Review: Sydney Comedy Festival Gala Night

The Sydney Comedy Festival has kicked off its first week.
Venues are selling fast, and there are individual shows all over the city.
The Enmore Theatre in Newtown is a major venue – here’s what a gala night is like.
READ MORE: Sydney Comedy Festival is pulling no punches for its 20th anniversary

Stand up? You wouldn’t want to do it for quids. And comedy festival galas? The equivalent of speed dating but with even more risk of emotional deflation.

We’re at the Enmore Theatre. Newtown, for the Sydney Comedy Festival Gala Night. Not a hard room to work. Most of the crowd had come for laughs, and they were giggling even before curtain up (Ok, there wasn’t a curtain—but you get the drift).

The Festival wheeled out a procession of jokers, five minutes apiece, like some sort of comedic cattle auction. There were Australians, more Brits than the Ten Pound Poms, a New Zealander, gays and lesbians.

Some were hilarious. Others are a little more confronting. One lady went on about lesbians having children, while another talked about her problems removing pubic hair with wax sheets (you really don’t want to know how that turned out)!

Sydney Comedy Festival host Ryan Nicholson

But that’s the joy of stand-up, right? You wriggle in your seat and giggle.

The Sydney Comedy Festival has worked hard to get this festival right, and the number of events and scale are amazing. Gala nights like this are just a small part of this extravaganza.

Of course, there were the wife jokes. The Aussie blokes couldn’t resist this well-worn terrain. You’d think after centuries of cohabitation, we could find some fresh material. But no, it’s still “my wife said this” and “my missus did that.”

The audience, bless ‘em, lapped it up. Families, relationships, husbands, wives – it’s all fodder for the greater belly laugh.

Then, just when you thought it couldn’t get any weirder, out came a pair of… well, they looked like they’d been chewing glow sticks and listening to too much oom-pah music. Techno heads. Their big idea? A game you can play on your mobile.

And we did. Play it, I mean. As funny as wife jokes? Probably not. But an interesting new take on stand up.

The host, Rhys Nicholson, did a good job keeping the whole thing on track. Then, the big guns came out.

Dave Hughes is “a typical Aussie bloke”. A university dropout and former abattoir worker, he regularly appears on TV panels and radio shows. But stand up is Hughesie’s home turf.

What is the state of stand-up today? It’s a tough gig, no doubt. You’re up there on your own, trying to wring a chuckle out of a room full of strangers. And the Enmore was packed. Appreciative, too. Like they hadn’t heard a decent gag in weeks (well, there is an election going on!).

The British website Chortle (yes, really!) said it was “a line up as fine as you could expect.”

It was a bit of a mixed bag, like a blind date with Tinder rejects. But the punters were guffawing, and in stand-up, that’s the name of the game. Altogether, a great night out with a lot to chuckle over.

And the venue? Well, no joke, the Enmore is Sydney’s oldest and longest running live theatre and has been a Newtown staple since 1908. The 100-year-old theatre hosts bands, comedy acts and other performances from around the world.