What’s the most important comedy pageant on this planet? Parochial Britons would say Edinburgh. Internationalists might contemplate Montreal’s Only for Laughs. They might all be improper. Only for Laughs is out of the operating: it filed for chapter safety earlier this 12 months, its future doubtful. And the Edinburgh fringe is a performing arts pageant not simply comedy. So for now, if solely on that technicality, Melbourne has the most important comedy pageant on this planet: a three-week carnival of standup, sketch and past, devoted to nothing however the artwork of constructing individuals chuckle.
In 20-plus years writing about comedy, I had by no means been – till now. However I’ve felt its affect. Twice just lately, the winner of its most excellent present award went on to win the Edinburgh equal. One was Hannah Gadsby’s Nanette, arguably probably the most important standup set of the final decade, which launched in Melbourne earlier than conquering the world. And as just lately as 2022, a former Melbourne champ – current Taskmaster star Sam Campbell – received Edinburgh’s high prize, of which Australia has now supplied extra winners than every other non-UK nation. The pageant additionally performed a weathervane position within the “trans debate”, when its important award – for years referred to as the Barry, after Barry Humphries – was re-named after the Dame Edna star’s divisive feedback about transgender individuals.
But when Melbourne seems, to British eyes, like a staging publish within the run-up to Edinburgh, it doesn’t really feel like that on the bottom. Sure, there are reveals that can come to Scotland in a couple of months’ time, the keenly anticipated beginner from Rose (Starstruck) Matafeo amongst them. Gadsby’s Woof!, which I watched on my first night time right here as my jetlagged eyelids drooped irresistibly, is quickly to tour the UK. Even via my exhaustion, it was thrilling to see Gadsby on dwelling turf, delivering a looser, extra playful set than we count on, taking in Cabbage Patch Youngsters, abortion, the Barbie film and whale watching. Unusually in a pageant context, she additionally shared her viewers with a unique help act nightly – Oliver Coleman, after I was there, whose personal set Goof was this week nominated for many excellent present.
Coleman seems like a star within the making: Goof showcases an act with a pop-eyed depth and grandiose flip of phrase, pondering the massive questions (“Am I unknowable even to myself?!”) and the small ones (papaya versus mango) with equal, full-body dedication. He’s one to look out for on the perimeter in August – as is Piotr Sikora’s character act Furiozo. Sikora’s silent comedy act is an lesson in not judging by appearances. Naked-chested, bullet-headed Furiozo comes throughout like a clenched fist in human type. The pleasant shock is that, as he depicts his lifetime of delinquency and ultra-violence, Sikora is the gentlest clown, ringleading his participatory hour with a beautiful gentle contact.
Furiozo didn’t make the shortlist for the pageant’s important award, which included a number of reveals acquainted to UK audiences: John Kearns’ terrific The Varnishing Days alongside Sarah Keyworth’s newest and Julia Masli’s smash agony aunt hour ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Additionally among the many nominees is Indian standup Kanan Gill, with a slick hour of existential meditation, which excursions the UK in Could. Kiwi up-and-comer Ray O’Leary featured, with a set filled with zingers delivered in an accent made for deadpan. Homegrown contenders included Lou Wall’s The Bisexual’s Lament, a PowerPoint-driven trip via the comedian’s traumatic 2023, and Celia Pacquola’s first present since 2018, I’m As Shocked As You Are. The winner is introduced on Saturday.
Few of those acts see Melbourne as any type of appetiser for Edinburgh. It is a pageant with a assured sense of itself. It’s Australia’s greatest ticketed occasion, too, promoting round 770,000 seats annually. Its opening gala, televised on the general public TV community ABC, is “the most important night time on Australia’s comedy calendar”. Lots of the 30-odd acts I see vocalise their gratitude and pleasure that the pageant takes place of their metropolis/nation/hemisphere.
Their reveals are clearly made with a home viewers in thoughts: time and again, I’m confronted with Aussie references whose significance I’ve to guess at, from Peter Dutton (very rightwing chief of the Australian opposition) to Schmackos (a pet food, apparently); from Bunnings (a ironmongery shop) to Have You Been Paying Consideration? (a panel present native comedians need to seem on). I discover myself stuffed with renewed respect for these Aussie (and different worldwide) acts who do make it to the UK and tailor their reveals accordingly: it’s simple to neglect how culturally particular standup often is.
