Review: Nina Oyama is Coming at The Rechabite

Nina Oyama is Coming at The Rechabite
Friday, May 16, 2024

Nina Oyama’s stand-up comedy show Nina Oyama is Coming was a delightful performance that saw the comedian merge her authentic vulnerability with razor-sharp wit to tremendous and hilarious effect. Performing at The Rechabite’s Goodwill Club as part of the 2024 Perth Comedy Festival, Oyama effortlessly connected with the audience, turning some of her most awkward and intimate moments of her life into comedy gold on stage.

Having started her career as a stand-up at the young age of seventeen, Oyama is now a veteran of the stand-up stage, and this expertise was evident throughout the show. Arriving on stage in the casual get-up of a backwards cap and baggy tee, Oyama’s on-stage persona was a mix of enthusiasm and endearing awkwardness, which, when mixed with self-awareness, often made the gig feel like you were being entertained by a good friend at a bar as opposed to a scripted performance.

The result of Oyama’s persona allowed her to gain a unique rapport with the audience, which she expertly worked to her favour throughout. Unlike other comedians who promote a veneer of cool professionalism, Oyama went out of her way to emphasise personal mishaps from her own life, even to the point of sharing mistakes from the performance with the audience.

Rather than skipping over missed material, Oyama chose to bathe in the awkwardness of the failure by admitting her mistake to the audience before laconically sauntering back to the skipped bit, telling it in full, and then, just as casually, returning to where she had left off. Such quirky on-stage behaviour can only come with learned experience, which Oyama has garnered from her decade-plus-long career thus far.

Given the name of the show, Oyama’s sex-positive vibes were often front and centre in her material, but unlike other comedians who traverse in the lewd, her jokes were often pointed inward and were commonly at her own expense. With jokes from fisting to Yoda impressions in the bedroom, Oyama’s ability to laugh at herself—often literally as she couldn’t help but follow some lines up with her trademark giggle—marks her as a unique talent in the field of stand-up.

It was not just about sex, though, as Oyama openly rejoiced in all the material many others would leave untouched in the too-much-information bin. There were stories about endometriosis and ovarian cysts woven, as well as depictions of marginalised identities in everyday life, where Oyama expertly trod a line between the significant, yet still hilariously silly, to the audience’s great rapture.

While one can never be entirely sure about the future, it can be almost guaranteed from such an outstanding performance Nina Oyama will be coming again and again to Perth, well into the future.

MICHAEL HOLLICK