The Laugh Resort to deliver biggest Fringe comedy season yet
Australia’s longest running comedy club, The Laugh Resort is delivering its biggest Fringe World season yet, featuring over 70 top hand-picked comedians from here and abroad, from Friday, January 20 to Sunday, February 19.
The Laugh Resort (voted WA Comedy’s Fave Venue of 2020) is set to ramp up from its year-round monthly residency at The Shoe in Yagan Square to host 86 performances of 24 events over 23 days of the festival (five nights a week, from Wednesday-Sunday) – a program larger than those even before the pandemic.
Manager Di Star said the world being “open” again would see the unique not-for-profit Club double its Fringe output from 12 all-local shows in 2022 to its more regular 50/50 mix of visiting and homegrown artists, including a number of returning ex-pats.
“2020 we last hosted a program this scale and many of these comedians haven’t been here since,” said Star. “For WA acts who live elsewhere, or touring comics with an existing or burgeoning fan base here, to (re)connect with Perth audiences has been a long time coming and we couldn’t be happier to host these experiences – we just hope audiences are as hungry for the laughs as we are, coz we’ve got a whole lot!”
Giving a taste of what’s in store over the festival, the Club’s regular monthly show on Wednesday, January 18 will be its popular Fringe Preview, featuring some special guests who have arrived in Perth early.
The Laugh Resort’s 2023 Fringe World season begins on the festival’s opening weekend with local Fringe favourite (creator of previous award winning Hilary Duff themed shows) and Perth’s “premier asexual comic,” with her Feast Festival hit for linguistics fanatics, Nicola Macri: Single Entendre.
One of two PG-rated rarities in a program that is otherwise M15+, the Club will also host the WA premiere of Bun Runner: The Choose-Your-Own-Adventure Multimedia Comedy Musical, in which the audience helps determine the story creator Jez Watts tells about some escaped talking rabbits.
From the teen-friendly to the extremely adults-only, ex-Perthling Jez Watts also brings his international cult hit late show back to the venue for two nights only, The Nasty Show, featuring the festival’s best comics on their baddest behaviour.
Opening weekend also has a return favourite premiering a deeply personal and characteristically oddball tale about losing a testicle, Nick Capper: Hold Me Closer Tiny Cancer; and fellow Melbourne-based comic Vincent Tshaka brings WA its first look at his African Aussie takes on life in Australianised.
Tshaka’s one of three shows not taking a break on Thursday, January 26, when two new WA comedies premiere: Noongar comic Fabian Woods’ follow-up to 2022 hit Always Woods, Always Will Be, Tick the Box, in which no one is left unchecked; and Beating Round the Bush with Pony & Squirly – Gidgegannup and Exmouth’s funniest, as seen in The Motherhood and winning WA Raw Comedy respectively.
Also home to Perth from the outback in January is Wheatbelt farmer/mum/singer/songwriter Alli Butler, with a one-night-only encore of her twice Sydney Fringe award-nominated cabaret 40 Year Old Popstar.
Locked out of her home state last Fringe, Albany-born, NT-based Amy Hetherington will perform in person an encore of her Adelaide Fringe award-winning show (beamed onto The Laugh Resort stage in 2022; lifesize hologram-style in realtime thanks to some hi-tech), Crying Over Spilt Milk! Hetherington will also premiere in WA her new show on parenting, work, friendships, sport, health and the chaos of life: Juggle.
A limited three-night-only season of Darwin Fringe Festival 2022’s Best Comedy Ben Stevenson: Ratbag marks its NSW creator’s WA debut, described as “cheeky and heartwarming… a festival highlight.”
Inbound from Tasmania is Australian comedy’s favourite Canadian with her tale of pandemic pandemonium, 2 Weddings & a Baby with Gillian English; and home from Hobart with the antidote to societal collapse – a guaranteed feel-good hour of laughs from a lol-making veteran – is Gavin Baskerville: Golden Gavtime.
Two popular comedic storytellers happily ‘trapped’ in Australia these past few years bring their new shows with global perspectives on calling down-under home: 3 x Fringe World Comedy Award winning Brit Gordon Southern: Waiting For Gordo; and fast-rising Japanese comedy export, Waka Takashi: Japanese Worry.
Fringe’s final week brings the rare homecomings of not one but three ex-Perthlings. Back from 10 years in New York is Kenyan Aussie prodigy and master of stream-of-consciousness comedy Josh Makinda; from QLD is Hayden Douglas with his hardcore musical comedy Bipolar Rock & Rolla; and from NSW, Ladies Guide to Dude Cinema podcast host Bec Charlwood.
Bec Charlwood will team up with her off-stage partner on stage for the couples’ comedy Bec Charlwood & Aleks Milinkovic: The Reunion Tour, and will host this year’s 5th annual Galentine’s Day Gala – a one-night gender inclusive celebration of gal pals, with some of fringe’s finest comics of the female persuasion.
Gender takes centre stage in two other local comedies. Funny Stories to Tell in the Closet sees award winning rising stars Kate Willoughby (WA Best Newcomer 2020) and Aves Robins (Raw Comedy WA Winner 2022) look at the funny side of ‘coming out,’ while the multi award-winning Queer Comedy will bring “more laughs than colours in the rainbow.”
To see Fringe guests up late (and making sh!t up), Australia’s renowned (only) grammar comedian Louisa Fitzhardinge returns home to WA, hosting punny improv wordplay championship The Australian O-Pun; while two QLD comics and a cavalcade of stars (the likes of Stephen K Amos, Becky Lucas, Nick Cody, Dilruk Jayashinha) are in Perth for the first time to solve all our problems in Shad & Pete Save the World.
If you feel spoilt for choice, see a curated selection of top local and guest comics each Wednesday of the fest in 9 AT 9. The show offers supreme bang for buck, with previous acts including Rove, Dave Callan, Georgie Carroll & Rory Lowe.
The Laugh Resort’s Fringe World 2023 season runs from Wednesday to Sunday at The Shoe Bar in Yagan Square from from Friday, January 20 to Sunday, February 19, 2023. For more info and to buy tickets head to fringeworld.com.au Tickets for The Laugh Resort’s Fringe Preview on Wednesday, January 18 are on sale now via Eventbrite