Underneath a mountain of thick curly brown hair, Katerina Vrana makes a grand entrance. And with a show entitled Feta with the Queen, you can see why.
The small audience squeezed into the boardroom of Three Degrees in QV was half expecting to hear a phenomenal disjointed accent, since Katerina has lived in the UK since she was 19, but what came out was flawless Queen’s English.
Katerina explains that her parents’ obsession with teaching her English – they even had British nationals sit down and talk to her for three hours a day when she was young – was probably the making of her.
“I now speak the England very best,” she says with a cheeky smile.
In the UK, she couldn’t shake the ‘Greek girl’ persona. People would talk to her as if she was Greek, while tugging on her hair and offering her copious amounts of tea. After a while, she chose to embrace the ‘Greek girl’ character.
On Katerina’s maiden visit to Australia, quite unknown to a Greek Australian crowd, her stand-up show speaks to the heart of the Australian identity crisis.
Feeling very Greek in the UK, and not-so-Greek back home, Katerina has learnt to juggle her two new identities and turn it into an hour-long show full of hilarious opposites.
She doesn’t go for the easy targets – this isn’t a show about the crisis, nor is it aimed at creating one-dimensional stereotypes.
Rather, it’s filled with little vignettes about how much Katerina loves her homeland, and how much she loves her adoptive one.
The UK’s fascination with politeness, the obsession with tea, the insane drinking culture and Katerina’s strange love of British queues makes for belly aching laughter. But, comparing them to their Greek counterparts has the audience in stitches.
Nowhere else would you have a riot explode on a ferry boat when people are delayed five minutes, she says. Nowhere else can you find flirting as a pastime or see someone get violent while trying to shout their friend dinner.
She now finds herself defending Greece and the UK when travelling abroad. As an actress, she found a new form of racism she would never have dreamed of in Hollywood.
“My agent used to send me out for parts that were Greek or Mediterranean, and I never used to get them because I don’t look Greek enough,” she told the audience.
“I’ll translate, that means I don’t have a monobrow and a moustache.
“I’d go to auditions and I’d get feedback like, we’re looking for someone who looks more like Salma Hayek. SHE’S MEXICAN!”
She has accepted that her hair does limit her options. She hates that leading ladies never seem to have “bird’s nests” on their heads, while the best friends, or worse, villains, always sport curly dos.
Her most hated comparison: Rebecca Brooks from the News of the World scandal.
Her hair does become a bit of a prop throughout the show, that Katerina brings back into her stories expertly. Against a plain black backdrop and a lone stool on the stage, you begin to understand how good she is when the hour is up and all you’ve done is listen.
If you’re lucky, Katerina normally sticks around to say goodbye to her audience in person.
Her shows in Australia for the Melbourne International Comedy Festival include three special shows entirely in Greek every Wednesday. Tickets are $20 for adults, and $15 for concession and on Tuesdays. For more information visit http://www.comedyfestival.com.au