The best comedians we saw at Sydney Comedy Festival 2022

Improv is for losers. It’s the lamest form of comedy. It even incorporates mime, the cringiest of performance art forms. No bloody thanks. This was my attitude towards improv before I saw the Bear Pack. Now, I’m a convert. Of the most zealous kind. Let me slow my hot little breaths of excitement and evangelise – the Bear Pack is the most joyfully exhilarating, spiritually euphoric, and creatively hilarious comedy show I have ever seen. It’s like if your imagination had an hour-long orgasm. 

The lights dimmed. A drumkit, guitar, and mic stand inhabited the stage, waiting and ready. My gut feeling that noticed that moment as the calm before the storm proved correct, as, from the moment Michelle Brasier stepped onto the stage, the show was a whirlwind from start to finish. Brasier is a comedic force with serious musical theatre chops. 

English Breakfast is considered the most British tea of them all, when in actual fact, the brew is a mixed blend of leaves taken from around the world and claimed as British. And in sentiment, do you think that the thievery makes it more or less British? Much like that cuppa, comedian AJ Lamarque is his own kind of brew. With a mix of Jamaican, Chinese, Indian, South African and Anglo heritages packaged with a British accent, Lamarque is constantly navigating where he really fits in the world.

Natali Caro doesn’t have a manager. And no, it's not for a lack of trying. A 27-year-old comedian, actor, DJ, drag king, impressionist, singer, dancer, writer and presenter – Caro takes it upon herself to showcase all of these skills as the ultimate live showreel in Seeking Representation. Lean into the frenetic energy of this jam-packed barrage of skills and you will be rewarded with a peek into Caro’s cutting perspective, as well as some wonderfully silly jokes. 

Two years ago, Gabbi Bolt started making political comedy videos on TikTok amidst the global pandemic. Now, she’s performing her satirical songs live to a sold-out crowd in Marrickville’s retro-industrial Factory Theatre. I Hope My Keyboard Doesn’t Break is a one-woman powerhouse of a musical comedy show, programmed as part of this year’s Sydney Comedy Festival. Bolt, a former ‘serious’ musician from Bathurst, combines her talented voice with an unapologetic streak of sarcastic, witty and quirky observational comedy. 

We zoom in on a finger skateboard, and then pan down to Shrek’s big throbbing dick. Switch to a photo of an intensely serious teen Cameron James holding up an iPod, then glide to the Jackass boys. Microsoft Word Art ripples across the screen, over Nelly albums, Matrix DVDs, Napster screens and scanned Kodaks. Rage Against the Machine is playing. The Oogachacka Baby dances. The show hasn’t even begun and we’re already roiling in sweaty waves of noughties
nostalgia. 

Does her first date still wear gloves during sex? Are gynaecologists clairvoyant on matters of mental health when staring up a vag? And where, oh where, have Big Aussie Things hidden the Big Poo? Her therapist might not have called Thalia-Joan back when she said she was going to use him in her show. But never mind. Her first Zoom session with Michael (that’s his name, Michael) is the journey we are all privileged, and perhaps a little unnerved, to re-live.

Christian Hull is the ultimate comic for the age of the gig-economy. He’s conquered cyberspace via every conceivable portal from TikTok to old skool YouTube; he’s charmed the literati with his memoir, Leave Me Alone, which was nominated last year for Booktopia’s Favourite Australian Book of the Year award; he helms a wildly successful podcast, Complete Drivel; and perhaps more than any other comedian out there, he’s a master of merch, flogging scandalising swag from dick-shaped soaps to offensive doormats. But does all that multifaceted success actually make him a good comedian? 

For a little over an hour, on the night of the federal election, we all put away our phones and stopped refreshing the #auspol Twitter feed. Bec Melrose was our happenstance bespectacled midwife into the new Australia. A well-known name on the Sydney comedy circuit, she’s opened for Wil Anderson, written for shows like Gruen and Question Everything, and won the 2018 RAW Comedy award. Her new show Wildflower is a rather lovely, eclectic and occasionally laugh-out-loud amble through her distracted yet sharp-witted mind.

Andrew Hastings grew up in Manly. His high school's unofficial slogan and aim was to turn "manly boys into manly men". As a skinny, pale, self-professed dork, he's never felt quite like he fit into what their idea of being a man meant. To top it off, his name also means man. At one point. one of his friends announced that they didn’t actually identify as a man. Simply put, Hastings put in a lot of thought about what it means to be a man.