What is the largest comedy festival in the world? Parochial Brits would say Edinburgh. Internationalists might consider Montreal's Just for Laughs. They would all be wrong. Just for Laughs is out of the running: it filed for bankruptcy protection earlier this year because its future is in doubt. And the outskirts of Edinburgh is not just a comedy festival, but also a performing arts festival. So for now, if only on that technical level, Melbourne has the world's largest comedy festival: a three-week carnival of stand-up, sketch and more, dedicated to nothing more than the art of making people laugh.
In the twenty-plus years I've been writing about comedy, I've never been one - until now. But I have felt its influence. Recently the winner of the most outstanding show award won the equivalent twice in Edinburgh. One of these was Hannah Gadsby's Nanette, perhaps the most important stand-up set of the past decade, which launched in Melbourne before taking the world by storm. And as recently as 2022, a former Melbourne champion - recent Taskmaster star Sam Campbell - won the Edinburgh top prize, from which Australia has now produced more winners than any other non-British country. The festival also played a weather vane role in the 'trans debate' when the top prize - known for years as the Barry, after Barry Humphries - was renamed after the Dame Edna star's divisive comments about trans people.
But if Melbourne looks to British eyes like a stopover on the run-up to Edinburgh, it doesn't feel that way on the ground. Yes, there are shows coming to Scotland in a few months, including the highly anticipated newcomer from Rose (Starstruck) Matafeo. Gadsby's Woof!, which I watched on my first night here with my jet-lagged eyes drooping irresistibly, will soon be touring Britain. Despite my exhaustion, it was exciting to see Gadsby on home turf, with a looser, more playful set than we expected, with Cabbage Patch Kids, abortion, the Barbie movie and whale watching. Unusually in a festival context, she also shared her audience with a different support act each night: Oliver Coleman, when I was there, whose own set Goof was nominated for most outstanding show this week.
Coleman looks like a star in the making: Goof shows an act with bulging intensity and grand turn of phrase, thinking about the big questions ("Am I unknowable even to myself?!") and the small ones (papaya versus mango) with equal , full body involvement. He's one to look out for on the sidelines in August - just like Furiozo, Piotr Sikora's character act. Sikora's silent comedy act is a lesson in not judging based on appearance. The bare-chested and ball-headed Furiozo appears as a clenched fist in human form. The pleasant surprise is that, as he describes his life of crime and ultra-violence, Sikora is the gentlest of clowns, leading his participatory hour with a sweet, light touch.
Furiozo was not shortlisted for the festival's top prize, which included several shows familiar to British audiences: John Kearns' great The Varnishing Days alongside Sarah Keyworth's latest and Julia Masli's wonderful Aunt Hour ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. The nominees also include Indian stand-up Kanan Gill, with a fine hour of existential meditation, who will tour Britain in May. Kiwi newcomer Ray O'Leary was featured, with a set full of zingers, delivered with an accent for a deadpan look. Homegrown contenders included Lou Wall's The Bisexuality's Lament, a PowerPoint-driven ride through the comic's traumatic 2023, and Celia Pacquola's first show since 2018, I'm As Surprised As You Are. The winner will be announced on Saturday.
Few of these acts see Melbourne as a taster for Edinburgh. This is a festival with a confident feel. It is also Australia's largest ticketed event, selling approximately 770,000 seats per year. The opening gala, broadcast on public television channel ABC, is "the biggest night on the Australian comedy calendar". Many of the thirty or so acts 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: time and time again I'm confronted with Aussie references whose meaning I have to guess, from Peter Dutton (very right-wing leader of the Australian opposition) to Schmackos (a dog food, apparently); from Bunnings (a hardware store) to Have You Been Pay Attention? (a panel shows what local comedians want to appear on). I find myself filled with newfound respect for those Australian (and other international) acts that Doing reaching Britain and tailoring their shows accordingly: it's easy to forget how culturally specific stand-up usually is.
That's part of the fun for the visitor. More than once I came across acts with large local followings and a palpable buzz around them, of whose oeuvre this comedy critic had heretofore been blissfully ignorant. Let's say laid-back New Zealander Guy Montgomery, whose following has soared since his own appearance on Taskmaster NZ, and who co-hosted the festival's gala night this year - or vintage Gen Z double act Mel & Sam, whose wittily titled show The Platonic Human Centipede celebrated (and channeled) queerness, polyamory and Willy Wonka in a succession of outre musical set pieces.
I would have liked to see more of the same, but the event in Melbourne is not as 24/7 as in Edinburgh. In Britain, the entire city is overtaken by achievements 24 hours a day. Down under, the shows are mainly in the evenings, in dozens of locations, the most prominent of which is City Hall, where the old-school Assembly Rooms atmosphere feels familiar to experienced edge hands like me. There is a curated element to the festival, in that the international acts, including Brits, are here mainly by invitation.
One of them, Paul Currie, had his show pulled - by his venue, not 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 might expect if you looked at the map or listened to the current conversations about Australia embracing its Asian identity.
Some would prefer, mind you, for the country to cling to its white European heritage. Last year, in what many see as the country's Brexit moment, Australians rejected proposals in a referendum for a greater voice for Indigenous people in the country's governance. The vote split the country, if not down the middle, then 60/40. Its aftereffects are clearly palpable at the comedy festival, in the announcement that precedes each performance ("This was and always will be Aboriginal country"), and in shows such as Good Point Well Made by comedian Tom Ballard, who rages against Aussie racism and the embarrassment of the triumphant slogan: "If you don't know, vote no." It's a clever set, asking profound questions about the country's identity after the plebiscite, while reveling in the gallows humor of eternal left-wing defeat. What should you do with all that unnecessary 'Yes' merchandise?
There are, of course, plenty of First Nation comics in Melbourne, on the Aboriginal Comedy Allstars bill and in individual shows by the likes of Dane Simpson, Jay Wymarra, Dave Woodhead and Sean Choolburra. Woodhead has a poor performance when I attend, arguing with taciturn punters in the front row, and making the kind of mildly sexist jokes that Zoë Coombs Marr satirized in her cross-dressing character act Dave. (As Woodhead himself jokes, male Australian comics should be called Dave.) Coombs Marr, a major star of Australian comedy, has more to offer elsewhere in the city, with a major show (also in Edinburgh) that invites its audience to navigate every single thing in my entire life.
That race and culture remain contentious issues in Australian life is evident from show titles such as Chinese Australian (by TikTok star Jenny Tian) and Takashi Wakasugi's award-winning Japanese Aussie, both of which imply that the idea of Asian-Australian identity remains notable. . Satirist Nazeem Hussain could hardly have been more explicit about 'bogan racism' and his own experience of prejudice after moving to the posh Melbourne suburb of Hawthorn East in his show Totally Normal. He confronts British colonialism and also Israel/Palestine, in a pleasantly provocative set at Melbourne Town Hall.
At the nearby Arts Center, even the acrobatic group Circus Oz gets into action, with an iconoclastic show deconstructing images of Captain Cook and others. Comedy can't overturn the referendum result, or solve Australia's particular problems of race and identity - but a festival as diverse, polyphonic and exciting as this, and the laughter it produces, can lift the spirits gather a little and take away some of the pain. and begin to pave the way to a more open-hearted future.
It certainly lifted my spirits. It was a sensation to be here. I highly recommend Melbourne's comedy festival - whether it's the largest in the world or not - to all comedy lovers.
* Melbourne International Comedy Festival runs until April 21. Zoë Coombs Marr, Oliver Coleman, Tom Ballard and others will be at the festival in Edinburgh in August. Kanan Gill will tour Britain from May 15 to 26.