That’s a part of the enjoyable for the customer. On a couple of event, I encountered acts with massive native followings and a palpable buzz round them, of whose oeuvre this comedy critic had been, till now, blissfully ignorant. The easygoing New Zealander Man Montgomery, say, whose following has sky-rocketed since his personal look on Taskmaster NZ, and who co-hosted the pageant’s gala night time this 12 months – or the antic Gen Z double-act Mel & Sam, whose drolly titled present The Platonic Human Centipede celebrated (and despatched up) queerness, polyamory and Willy Wonka in a succession of outre musical set-pieces.
I might have fortunately seen extra of the identical – however Melbourne’s occasion isn’t as 24/7 as Edinburgh’s. Within the UK, the entire metropolis is overtaken by efficiency, across the clock. Down underneath, reveals are primarily within the night, in dozens of venues, probably the most outstanding of which is the City Corridor, whose old-school Meeting Rooms vibe feels acquainted to veteran fringe fingers like me. There’s a curated aspect to the pageant, in that the worldwide acts, Britons amongst them, are right here primarily by invitation.
One in all them, Paul Currie, had his present pulled – by his venue, not by the pageant – after the controversy over his remedy of an Israeli viewers member at Soho theatre in London in February. There are far fewer American and European acts than in Edinburgh, and extra from east and south-east Asia – as you’d count on, should you checked out a map or tuned in to present conversations about Australia embracing its Asian identification.
Some would favor, thoughts you, that it cling to its white European heritage as an alternative. Final 12 months, in what many see because the nation’s Brexit second, Australians rejected in a referendum proposals for an elevated voice for Indigenous individuals within the nation’s governance. The vote cut up the nation, if not down the center, then 60/40. Its after-effects are keenly felt on the comedy pageant, within the rote announcement that precedes every efficiency (“This all the time was and all the time will probably be Aboriginal land”), and in reveals like Good Level Nicely Made by comedian Tom Ballard, which rages towards Aussie racism and the timidity of the victorious slogan: “For those who don’t know, vote No.” It’s a sensible set, that asks looking questions in regards to the nation’s identification post-plebiscite whereas savouring the gallows humour of perpetual leftwing defeat. What to do now with all that redundant “Sure” merch?
There are lots First Nation comics at Melbourne, after all, on the Aboriginal Comedy Allstars invoice and in particular person reveals by the likes of Dane Simpson, Jay Wymarra, Dave Woodhead and Sean Choolburra. Woodhead has a nasty gig after I attend, arguing with taciturn punters within the entrance row, and cracking the type of mildly sexist jokes that Zoë Coombs Marr satirised in her cross-dressing character act Dave. (As Woodhead himself jokes, male Australian comics need to be known as Dave.) Coombs Marr, an enormous star of Aussie comedy, has extra to supply elsewhere on the town, with a big-hitting present (additionally Edinburgh-bound) inviting her viewers to navigate via Each Single Factor in My Entire Whole Life.
That race and tradition stay contentious points in Australian life is apparent from present titles equivalent to Chinese language Australian (by TikTok star Jenny Tian) and Takashi Wakasugi’s award-nominated Japanese Aussie, each of which indicate that the very thought of Asian-Australian identification stays noteworthy. The satirist Nazeem Hussain may hardly be extra express in his present Completely Regular about “bogan racism” and his personal expertise of prejudice after shifting to the high-end Melbourne suburb of Hawthorn East. He’s confrontational on British colonialism and Israel/Palestine, too, in a pleasingly prickly set at Melbourne City Corridor.
On the close by Arts Centre, the acrobatic troupe Circus Oz even get in on the act, with an iconoclastic present deconstructing statues of Captain Prepare dinner and others. Comedy can’t reverse the referendum consequence, or resolve Australia’s explicit points with race and identification – however a pageant as numerous, polyphonic and thrilling as this, and the laughter it supplies, can rally the spirits a little bit, absolve among the ache, and begin paving the best way to a extra open-hearted future.
It definitely rallied my spirits. It’s been a thrill to be right here. I warmly advocate Melbourne’s comedy pageant – whether or not it’s the world’s greatest or not – to all lovers of comedy.
