Colonialism, candour and a cat bite: Sashi Perera is the real deal

Laura Davis: Swag
Enmore Theatre, May 2
★★★★
Laura Davis has had enough. Battered by their recent divorce and disillusioned with headlines about all manner of crises (housing, fuel, geopolitical), they’ve decided to go on strike from telling jokes, devoting themselves to making and selling protest signs instead.

While normally such a disclaimer would be an alarming start to a comedy show, in the hands of Davis, who recently won the Golden Gibbo award - bestowed on the work that pursues its artistic goals over commercial gain – it’s still a recipe for rousing laughs.

Across a career that they explain has often involved them being told their comedy is too cerebral for Australian audiences, there’s often been a formal inventiveness to their work, an interest in exploring the possibilities and limitations of stand-up comedy. One show they performed as a ghost under a sheet, another they did blindfolded.

Swag sees them going through two piles of their new protest signs, a simple conceit that becomes possibly the funniest and most thought-provoking inventory exercise you’ll ever witness.

COMEDY
Sashi Perera: Pear Tree
Enmore Theatre, May 7. Also Chatswood Concourse, May 9
★★★★

When a legal team reviewed Sashi Perera’s memoirs, they took pedantic issue with the claim she was one of Australia’s fastest-growing comedians, instead preferring “fastest rising”.

In her impressively assured new hour, Pear Tree, Perera returns to where she wrote that book, her country of birth, Sri Lanka. Travelling with her husband, Charlie, “the whitest man alive”, she was greeted with a mix of suspicion and bemusement as part of an interracial couple.

Colonialism has rarely been as funny as with Perera playing tour guide, explaining why so many Sri Lankans have Portuguese surnames and how these families can be divided into “O.G.s” and “cowards” – there’s no judgment here, though, as she’s proudly a member of a coward clan. She’s also not above a moment of petty triumph after Charlie ignores her warnings not to pet the street animals, then gets bitten by a cat and needs a rabies shot.

State Theatre, April 25
★★★

When actress, comedian and author Tiffany Haddish was in negotiations to perform this show, a Sydney Comedy Festival exclusive, she had one key question: how close would she be staying to the nearest McDonald’s?

That important detail was resolved to her satisfaction, and it’s given her some strong local material, as she riffs energetically on how our version of the ubiquitous fast-food franchise is superior to its US counterpart. Our McDonald’s soft drinks don’t even burn your throat, she explains in tones of wonder.

Macca’s aside, however, the Girls Trip stars’ first Australian headline show is a decidedly mixed bag. While it showcases her funny bones and movie-star charisma, some sections lack the polished, joke-dense storytelling of her raunchy, rambunctious comedy specials like She Ready!

Elf Lyons: Swan
Factory Theatre, April 22 - 24
★★★★

According to Timothée Chalamet, nobody cares about ballet. Try telling that to British comedian and clown Elf Lyons, who has lovingly created Swan as an accessible guide to the art form, specifically the evergreen Swan Lake.

Seemingly playing a fictionalised version of herself and speaking in a mixture of child-like French and English with purposely mispronounced words, this hybrid of physical comedy and satire is hard to categorise and even harder to resist.

Dressed in a parrot outfit concealing a seemingly never-ending array of props and surprises, Lyons makes for an enthusiastic if often bewildered tour guide. Hilariously breaking down the key ballet moves (including the “sexy pair of scissors” and the “Nutribullet”), she explains the most important part of ballet (the curtain calls, of course), reveals why we never see a ballerina over 30 and recreates the most famous dance sequences from Tchaikovsky’s classic with high-kicking fervour.