Sean Diao – I’m Much Funnier Since My Dad Is Dead
at Terrarium Bar

Sean Diao – I’m Much Funnier Since My Dad Is Dead
at Terrarium Bar
Friday, January 30, 2026


Sean Diao opened his Fringe set as his own MC, armed with a laptop instead of a screen and a PowerPoint that needed restarting. This immediately signalled the tone: lo-fi, unpolished, almost amateur-core in presentation. This was not a show chasing slickness or velocity—and in a festival environment calibrated for immediacy, that choice both defined the night and complicated it.

Coming on the heels of high-octane Fringe comedy elsewhere, Diao’s pace felt deliberately meandering. Rather than rapid-fire delivery, the set evoked a more detached, pottering mode of attention—ideas wandered, jokes remained half-finished, and connections were made loosely rather than driven home. It recalled a quieter, less hyperactive expression of ADHD: not frenetic, but diffuse. At times, this read as intentional—a dry, observational style that invited recognition more than laughter. At others, it felt like the joke dissolved before the audience quite knew where to meet it.

Language was central to both the charm and the friction of the show. As a Chinese-born comedian working in his second language, Diao repeatedly returned to linguistic oddities and cultural misfires. His humour often emerged from literal interpretations, odd inflections, and curious logic leaps. It took a beat to tune the ear to his rhythm—and not every Fringe crowd would be patient enough to wait for that beat.

The set roamed widely: Perth-specific observations, AI paranoia, white supremacy parsed through absurd literalism, polyamory, Hollywood moral authority, and cultural stereotyping approached from an outsider’s vantage point. Some ideas landed with a knowing smirk; others passed with a skipped beat. There was a recurring sense that the audience wasn’t always sure whether they were laughing with Diao or simply at the strangeness of the delivery—a delicate line for any comedian walking without the armour of smut or shock.

Where the show sharpened, it genuinely connected. The final turn towards the title material—Diao’s reflections on his father’s death—drew the clearest laughs of the night, particularly in a sequence about Chinese funeral customs, a tomb subscription model à la Netflix (how far would you go to cancel your account when there’s no new content?), and the deeply inappropriate act of burying pork belly with his gall bladder-diseased father. These moments earned snickers rather than roars, but they were real: dry, thoughtful laughs that lingered.

Ultimately, I’m Much Funnier Since My Dad Is Dead felt less like a floundering set than a mismatched one. Diao’s quiet observational style asked for time, attention, and generosity — commodities not always abundant in a Fringe room geared to reward speed and spectacle. There was something endearing and thoughtful here, even when it didn’t quite land. The question wasn’t whether Diao had something to say, but whether this environment knew how to listen.

CAT LANDRO