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