Melbourne International Comedy Festival Roadshow brings some diverse laughs in Geraldton pit-stop

The Melbourne International Comedy Festival Roadshow stopped in Geraldton on Thursday night as they brought some of the festival’s top comedians on the road.

A well-oiled showcase, the show impressively managed to bring the laughs all night, with short sets from five different comedians lighting up the Queens Park Theatre.

Dilruk Jayasinha, the most well-known comedian of the bunch, was the MC for the night, hyping up the audience and breaking up the sets with jokes of his own.

Anyone familiar with Jayasinha through his role as the mild-mannered Ash in ABC’s workplace sitcom Utopia would have gotten a shock that his comedy was often raunchy and explicit, including his current dating woes and a bargain visit to a massage parlour in his youth.

The first comedian on stage was Maddy Weeks, who shared their own experiences of growing up in a regional community, where the only options for young people were “drugs, suicide, or community theatre”.

Weeks had a high-energy ocker persona and a natural flow, playing around with jokes that clearly resonated and moving swiftly past bits that didn’t land.

Kuah Jenhan was wearing a shirt featuring Godzilla eating a rocketship, and his comedy matched this full-on energy. Jenhan’s jokes were accessible and relatable, and he cast himself as an outsider in various situations — snorkelling the Ningaloo Reef without knowing how to swim, being the only man in a spin class and starting his TV career by insulting a child.

Before Con Coutis stepped onstage, Jayasinha told the crowd they were about to see a different type of comedy, and he couldn’t have been more spot-on.

While Coutis’ tech-heavy, absurd comedy clearly wasn’t a hit with everyone in the audience, his innovative use of impression and music left its mark. Particularly bold was a segment based around a presidential address given by a lead pipe, which had some fans cracking up, while leaving other audience members confused.

Finishing off the night was Kate Dolan, hailing from the UK, who brought Catherine Tate-style comedy to finish off the night. Her stories of hen’s nights, bridal shopping, and dealing with friends attempting to gentle parent would have been relatable to many in the audience, even if her more over-the-top bits or wordplay didn’t always land.

Overall, it’s impressive to pull together five comedians who bring diverse styles of humour to the stage and still have the audience cracking up throughout the night.

As Jayasinha reminded us, these were some of the top acts from one of the world’s biggest comedy festivals, who have the pleasure of bringing their unique talents to rural WA.