The Com­e­dy Mix­tape line­up, host­ed and curat­ed by Joe Day­mond, was billed as a stand-up show­case built like a per­fect set list, come­di­ans you already rate mixed with ris­ing stars you’re about to fall in love with.

The night kicked off with DJ Randy from Mai FM spin­ning clas­sic Hutt bangers. Joe described the aim as build­ing up garage par­ty vibes, and DJ Randy nailed it. As the sold-out crowd trick­led in, we were groov­ing in our seats to old-school par­ty favourites like Diga­ble Plan­ets and 50 Cent. Joe even demand­ed that the crowd sing along to Flo Rida’s “Low” before he’d take the stage. A bril­liant way to set the scene.

Joe Day­mond him­self is a charm­ing and unas­sum­ing host. It’s no small feat for some­one who has amassed mil­lions of fans online and toured inter­na­tion­al­ly with com­e­dy leg­ends. I had the priv­i­lege of see­ing his show “I Hope I Made You Proud” last year, when he brought us through how sur­re­al it was for him to be on the cusp of all his dreams com­ing true. We left with laughs in our bel­lies and hope in our hearts for all that lay ahead.

The open­ing crowd work got off to an awk­ward start. Was it an unusu­al­ly intro­vert­ed audi­ence? Was it because it was straight after work on a Tues­day? Was it because a Welling­ton audi­ence is nev­er going to vol­un­tar­i­ly shout their per­son­al sto­ries across a room with­out at least three drinks? Or was it Joe’s unusu­al­ly chill demeanour? What­ev­er led to the slow start, the night did pick up the pace.

It was a packed line­up of local and some inter­na­tion­al tal­ent. High­lights includ­ed Claris­sa Chan­dra­hasen, with fan­tas­tic tim­ing and con­fi­dence; Mar­tin Urbano, with his satir­i­cal role-play­ing and hor­rif­ic one-lin­ers; and the leg­end him­self, Ray­bon Kan.

The line­up opened with Q Potts, who shared very relat­able mate­r­i­al on being of both War­rior (Māori and Cook Island) and colonis­er (Ger­man and British) her­itage. This was fol­lowed by new­com­er and reg­u­lar face at open mics in Welling­ton, Jenice Gov­eas. I must say, I’ve real­ly enjoyed see­ing her hone her com­e­dy into what was a very impres­sive short set about the idio­syn­crasies of being a new migrant in New Zealand and why a but­ter chick­en tsuna­mi might be exact­ly what the coun­try needs.

Claris­sa gave us insight into the sports les­bians get to choose when they come out of the clos­et and the cor­re­la­tion between aca­d­e­m­ic achieve­ment and les­bians. Leki Lyons, anoth­er Hutt come­di­an, deliv­ered smart, punchy lines with lay­ered con­text, deserv­ing of a sharp audi­ence.

The evening went up a notch when New York come­di­an Mar­tin Urbano took the stage. He per­fect­ed the art of con­fu­sion and sur­prise, and with his 1950s radio voice, he threw the audi­ence into a full ten min­utes of one-lin­ers that caught us off guard and could get a lit­tle dark, if not dirty.

Tama Alexan­der kept the laughs going with a pol­ished set of well-timed phys­i­cal com­e­dy and self-dep­re­ca­tion.

All of this round­ed off with a won­der­ful end to the night with Ray­bon Kan, a leg­end in the NZ com­e­dy scene. Ray­bon did his first com­e­dy fes­ti­val in 1996 and brought a fresh take on the “in my day” jokes. This was fol­lowed by an expla­na­tion of how to pre­pare the New Zealand Olympic team for Bei­jing when you’ve nev­er been there your­self.

You can still catch some of these fan­tas­tic come­di­ans this week:

 

Review by Nadia Free­man