some of the greatest and most influential figures in history. Coco The Time-Travelling Tart shined with the level of audience engagement that the comedian encouraged with humour and ease. Throughout the show, audience members were singled out by Coco to take on the role of monarchs and empresses in history. We watched, baffled and amused, as she conversed with “Cleopatra” entirely through meows and tempted “Eve” to eat an apple with no hands. The banter between Coco and the audience is as unhinged and hilarious as it can be, and I cannot help but laugh unabashedly every time someone was caught off guard by the crazy things Coco asks them to do on stage. 

Norman’s comedy show is scrappy and the suspension of disbelief relied heavily on Coco’s charisma and the audience’s imagination—but that’s what made it so fun. The show is reminiscent of the plays my sister and I used to put on for our parents when we were young, playing multiple characters at once and using our toys as props, but endlessly entertaining nonetheless. As we watched a Barbie version of Coco zipline through the air using a fishline held up by an audience member before breaking into the Louvre, I was reminded of the unbridled joy and whimsy from my childhood that encapsulated the love of storytelling in its purest form.

Coco The Time-Travelling Tart is vulgar, absurd, ridiculous and incredibly silly in all the best ways possible. Norman skillfully and wittily blends history and comedy, producing a show that is hilarious and surprisingly educational. Coco shows us that history is not only for shut-in academics scouring through books in dusty archives, sometimes history can also be enjoyed by laughing along to a stilettos-clad time-traveller bumbling her way through ancient Egypt with a roomful of strangers on a Wednesday night.

While my wish of reigniting my love for history might be too much of an ask from an hour long comedy show, I left the theatre with a pep in my step and a permanent smile on my face. It was the perfect end to an otherwise dreary day.

Coco The Time-Travelling Tart runs until April 5th at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival.