This is a rare show where the second half works better than the first (she could lose some of the show-stilting phone calls) as the sassy cheerjerker sings the house down and brings on a leggy character named Glenda to get to the bottom (pardon the fart pun) of how she should end the show.
★★★★
Reviewed by Mikey Cahill
Julia Masli | ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
Chinese Museum, until April 21
Pacing the entirety of the room in Victorian bridal wear, a periscope-shaped torch attached to her head and with a fake leg clutching a microphone enclosing her arm, Estonian clown Julia Masli approaches members of the audience with a single word: “Problem?”
ha ha ha ha ha ha ha by Julia Masli is on at the Chinese Museum until April 21.
As the adage goes, a problem shared is a problem halved – thus lies the crux of the show.
Masli implores the audience to share their grievances with the promise she will help. While they begin mildly: “My car needs servicing” and “My feet hurt” (which led to a foot massage), a sense of purgation takes over the room and our collective guard is let down. “I’m lonely”, “I’m anxious” and “My heart’s broken” are all shared as she then implores the audience to purvey warmth and tenderness. The result? She’ll be taking a multitude of attendees feeling isolated on a trip to the Melbourne Zoo on the final weekend of the festival.
This was all taking place while two other attendees spent the entire of the hour on the stage putting together a chair that Masli had smashed during her introduction (their problem was that they now needed a chair, the show was sold out).
Was it funny? Absolutely. But that was far from the point of the show. At its heart, it’s a declaration of the importance of collective care and the mirth that aiding others can conjure.
★★★★
Reviewed by Tyson Wray
Viggo Venn | British Comedian
Trades Hall, until April 21
What a glorious, joyful romp through a garden of unearthly stupidity.
British Comedian by Viggo Venn is on at Trades Hall until April 21.
While Viggo Venn won over the UK (and professional curmudgeon Simon Cowell) when taking out the 2023 Britain’s Got Talent title, Melbourne comedy aficionados have had a long-time adoration for the Norwegian clown. Having performed here for the best part of a decade with American Zach Zucker, their joint hours and riotous late-night variety show Stamptown has led to a love of his charming idiocy.
Having studied at – you guessed it, Ecole Philippe Gaulier’s lauded French school – Venn is as imbecilic and energetic in a 150-seater as he was in the cavernous British theatres where the aforementioned reality competition was filmed. The hi-vis vests, recurring Daft Punk soundtrack and manipulation of Eminem’s My Name Is that made him a television phenom all make an appearance. If you’re wary of audience participation, stay far away from the front rows – you may end up proposing to a stranger.
It’s a frenetic patchwork of an hour. When you feel the wheels may have fallen off, you’re quickly assured that you’re in the hands of a master of chaos. Although, spare a thought for his poor tech – with so many audio/visual cues you can only imagine they’ll have carpal tunnel by the end of the run.
It’s a nonsensically beguiling way to spend an evening.
★★★★
Reviewed by Tyson Wray
Tess Birch | How NOT To Run a Music Festival
Coopers Inn 2, until April 21
How NOT To Run a Music Festival by Tess Birch is on at Coopers Inn 2 until April 21.
Tess Birch is a lawyer by day and comedian/music festival organiser by night. The effortlessly ebullient Melbourne comic got roped into the festival caper seven years ago by her partner and since then, they’ve tried to make Loch Hart Festival a viable (and profitable) escapade.
This is a pacy, crisp hour of Fyre Festival meets Woodstock tales that never lags, contains loads of beautifully written jokes and a PowerPoint presentation packed with callbacks.
Birch paints a vivid picture of shifty characters, including Saffron the flaky vegan, her paranoid colleagues and over-eager coastal police.
She also dishes the dirt on some artists’ rider requests: “They’re called riders because the band are literally taking you for a ride.”
Her permanent smile belies a bait ‘n’ switch approach to punchlines that makes this a very enjoyable and original show. You’ll wince at the hard parts (a story about a non-Native American colleague turning up to her shift wearing Native American headwear) and rejoice at the unlikely heroes (a friend who cleaned up the portaloos without being asked). Brilliant.
★★★★
Reviewed by Mikey Cahill
Grace Zhang | Cult Sh!t
Storyville Melbourne, until April 21
Our first glimpse of Grace Zhang is her meditating cross-legged onstage amid the soothing sounds of Enya. It is, after all, her dream to destigmatise white girl proclivities – living, laughing and loving – and to claim a slice of the contentment pie for herself.
