In partnership with Melbourne International Comedy Festival, ArtsHub is once again sharing some of our favourite reviews from the 2026 Funny Tonne, the Festival’s annual competition for fledgling reviewers.
If you’re unaware of this component of the festival, here’s how MICF itself describes it:
‘Since 2005, Melbourne International Comedy Festival has challenged die-hard fans of funny to dive deep into the festival program and pen engaging and enthusiastic show reviews. Armed with a keyboard and a coveted festival VIP pass, Funny Tonners review shows right across the [MICF]. Reviews are posted on the Festival website, as our Funny Tonners battle it out to be crowned this year’s winner with the best review!’
Read on for part one of our 2026 Funny Tonne coverage, featuring reviews of current shows by Connor Fantasia-Serve and Maddison Verducci. (Reviews from Alex Carpi and Joanne Zhou will appear in the second part of this series.)
The winner of the 2026 Funny Tonne Award will be selected by ArtsHub and presented by our Performing Arts Editor Richard Watts this Saturday 18 April, alongside the awards for Most Outstanding Show, the Golden Gibbo, Best Newcomer and more.
Funny Tonne MICF reviews – quick links
Ben Russell: Bon.
★★★★
Through the power of an OP-1 synthesizer and video clips from Japanese game show Takeshi’s Castle, Ben Russell immediately hypnotized me into a blissful delirium that I never wanted to end. And who can blame someone for narrowing their focus solely onto the things they love?
The lo-fi beats he produces on the fly begin as delightful underscores to his already strong material, but they gradually intertwine with his ever shifting rhythm of delivery. Select phrases are delivered with booming reverb, jokes are punctuated with abrupt pauses, and naturally, a singular fart sound is presented at just the right moment.
His auto-tuned recollection of his Anglican high school teacher incorrectly stating in an assembly that ‘wussy’ is short for ‘woman’s pussy’ is worth the price of admission alone.
Reviewed by Connor Fantasia-Serve.
Brynley Stent: Bird of the Year
★★★★
Brynley Stent promised herself she’d try and write a regular hour of stand up this year, but I’m so glad that she gave in to her theatre kid instincts instead.
With commanding monologues, painfully accurate character explorations and inch-perfect physical comedy, Bryn is an entire sketch troupe confined within a single goofy entity.
I gasped when she revealed that this was her first time ever performing the completed show, as it felt like it was already second nature for her to bite through the skin of a raw pineapple, mime spoon-feeding the audience for five unbroken minutes, and replace all the words of Akon’s Smack That with bat facts.
But don’t worry, she’s still got plenty of normal anecdotes about topics we can all relate to – like the best strategies for cock-blocking your parents, which Yowie is the most fuckable, and what to do when your drama teacher locks you and your blindfolded classmates in a room and forces you to forage for punnets of blueberries.
This is only Brynley’s second time in Melbourne, but please go see her a hundred times so she keeps coming back.
Reviewed by Connor Fantasia-Serve.
Dan Rath: Help Me Please
★★★★
Dan Rath is a certified freak (complimentary). This wasn’t my first Rath rodeo, so I was well prepared for his bug-eyed demeanour and staccato rhythm of nihilistic anti-comedy. He is the antithesis of run-of-the-mill white-bread stand up comedy, a beautiful mind all of his own. There are no transitions, no hand-holding of the audience into a new topic and definitely no incentive from Rath in getting a ‘comedian roasts heckler’ viral moment – what you are seeing is a crumpled mess of a man who seems under duress, staring down the barrel of the stage and delivering some of the most off-the-wall (and incredible) punchlines of this festival.
Rath is like an alien lifeforce brought to Earth, keeping the audience on their toes by evading the obvious as he spits out a frenetic unravelling of political observations and self-flagellating thoughts. It’s an acceleration into absurdity, as Rath cuts the show with little fanfare and impeccably timed prop work, leaving the audience in awe.
Reviewed by Maddison Verducci.
Grace Jarvis: Getting Dragged Backwards Through a Hedge
★★★★
Charming and eloquent as always, Grace Jarvis is a master of taking her time to lure you into a sense of complacency before whacking you over the head with a punchline so strong, you’ll be scrambling to recall it out of context to your loved ones the second you get home (to far less effect).
That said, her suggestions that ‘self-harm is the most thrifty coping mechanism’ and that ‘Henry the Hoover was personified as a man to prevent men from using him for pleasure’ need no explanation, and shall live in my head forever.
The core of the show was incredibly relatable to me as a person who is also trapped inside benign rules they set for themselves in childhood, but her stories of growing beyond them that are woven throughout the show felt genuinely inspiring.
Seeing Jarvis perform has come to feel like checking in with an old friend, with 2026 marking the third year in a row that I’ve had the pleasure of seeing her latest show. I truly hope we can borrow her back from Edinburgh again in 2027.
Reviewed by Connor Fantasia-Serve.
ArtsHub: The Business of Comedy Conference – an Australian first
Jay Wymarra: is a Tropical Fruit
★★★★
Jay Wymarra: is a Tropical Fruit is a surefire sweet and spicy way to spend an hour, [with Wymarra] peppering punchlines into stories with such levity and brightness that you can’t help but smile ear-to-ear.
Wymarra exudes a warming presence on stage, spending his hour exploring the duality of his Torres Strait Islander identity and his pansexuality. His storytelling is ripe with juicy details and feels totally organic, [providing] a splash of unabashed joy unlike anybody else.
