Our reviews from week three of the NZ International Comedy Festival

The Spinoff

22-05-2025

A mixed bag (with some Billy T disappointments) in the final week of the comedy festival.
Hoani Hotene – IT'S GETTING HOT-ENE, SO TELL ME ALL YOUR JOKES
I hadn't heard of Hoani Hotene before this year's International Comedy Festival, but some quick research revealed he's on the rise – last year's Breakthrough Comic at the NZ Comedy Guild Awards and a 2025 Billy T nominee. With that in mind, I entered a packed Basement Theatre on a Tuesday night, keen to see what the buzz was about. Hotene opened strong, riffing on his deceptively fair skin and delivering a solid Spongebob Tarau Porowhā gag that landed well with the crowd.
Unfortunately, most of the show's standout moments had already featured in the promo clip online, leaving little surprise in the full set. Hotene's style leans clean and family-friendly – a hit with the audience, but not quite my flavour. I didn't laugh out loud, though I did smile a few times, particularly during his lively crowd interactions. That said, the show ended on an oddly flat note when Hotene declined a fan request, missing a chance to leave on a high. / Liam Rātana
Itay Dom – Itay Phone Home
Billy T nominee Itay Dom cuts a familiar figure onstage. Chill, confident, and yet desperately wanting the audience's approval. His material is equally familiar – the differences between the sexes, what it means to be an immigrant in New Zealand, and what it means to be a stand-up comic who wants to date. Familiar, to a fault.
A quiet audience quickly retracts to being a near silent one. The crowdwork starts to feel less like working the crowd and more like the crowd is working – the show, and Dom, is ostentatiously relying on the audience to respond to his jokes. He engages with the crowd, and when they don't engage back ideally, he shuts down.
It would be easy, and to Dom's benefit, to mistake him for someone who is fresh out of uni, but instead, he reminds us constantly that he is over a decade out of uni. A man in his thirties making these jokes isn't inherently unfunny, just as an adult making a fart joke isn't, but a man in his thirties making an hour of material that could be delivered by a man fresh out of uni? Are these really the jokes a stand-up, and adult man with three decades of life under his belt, has for us? Should we be paying for this crowdwork or invoicing for it?
It is telling that the end of the show – jokes written in his past, delivered in the present – actually hit harder, and garner more laughs, than anything for the rest of the hour. There's a simple reason: they're more authentic to the deliverer. Dom is clearly funnier, clearly smarter, than his material and the delivery of it. / Sam Brooks
Lesa MacLeod-Whiting – Rebellina
Another of the five Billy T nominees, Lesa MacLeod-Whiting, starts her hour-long show with a story about her daughter. The little five-year-old wants to wear a floral dress so that her friend at school will think she is pretty and give her compliments because that makes her feel good. MacLeod-Whiting, ever the progressive feminist mum, can't find a way to convince her 'trad wife' daughter otherwise. When they arrive at school, the boy is wearing a Batman costume.
It was a cute and funny story that had me a little worried. I'm one half of a Dink (double income no kids) couple and as far as I know, parenting is a distant land with a near toxic climate that people come back from sleep-deprived and with many qualms. Was the next hour of material a dive into parenting anxiety? Would 101 feminism be shoved down my throat? Should I have read the show description properly and realised its a whole lot of complaining dressed up as jokes? Luckily, no, no, no. Rebellina is a collection of little scenes from MacLeod-Whiting's life, tied to her daughter, herself and certain pieces of historical art like Night by Michelangelo (wonderful prop included). They are charming, light-handed and funny.
MacLeod-Whiting is a quick storyteller with a short attention span. Sometimes a story escapes halfway through another before she pivots back to finish what she started. Sometimes stories are quick mentions ($150 baby sensory classes) which act as funny interjections. She's playful and responsive to her audience, without asking too much from them. There was something lovely and modest about Rebellina which suited the tiny venue perfectly. There are still two chances (tonight and Saturday) to see her there before she hits the big stage at Last Laughs. I'd recommend it for parents and non-parents alike. / Gabi Lardies
Barnie Duncan – Ooky Pooky
Returning after 2024's Fred award-winning Different Party, Barnie Duncan again embraces blasts of the physical comedy familiar from his collaborations with Trygve Wakenshaw, but here they tag in and out with more conventional standup, and a sort-of-thesis across the top.
The premise is sublime: a cassette tape has been found in a box somewhere, on which a conversation is recorded between Barnie's mum and a UK-based astrologist – called Michael Jackson, helpfully – who talks her through the birth chart of her son, Barnie, then four years old. Like a fever-dream Krapp's Last Tape relocated to Palmerston North, the audio provides the impetus for an hour of spice, stingrays and teabags – of anecdote, filth and ultimately self-reflection.
Along the way there are hits and misses, but the swings are big, ambitious and fearless, flying as irrepressibly as a moth at a Christmas party towards the absurd. / Toby Manhire
Michelle Wiley – Is Who She Said She Is
When you've been seeing comedy for a long time, it's almost impossible not to compare newcomers to their predecessors. Within five minutes of being onstage, I clock Michelle Wiley's predecessors. She sits at nearly the dead centre between Hayley Sproull and Melanie Bracewell – the charisma and relatability of the former, the mathematically rhythmic bits of the latter. You could do a whole lot worse.
Wiley sits at the intersection between 'naturally charming' and 'deeply structured'. In her first hour, she does all of the things a well-written show should – she builds, she calls back, she twists – but it feels more like a solo show than an organic piece of stand-up. It could be the nerves of a quiet Wednesday night crowd, or the understandable nerves of a relatively fresh comic, but it leads to a lot of repeated 'rights?' that could be easily flowed through into the next beat of the story. It leads to as many references to jokes not working as there are actual jokes. It's standard practice to acknowledge when a joke isn't working – masters of the form can do it and move on – but it never beats a joke that actually lands.
Wiley clearly has a lot of material to dig from – coming out in uni after a religious upbringing, classic lesbian relationship stuff – and I'll be excited to see where she goes in the future. Her first hour is promising as hell, a comedian still finding their legs, and the things that make them stand out from the pack. / SB
Joel McCarthy – Tongue in Cheeks
Joel McCarthy had easily the messiest show of the three I saw in the final week of the comedy festival, but it was by far the most entertaining. As a performer, he has the presence of a young James Nokise peppered with just a little bit of David Correos' chaos (apologies for once more referencing the ancestors). He descends from the curtain of the Classic Studio's window, a decision that seems like it was decided in the moment rather than pre-planned, he props two beers on the stool next to him, and he gets rambling.
It's not an auspicious beginning, but McCarthy very quickly wins over the audience. He's a bit awkward, a bit tipsy, and shocked that anybody would come out to see him at 9.30 on a Wednesday night. By the time he actually gets into his set, he shows off what he has.
You guys, he had jokes. And new ones, at that. I'm not sure whether it's a lack of familiarity with older comedy or less experienced comedians riding with training wheels, but so much of what I've seen from the new generations are, to hypocritically reference a dead meme, reheated nachos. His presence is winning, but what gets him over the line is his unique point of view. I won't spoil the punchlines, but I'm never eating trifle or looking at Superman the same way again. (I will however, ding him for the material on Des'ree's 'Life', because ghost/toast has been a punchline since it came out.)