Review: Stephen K Amos: Now We’re Talking at Regal Theatre

Stephen K Amos: Now We’re Talking at Regal Theatre
Thursday, May 14, 2026

British comedian Stephen K. Amos returned to Subiaco and The Regal for this year’s Perth Comedy Festival with the new show Now We’re Talking. At the end of an Australian tour that had lasted more than two months and a constant visitor down under for two and a half decades, Amos easily conceded to the audience tonight that he considered the country a second home.

But he almost didn’t make it this year, having booked flights through the Middle East that were cancelled due to the war, with the replacement travel options offered barely better, in the artist’s own thinking. Resolve stiffened with the attitude that Australia needed him, Amos swallowed his well-founded issues with the airline industry and arrived in time for his first set of gigs, in both Canberra and Adelaide.

Amos proposed the thesis that a good comedian could tackle any material without the need to punch down. As someone born in London to Nigerian parents, he advised that once, after a show, he had been told his attempts at Nigerian accents were culturally insensitive and then led tonight’s crowd in a Muppets-style singalong about religion. After that latter skit, he observed that what likely wouldn’t fly in Oxford back home seemed perfectly okay here in Perth and that this evening’s audience were all going to hell for it.

This introduction of sorts out of the way, Amos brought forward the core idea of the night: that laughter was one of the few things that brought humanity together and that the very concept of comedy separated homo sapiens from the rest of the animal kingdom. Certain animals do laugh, but none intend to invoke such a reaction in others of their kind.

Amos continued, outlining the physiology of laughter as it pertained to the brain. The amygdala is involuntarily hijacked from its usual fear or anxiety, through the release of endorphins and dopamine, to a live example of all these effects in motion with a throwaway Prince Andrew line.

Next taken back several decades, Amos regaled the audience with his youth, in his opinion grown up on hard mode. His parents, having emigrated to Britain in the 1960s, insisted on recreating Nigeria in the home, and little Steve struggled at school until releasing his sense of humour to his peers. Amos also gave the youth in the crowd a brief history lesson on three channels on television: the expert authority of the media, especially News at Ten; and, ahem, Benny Hill.

The set wrapped up with a shout-out to his own generation, as Amos revelled in the authenticity he now brought to life, after having spent too many years attempting to please everyone. At his current age, the friends he had now would stick with him through thick and thin, and anyone that brought negativity or even mere neutrality to his sphere could go away, sharply and crudely.

Amos tonight was amiable, relaxed, and looked like he was having a ball, with his material intelligent, measured, and well-honed. At the very top of the show, he highlighted the potential for chaos in the performance ahead, and the crowd work he enthusiastically undertook would obviously play out differently each night. He clearly loves Australia and gets the nation’s humour; the jokes he told in Perth about Adelaide were reversed when in the Festival City, and all in attendance were perfectly fine with that. A wonderful hour spent with a premier international comedian; long may he return to these shores.

PAUL MEEK