Where other stand up shows falter with their need for edginess, Wymarra shines in his authenticity. His show is utterly delightful, punchy in the right places and bursting with off-the-cuff brilliance, fourth-wall breaks and quippy callbacks that feel totally earned. It’s so refreshing to witness a voice like Wymarra’s emerge. He has a talent that should be on the big stage, and I’m so excited for what is to come next.
Reviewed by Maddison Verducci.
Joe Kent-Walters is Frankie Monroe: Live!!! (& Dead!!!)
★★★★★
Beetlejuice eat your heart out because there’s a new undead anti-hero in town! Joe Kent-Walters makes a drab conference room at the Greek Centre feel like the biggest stage in the world, enrapturing the room with his larger-than-life presence, boisterous energy and cheeky wink-wink nudge-nudge interjections.
Frankie Monroe: Live!!! (& Dead!!!) is a hijinks-every-second kind of show and a masterclass of character comedy. Kent-Walters injects a vaudevillian spirit into the undead and playfully disarms the audience through high-energy musical numbers, unhinged games and quick banter. Audience involvement is baked in, but never at the expense of the individual, keeping the room fully at ease and genuinely itching to play. All of the bits are more flirty than feisty, with the equilibrium between chaos and whimsy beautifully harnessed.
Like every good piece of theatre, there’s a tragedy bubbling in this bizarro underworld which erupts into an audience-gasping finale that leaves you dying for more. I’m so glad I got to witness this silly show for myself. Overall, a ferociously funny trip into absurdity, a definite must-watch for every The Mighty Boosh head out there and a benchmark for the future of character comedy.
Reviewed by Maddison Verducci.
Kate Dehnert: Echo
★★★★★
Oh, words actually cannot describe how intrinsically brilliant this is … Kate Dehnert is firing on all cylinders as she breaks down a horrifying sequence of events with her fantastical and innovative comedic uprising.
This is her pièce de résistance, a reckoning of catastrophic circumstances that is so funny and unflinching in its honesty. Maybe I’m just a petty gal who loves a ‘good for her’ revenge plot, but I adored every single second of it. It’s textbook storytelling, [with] involved bodywork that warms the space, silly music numbers and exposing character portrayals that are gratifyingly absurd and yet bleakly human at their core.
Stupid and smart, vulnerable and courageous, a great piece of art. I don’t know who I need to speak with to get this nominated for every award, make it mandatory for the VCE curriculums or get Reese Witherspoon producing the film adaptation, but trust me. Put it on your watch-list and tell everyone you know: Kate Dehnert is a superstar.
Reviewed by Maddison Verducci.
Kate Dolan: Trout
★★★★★
Holy moly, what a breath of fresh air Kate Dolan is to the industry. Having won the [MICF Golden] Gibbo last year for The Critic, Trout cements her status as an undisputed festival favourite.
Beyond being naturally charming and insanely funny, what is most remarkable in Trout is Dolan’s innate ability to command a space. Not a single second goes by where Dolan isn’t exploring where she can go next. She moves with the intensity of a ping pong game, pacing from one spot to another, slithering about and blessing every corner of the room with joy. It is purposefully fitting and tonally satisfying to slurp up, as Trout [unpacks] the sheer dread of having a body – from PMDD to boyfriend tees to giving up childhood dreams of being a dancer. The dance breaks in the show are breathtaking, accompanied by some of the tightest, snappiest and most well-executed punchlines of the fest.
Don’t get me wrong – it’s downright goofy as well. Dolan refuses to allow any dead air, and at one point riffs Camp Rock lyrics as a segue. Like, that’s just a little bit of fun, innit? Even her moments of sincerity explode with jokes, resulting in a faultless and mesmerising performance. Dolan’s mind is as beautiful as it is surreal, and Trout is evidence of her place as a heavy-hitter in the MICF ranks.
Reviewed by Maddison Verducci.
Lara Ricote: Inkling
★★★★★
This was special. Lara Ricote begins her show perched perilously atop two wooden stools, violently gnashing her teeth in an impression of The Oracle of Delphi, with moral precepts from Ancient Greece printed on three giant cards behind her.
I could sense that people around me were wondering if they’d stumbled into some sort of high-brow performance art by accident, but it wasn’t long before we were all completely smitten with Ricote and her journey of self-discovery following the end of a six-year relationship.
Only when you’re this authentically yourself can you create a half-dozen distinct comedic moments with only a cup of water, convince each audience member to shout out the word they’re personally most insulted by, and test out an entirely new ending halfway through your festival run that manages to leave a tear in everyone’s eye.
I’m going to be thinking about Lara’s performance for a very long time, and I hope she finds an excuse to come back to Melbourne again soon.
Reviewed by Connor Fantasia-Serve.
Meg Jäger: A Beautiful Mind
★★★★
Even hungover from her birthday the night before, Meg Jäger is at the top of her game. Ballsy enough to accuse Don Bradman of being autistic and Basil Brush of sexual impropriety, Meg is shielded by her own bubble of reality, developed in her youth to make her impenetrable to bullies and the debilitating effects of acid reflux.
This confidence also gives her the ability to draw out the spaces between set-ups and punchlines much longer than they have any right to be, and utterly break you on the third variation of a joke she seemingly wasn’t too fussed about landing the first two times around.
Jäger is an absolute joy to watch on stage, and if the cheeky, full-faced grin that creeps through her deadpan façade every now and then is any indication, I think she’s having a ball up there too.
Reviewed by Connor Fantasia-Serve.
