by What is the biggest comedy festival in the world? Parochial Britons would say Edinburgh. Internationals can consider Just for Laughs Montreal. They would all be wrong. Just for Laughs is defunct: it filed for bankruptcy protection earlier this year, and its future is in doubt. And Edinburgh Fringe is a performing arts festival, not just comedy. So, for now, if only on that technicality, Melbourne has the biggest comedy festival in the world: a three-week carnival of standup, sketch and beyond, dedicated to nothing but the art of people to laugh.
In over 20 years of writing about comedy, I have never been – until now. But I felt his influence. Twice recently, the winner of the most outstanding show award went on to win its equivalent in Edinburgh. One of them was Nanette Hannah Gadsby, the most prominent stand-up act of the last decade, launched in Melbourne before hitting the world. And as early as 2022, former Melbourne champ – recent Taskmaster star Sam Campbell – won the top prize in Edinburgh, with Australia now producing more winners than any other non-UK country. The festival also played a pivotal role in the “transgender debate”, when its main award – known for years as the Barry, after Barry Humphries – was renamed after Dame Edna’s divisive views about transgender people.
But if Melbourne, to British eyes, looks like a stage post before Edinburgh, it doesn’t feel that way on the ground. Yes, there are shows coming to Scotland in a few months, including highly anticipated newcomer Rose (Starstruck) Matafeo. Gadsby’s Woof!, which I watched on my first night here with my jetlagged eyelids drooping irresistibly, is due to tour the UK soon. Even when I was exhausted, it was exciting to see Gadsby on home turf, delivering a looser and funnier set than we expected, introducing Cabbage Patch Kids, abortion, the Barbie movie and lice watching large. Unusually in a festival context, she also shared her audience with another supporting act each night – Oliver Coleman, when I was there, whose own Goof set was nominated this week for best show.
Coleman looks like a star in the making: Goof shows action with pop-eyed intensity and a great turn of phrase, pondering the big questions (“Am I ignorant even of myself?!”) and the small ones (papaya versus mango) with equal commitment, full body. He’ll be watching on the sidelines in August – as will character actor Piotr Sikora Furiozo. Sikora’s quiet comic act is a lesson in not judging appearances. Furiozo, a bullet head, comes at him like a clenched fist in human form. The delightful surprise is that, in portraying his life of conviction and extreme violence, Sikora is the gentlest of comedians, guiding his moment of engagement with a beautifully light touch.
Furiozo was not shortlisted for the top award at the festival, which included some shows familiar to UK audiences: John Kearns’s brilliant The Varnishing Days alongside Sarah Keyworth’s latest and Julia Masli’s agony aunt ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha to phi fin superhern. Also among the nominees is Indian standup Kanan Gill, with a slick hour of existential musings, who toured the UK in May. Kiwi novelist Ray O’Leary was in attendance, with a series full of zingers delivered in a dialect made for deadpan. Local contenders included Lou Wall’s The Bisexual’s Lament, a PowerPoint-led tour through the comic’s traumatic 2023, and Celia Pacquola’s 2018 debut, I’m As Surprised As You Are. The winner is announced on Saturday.
Few of these actions see Melbourne as any kind of tool for Edinburgh. This is a festival with a confident sense of itself. It is also the largest ticketed event in Australia, selling around 770,000 seats each year. Its opening gala, broadcast on public television network ABC, is “the biggest night in the Australian comedy calendar”. Many of the 30 odd activists I see express their gratitude and pride that the festival is taking place in their city / country / hemisphere.
Their shows are clearly made with a domestic audience in mind: again and again, I’m faced with Aussie references that I have to guess, from Peter Dutton (the far-right leader of the Australian opposition) to Schmackos ( apparently dog food); from Bunnings (hardware store) to Are You Paying Attention? (a panel show where local comedians want to appear). I find myself filled with a renewed appreciation for the Aussie (and other international) acts who do to the UK and adapting their shows accordingly: it’s easy to forget how specific the culture is.