Cult Sh!t by Grace Zhang is on at Storyville until April 21.
Coming out as “happy” has been harder for Zhang than coming out as bisexual. She takes us on a journey as she charts how she came to emulate one of the most highly maligned states of being in the 21st century.
Zhang zigzags between her desire for more equitable representation in the stoner community, epiphanies about her sexuality, and her disenchantment with living a life of corporate servitude and adhering to the expected mould of a second-generation Asian-Australian. There’s (unconfronting) audience work, a neat narrative arc, and a well-earned callback at the end.
Zhang could afford to be more confident in her delivery – the persistent “I’m-just kidding” detracts from what is genuinely strong material. But that will come with time – Zhang has constructed a heartwarming yet funny, earnest yet sardonic show that has all the hallmarks of a strong hour of comedy.
★★★
Reviewed by Sonia Nair
Jennifer Wong | The Sweet and Sour Hour of Power
Chinese Museum, until April 21
It takes a big helping of intestinal fortitude to squeeze this many puns into a stand-up show. Many of them are food-related. Wong’s secret sauce is to acknowledge the groaning as a healthy response – and just like that not only are we complicit in the daggy fun, turns out we’re doing “chair yoga”.
For the last little while, Wong has been reviewing health and wellbeing group classes for The Guardian – partly to keep herself accountable for the exercise she keeps hearing will help her depression. From ballet to tai chi to the spin class from hell, she’s done the hard yards so you don’t have to.
The Sweet and Sour Hour of Power by Jennifer Wong is on at Chinese Museum until April 21.
The “sweet” of the show title is apt – it’s G-rated humour you can safely serve to the kids, your gran, or anyone else you don’t want to be next to during an awkward or X-rated bit.
★★★
Reviewed by Hannah Francis
Matthew Vasquez | South American Delight
The Catfish Bar, until April 20
Race comedy can be two things: awfully racist or extremely truthful. Luckily Matthew Vasquez’s South American Delight doesn’t belong to the former. There are stories about interracial relationships and growing up in public housing, all delivered in a way that is awkward and sincere – not unlike the embroidered Paddington-esque bear on his hoodie.
It is almost as if Vasquez desperately wants to release these stories to the world. His segues are noteworthy: he swiftly moves from a story about a tour of Melbourne CBD, to the false enthusiasm needed when applying for jobs in these times, to how he finds himself relating most to a cardboard box.
South American Delight by Matthew Vasquez is on at The Catfish Bar until April 21.
Three quarters in, we receive a surprise. It’s a story read in person by someone he knows, verbatim from a “picture book” he wrote when younger. This is arguably the highlight of South American Delight which matches Vasquez’s earlier forewarning about anime, what he considers a genre Latinos especially love: “You start off with nothing, you work really hard, you get something.” The payoff is totally worth the (few) duds.
★★★
Reviewed by Cher Tan
Josh Thomas | Let’s Tidy Up
Arts Centre Melbourne, until April 21
The title of Let’s Tidy Up is… aspirational. No one really expects Josh Thomas, creator of Please Like Me and Everything’s Gonna Be Okay, to clean anything in this hour of stand-up, though the stage could use a little sprucing should the mood ever take him.
For most of the show, confetti rains down over an obscurely cluttered set. It looks like a TV quiz show championship being filmed in a student share house, and proves a fair frame for the rambling and tangential web that unfolds (for a visual of the show’s narrative structure, Google “spiders on LSD”).
Let’s Tidy Up by Josh Thomas is on at Arts Centre Melbourne until April 21.Credit: Daniel Boud
Thomas’ peculiar brand of offbeat comedy doesn’t take long to raise a hot-button issue: the massive increase in autism diagnoses. The comedian discovered he had ADHD back when that was still interesting (and has been diagnosed with autism since then) and allows himself a few uncharitable remarks about the size of the bandwagon.
He isn’t so loose a cannon he’ll risk improvised offence, though. One latecomer excused her tardiness citing “crip time”, and whatever disability quip leapt into Thomas’ mind stayed there. He wrestled with himself internally, before deciding: “I’m not brave enough.”
Shrewdness is a quality I don’t admire in comedians, but it was a rare moment of circumspection in an otherwise unfiltered take on Thomas’ life. Dinner parties. Animal carnage. Tales of Hollywood quirk and debauchery. A comprehensive romantic update that holds it all together.
