The Best Foods Comedy Gala opened this year’s comedy festival with a diverse range of performers who had 6-7 minutes to deliver their best bits in a rapid fire way.
The ever popular and always on form Dai Henwood hosted the event and his opening monologue was a hilarious set of personal anecdotes about his six year journey with cancer, memories of covid and a brilliant story about confronting children one halloween while high on medicinal marijuana. Later in the show he shared more including a story of how he upset a resident of the Auckland suburb of Avondale with jokes about drug use.
Some memorable moments included Ivan Aristeguieta’s devastatingly funny take on the infuriating weirdness of the English language and the versatility of the word fuck, Angella David’s self deprecating observations about her own body and a very amusing take on the YouTube show Miss Rachel which she likens to porn for kids.
Kiwi Guy Williams wasn’t afraid to throw his aunt under the bus to expose the weirdness of right wing philosophy personified by podcaster Joe Rogan and his own uncle. Was it true? Who cares, it was funny and topical.
A definite favourite is Hoani Hotene whose clever comedy plays on being Māori but looking Pakeha. Political and also observational, his jokes catch you off guard with apparent simplicity, but the man is very sharp and worth seeing.
Hayley Sproull is a firecracker and probably had the strongest joke of the night when she compared a man putting on a condom to that of a dog being watched while having a poo. Gold!
Some potentially controversial moments ensued, but went down well. These included Tony Lyall saying he gets mistaken for the deceased fugitive Tom Phillips. He Huang from China gave an off beat yet witty routine about trying to kill her nonagenarian grandfather. And the very polished Paul Ego said he likes to drink because ‘he has children,’ and that boys are basically dumb.
While the aforementioned Sproull and Angella David took potshots at their own physique as did Jessie Nixon who called herself ‘tavern wench hot’, we also know sex sells and Eloise Eftos played up her sexiness with a kind of off beat twist on feminism which included a funny and surreal sequence to the song Dream Weaver while flirting with a member of the audience.
A nice surprise was Sam Smith who, guitar in hand, sang a medley of opening lines of pop songs while warping the lyrics to create an absurdly amusing and often subversive counter message.
Among the others, Scot Rosco McClelland gave a very relatable (at least to me) rant about the appearance of unwanted hair due to aging, Emmanuel Sonubi claimed Mary Poppins was a drug dealer. Felicity Ward admitted going on dates with socially awkward autistics, The Fuq Boiz did a curious routine that seemed to evoke a conjuring act, but it didn’t quite land with the audience, and Ray O’Neill said he knew a woman so negative she’d given her own dog depression.
The final act was the most unexpected and quite superb in which Aussie comedian Lu Wall with the aid of a powerpoint presentation sang a story of how she fleeced a man with a foot fetish out of thousands of dollars.
The show was a veritable feast of comedy and the ultimate highlight was seeing Dai Henwood living that timeworn phrase ‘the show must go on’. It is a truth that personal challenges are easier to deal with when shared with laughter.