That’s part of the fun for the visitor. On more than one occasion, I encountered acts with large local followings and a visible buzz around them, of which this comic critic was, until now, unaware. New Zealander Guy Montgomery, say, whose following has skyrocketed since appearing on Taskmaster NZ, and co-hosted this year’s big night of the festival – or the activist old Gen Z duo Mel & Sam, with the drolly title. the show The Platonic Human Centipede celebrated (and promoted) queerness, polyamory and Willy Wonka in a succession of other musical set pieces.
I would have happily seen more of the same – but the Melbourne event is not as 24/7 as the Edinburgh event. In the United Kingdom, the entire city is overtaken by performance, one hour. Down below, shows are mainly in the evening, in many venues, the most notable of which is the Town Hall, whose old-school Assembly Rooms vibe feels familiar in the hands of a veteran fringe like me. There is a curatorial element to the festival, in that the international acts, including the British, are here mainly by invitation.
One of them, Paul Currie, had his show pulled – from his own venue, not at the festival – following the controversy over his treatment of an Israeli audience member at London’s Soho Theater in February. There are far fewer American and European acts than in Edinburgh, and more from east and south-east Asia – as you’d expect, if you looked at a map or looked at current conversations about Australia embracing her Asian identity.
Some, you think, would rather he stick to his white European heritage instead. Last year, in what many see as the country’s Brexit moment, Australians in a referendum rejected proposals for an increased voice for Indigenous people in the nation’s governance. The vote split the country, if not down the middle, then 60/40. Its after-effects are felt acutely at the comedy festival, in the rote announcement that precedes each performance (“This was and always will be Aboriginal land”), and in shows such as Tom Ballard’s comic Good Point Well Made , which rages against Australian Racism and the timidity of the winning slogan: “If you don’t know, vote No.” It’s a smart series, which asks calm questions about the identity of the country after the community and evokes the gallows humor of the eternal leftist perpetuation. Now what to do with that redundant “Yes” salesperson?
Melbourne, of course, has plenty of First Nation comics on the Aboriginal Comedy Allstars bill and in solo shows with the likes of Dane Simpson, Jay Wymarra, Dave Woodhead and Sean Choolburra. Woodhead has bad music when I attend, arguing with taciturn punters in the front row, and cracking the kind of sexist jokes that Zoë Coombs Marr satirized in her cross-dressing actor Dave. (As Woodhead himself jokes, Australian male comedy needs to be called Dave.) Coombs Marr, the big star of Australian comedy, has more to offer elsewhere in town, with a popular show (and Edinburgh as well) inviting their audience to navigate through Every Single Thing in My Whole Life.
Show titles such as Chinese Aussies (starring TikTok star Jenny Tian) and Takashi Wakasugi’s award-nominated Aussie Aussie show that race and culture are contentious issues in Australian life, and both contribute to understanding that Asian-Australian identity is worth thinking about. . Satirist Nazeem Hussain could hardly be clearer in his show Totally Normal about “soft racism” and his own experiences of prejudice after moving to the high-end Melbourne suburb of Hawthorn East. He rails against British colonialism and Israel/Palestine, too, in a delightfully barbed series at the Melbourne Town Hall.
At the nearby Arts Centre, the circus troupe Circus Oz even gets in on the act, with an iconic show deconstructing statues of Captain Cook and others. Humor can’t overturn the referendum result, or solve Australia’s particular issues of race and identity – but a festival as diverse, polyphonic and exciting as this, and the laughter it provides, can lift the spirit a little, release some of the pain, and start paving the way to a more open-hearted future.
It certainly touched my spirits. It was a pleasure to be here. I highly recommend the Melbourne comedy festival – whether it’s the biggest festival in the world or not – to all comedy lovers.
• The Melbourne international comedy festival runs until 21 April. Zoë Coombs Marr, Oliver Coleman, Tom Ballard and others are at the Edinburgh festival in August. Kanan Gill is on tour in the UK May 15-26.