Let’s Tidy Up is co-written with playwright Lally Katz, whose wacky humour it sometimes recycles. I’m old enough to have seen Katz’s Stories I Want to Tell You in Person (2013), and if this show’s anything to go by, Katz may have the most artistically virulent strain of herpes the world has ever known.
Still, the lion’s share of the material is pure Josh Thomas, and his fans should relish the opportunity to watch live the eccentric charm that’s made him a celebrated figure in Australian comedy.
★★★
Reviewed by Cameron Woodhead
Annie and Lena | Have a Talk Show
The Malthouse – Playbox, until April 21
For a few seconds you’d be convinced former child actor Drew Barrymore, in talk-show-host-mode, was on stage at The Malthouse.
Annie and Lena Have A Talk Show is on at The Malthouse – Playbox until April 21.
Annie Lumsden and Lena Moon, acting as production assistants, prime the crowd for a 50-minute foray into “behind the scenes” of a talk show, complete with an applause sign that lights up sporadically, begging for audience validation.
Loading
A video vignette, recorded by a prime selection of comic notables including Celia Pacquola ( in the audience on this night) is peppered with funny quips. Moon’s impressions are brilliant (her southern drawl is golden) and while a bit “yelly”, Lumsden brims with over-the-top ebullience.
Oddly, there’s an apology for being loud – before and after the show, and an exchange with a bloke in the front row goes nowhere.
Overall, it’s sketch comedy delivered with chaotic exuberance and constant costume changes, and the show builds to a clever climax.
★★★
Reviewed by Donna Demaio
The Ghostlight League | Shakespeare Ghostbusters
St Martins Theatre, until April 13
Shakespeare Ghostbusters does what it says on the box. It’s a re-enactment of the 1984 film rewritten in Shakespearean English, and it’s as much fun as the free-for-alls from those boozehound thesps at Sh!t-faced Shakespeare (whose Macbeth is also showing at this year’s Comedy Festival).
Shakespeare Ghostbusters by The Ghostlight League is on at St Martins Theatre until April 13.
What makes it work? Nerdlove. Camp devotion to Ghostbusters carries the show, and although there are no plot surprises, there’s comic mystery in how the artists will find novel solutions to cinematic problems through costume, puppetry, and lo-fi special effects.
Some of these are unbelievably cute. Wanna see Slimer and Zuul in Elizabethan ruffs? This show’s got you covered.
And the actors embrace physical comedy, Shakespearean silliness, and pinpoint impersonations of performances (not to mention iconic scenes) from the original movie.
Plus, after the furore the 2016 all-women Ghostbusters remake caused online, a cross-gendered Egon should keep the incels away, and Ghostbusters fans will get a kick out of this improbable and entertaining comic mashup.
★★★
Reviewed by Cameron Woodhead
Samuel Gebreselassie
Chinese Museum – Tea Room, until April 21
Samuel Gebreselassie knows that his “name privilege” grants him advantages in life – including benefiting from a cafe giving free coffees to people called “Sam”.
I’m a Refugee… Get Me Out of Here! by Samuel Gebreselassie is on at Chinese Museum until April 21.
I’m a Refugee… Get Me Out of Here! is about the everyday microaggressions that Gebreselassie, his family and peers navigate as refugees and migrants. People presuming his colleague Mustafa is named after The Lion King is a frequently used example that illustrates this.
Loading
Racism is a tough topic to tackle, relying on the audience’s ability to relate or laugh at their own unconscious bias. For the most part, Gebreselassie’s laidback delivery helps soften the blow in moments that might be considered “triggering”.
Some jokes land more easily than others – a bit explaining why Australia’s reputation for racism supersedes New Zealand’s feels particularly laboured. Investing in a dramaturg would help the routine seem less one-note and structure jokes so that the punchlines land harder.
Nevertheless, a thought-provoking comedic response to the question: “Where are you from?“
★★
Reviewed by Vyshnavee Wijekumar
Annie Louey and Mohammed Magdi | Too Haram to Handle
Melb Town Hall – The Flag Room, until April 21
Fashioned as a comedian couple double-bill, Mohammed Magdi, an Egyptian who’s lived in China for the past 11 years, performs for the first half of Too Haram to Handle, followed by Annie Louey, an Asian-Australian with ancestral roots in Hong Kong and China. There could’ve been interesting material mined from the couple’s asynchrony, but their sets are disparate and barely interact with each other.
Too Haram to Handle by Annie Louey and Mohammed Magdi is on at Melb Town Hall until April 21.
