Sydney’s biggest annual comedy event just wrapped for another year, and I want to give a nod to some of the most hilarious, off-the-wall, and delightful shows I managed to catch during Sydney Comedy Festival’s huge 20th anniversary year.
Plus, hot tip: the laughs aren’t over! There is an assortment of encore performances coming up for some of the festival’s most popular shows. This includes the winner of the Best of the Fest Award, Dan Rath’s Tropical Depression – a razor-sharp offbeat observational show offering Rath’s fresh take on a broad range of topics from Uber rides to moving to Korea, chatbots and more. (Tropical Depression is playing an encore at the Comedy Store on Friday, August 8. You can book tickets here.)
Highlights of Sydney Comedy Festival 2025
Ruby Teys – Cherry Vinyl: Coober Pedy’s Last Show Girl
★★★★★
Ruby Teys’ cabaret-esque style is the very definition of prawn cocktail comedy: delicious, decadent, somewhat perplexing, and always existing one minor but dangerous temperature change away from turning your stomach. The ingredients probably shouldn’t work together, and yet, she tosses them together with a dash of showgirl chutzpah and mad genius, leaving audiences rolling in regular roars of laughter – satiated, but always hungry for more. Much like a prawn, the body horror also makes it even better (The Substance’s special effects team simply can’t compete with what happens to a Gold Coast showgirl after a few too many komodo dragon placenta pills). Also, she appears in a bedazzled prawn costume. What more could you want?
Nostalgically and politically irreverent, Coober Pedy’s Last Show Girl is a comedy with two buttons undone on the working class. From following the “dingo proof fence” to the Gold Coast in order to pursue her dream of becoming a glamorous showgirl, Cherry Vinyl’s story is a parable for the little Australians, for the underdogs, for the blind blonde mole in all of us. Incorporating animation, pre-recorded footage, costume changes, old fashioned razzle dazzle, the right amount of crude jokes and some top notch physical comedy, Teys delivers a character performance that simply must be inducted into the Australian consciousness. There’s even a frank meditation on the intersection of power and gender and body modification, if you should choose to read into it. All in all, a solid six tits out of five.
ENCORE: Cherry Vinyl: Coober Pedy’s Last Show Girl is coming back to town for Qtopia Sydney’s Pride Fest on Wednesday, June 4. You can book tickets here. (Hot tip: chase it up with Alt Grl Wrld, a variety show for “genius freaky geeks” curated by Ruby – book here.)
Thalia Joan – Dear Future Memoir
★★★★☆
A talented storyteller with a real knack of unhinged brilliance, Thalia Joan is the kind of comedian who can get a whole room singing along, karaoke-style, to ‘I Believe in a Thing Called Love’ by British glam-rock-revivalists, The Darkness. And that’s exactly what she does in her latest show, Dear Future Memoir. A suitcase-full of stories from her recent fever dream of a trip to the United States – where, spoiler alert, her suitcase never actually joined her – it’s a somewhat looser affair than her previous, more tightly scripted shows. (And that may or may not have something to do with the copious amount of cold ’n flu pills she had to snaffle down ahead of her Sydney Comedy Festival run.) But Thalia has the kind of enigmatic presence that thrives in chaos, winning over an audience with witty quips, kooky mannerisms, effervescent energy, and even some amateur keyboard skills.
While her therapist may be dismissive about her habit of excusing all of her most self-destructive decisions as “doing it for the memoir”, Thalia proves that she is living out stories that are worth sharing – and in doing so, she encourages us to be bolder, too. (And besides, no man who passes off memeable quotes as billable wisdom can tell us otherwise!)
ENCORE: Dear Future Memoir is coming to the Comedy Store on Saturday, July 5. Find tickets & info over here.
Breaking the Musical
★★★★☆
In the long run, it turns out that the threat of being sued by Rachel Gunn herself was the best publicity that this little-low-budget-show-that-could could’ve asked for. Sydney-based comedian Stephanie Broadbridge writes and stars in this satisfyingly silly, unauthorised musical satire that is definitely not about a certain Australian hopeful’s journey to compete as a break dancer at the 2024 Paris Olympics. Supported by a hardworking ensemble, Broadbridge (as “Spraygun”) strikes the perfect balance in this clever and creative show, painting “Spraygun” with a relatively sympathetic brush while also holding space for the genuine concerns that certain communities might have about a white woman of a certain demographic representing a dance style pioneered by marginalised communities on the world stage.
Breaking the Musical is able to poke fun at the absurdity of certain strains of academia, as well as the absurdity of taking any sort of artform and trying to rank and judge it on a scale, all while exploring what the Australian identity means in today’s world (with a ‘Nutbush’-esque instructional dance thrown in for good measure). This show is also packed with a delightful grab-bag of musical references for the theatre fanatics to get down with, as well as nods to British pantomime, some genuinely impressive French mime action, and some bedazzled green tracksuits to boot.
Playing out over about an hour, Breaking is able to pack in a lot without overstaying its welcome. The ending doesn't tie up neatly, leaving us somewhat baffled and somewhat bemused, but this actually lines up rather well with the real story that may or may not have inspired it. This is comedy theatre that is low-budget, high-stakes, and thoroughly entertaining – something that all Aussies need to see.
(Follow @stephbroadbridge on Instagram for updates about Breaking the Musical.)
Reuben Kaye – The Party’s Over
★★★★☆
Reuben Kaye reaffirms why he is one of the best entertainers Australia has ever accidentally produced with his latest solo show, The Party’s Over. In a show that re-treads some of his greatest hits and sprinkles in some updated social commentary and personal anecdotes, Reuben is able to keep everyone on the edge of their seats with his bitingly intelligent and shamelessly raunchy antics as he struts across the Enmore Theatre stage (and playfully taunts unsuspecting folks in the audience). As fans might be aware, the last time Reuben was at this venue, his show had been considerably postponed after threats were made by far-right “Christian activists” over a certain Jesus joke on a certain primetime television appearance went down famously well. That 2023 performance was a triumph, and this one in 2025 is a total home run. The best part of a Reuben Kaye show is not just how much he’ll make you laugh (and that’s a lot), but how he’ll leave you feeling energised, and ready to fight back against conservative bores.
(Follow @reubenkayeofficial on Instagram to stay up to date with future shows.)
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Check out all encore performances for Sydney Comedy Festival over here.
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