With an off-putting delivery style of cheerful abrasiveness, Magdi takes aim at the audience and treads tired ground as he rehashes stereotypes about Chinese people – less punching down, more culturally insensitive and uncomfortable. He has gems in his set – from an entertaining story about an Egyptian paralympic delegation, to the irony of seeking refuge from an authoritarian state in China – but many of his punchlines devolve into lewdness.
Louey’s set is smoother as she chronicles the challenges of a long-distance relationship, her mother’s racism, and a particularly regrettable incident that kickstarted her courtship with Magdi, but there are also callbacks to jokes that didn’t land the first time and overly long setups with minimal payoff.
Ending with an “ask me anything” segment that prolongs the awkwardness, Too Haram to Handle has flashes of brilliance but never quite gets there.
★★
Reviewed by Sonia Nair
Andy Balloch | Killing Time
Motley Bauhaus Theatrette, until April 21
Killing Time by Andy Balloch is on at Motley Bauhaus Theatrette until April 21.
After his Golden Gibbo-nominated Am I the Drama last year, Andy Balloch returns to the Comedy Festival with a show full of ideas, but that has no idea what to do with them.
The premise of his newest sketch show is muddy from the outset and it only gets more unclear as it goes on. Dressed in funeral-black sequins, Balloch moves helter-skelter from personal anecdotes about his loveable grandmother to soap box sermons about growing up gay; from deep dives into the effects of the AIDS crisis to absurd sketches about camp cult leaders.
Balloch is likable and incredibly charming, but even he can’t soften the emotional and tonal whiplash of a segue that goes from imagining the death toll of the HIV epidemic to fangirling over Ginuwine’s classic ’90s banger, Pony.
A final call to “make every moment count” comes across as a last-ditch effort to tie things together neatly with cringy sentimentality. Balloch might settle into the show better as the season continues, but at the moment it’s a disappointing follow-up to last year’s success.
★★
Reviewed by Guy Webster
Jay Wymarra | AmaJayus
Trades Hall – Archive Room, until April 21
Jay Wymarra is really, really good at singing, but there might not be much else apart from that. AmaJayus is billed as a “queer-feral rock opera”, and while that isn’t false advertising per se, the narrative is thin. The show involves Wymarra speaking to an imaginary “boy”, a version of him that we assume is a kind of shadow self to his “pansexual, pancontinental” present.
AmaJayus by Jay Wymarra is on at Trades Hall until April 21.
There’s not much to laugh about across the show. Some of the laughter that did come – during particularly camp moments, or when there were pauses between transitions – felt as though they were from a place of confusion or discomfort. Outfit changes are sloppy, and although Wymarra may well be attempting to break a fourth wall, there is a certain amateurish quality about it. Many interactions with the “boy” seem as if he is using AmaJayus as a vehicle to project self-loathing.
I will reiterate: Wymarra is excellent at singing, but otherwise would surely be better off at Fringe as a cabaret show. Whatever he may be trying to subvert isn’t cutting it.
★★
Reviewed by Cher Tan
Sonny Yang | Tales from My Immigrant Father: A Serious & Poignant Show About Culture for a Pretentious Audience
Trades Hall – Archive Room, until April 21
Tales from My Immigrant Father: A Serious & Poignant Show About Culture for a Pretentious Audience by Sonny Yang is on at Trades Hall – Archive Room, until April 21.
Sonny Yang’s sketch comedy begins on a sombre note: with a black-and-white slideshow chronicling his father’s life in Burma and a familiar soliloquy, expanding on themes of fractured cultural identity, a disconnect with the homeland and a desire to rediscover his father, and in the process, himself. It seems as though Yang is laying the groundwork for the classic migrant story so he can dismantle it, speak against it.
Cue an absurdist turn in the show when Yang receives news that his father has died. A pre-recorded, prolonged Zoom call with his father’s blended white and Burmese family plays out – Yang trying to get a word in while the most aggravating caricatures of middle Australia take centre stage. Further strange things happen.
The show is less about skewering the migrant stereotype than it is about lambasting the many faces of white Australia: the fetishising Bali-loving uncle, the wine enthusiast, the boastful mum. The problem is: even if the depictions ring true, none of it is particularly funny. A talking goldfish elicits the most laughs.
There are seeds of interesting explorations of model minorities and the ridiculousness of the arts, but these ideas never fully come together convincingly.
★★
Reviewed by Sonia Nair
The Booklist is a weekly newsletter for book lovers from books editor Jason Steger. Get it every Friday.
