Best Of Fest is always a highlight of Perth's Fringe World Festival, and this year’s performance was no different.
Darius Davies took control of hosting duties, looking super swish in a tux. With the pleasantries out of the way, Darius went straight to work on the crowd, somehow weaving Iranian Russian banter, mushrooms, self-development, and autism together. If that wasn’t enough, he moved onto relationships, cuckolding, and fingering; the crowd was in raptures and would have been happy for him to stay on for the next hour.
Anna Perry was first up on the roster of super comics and touched on the joys of drinking; she had me convinced it contributed to wellness. She followed with some excellent observational comedy on bad parenting, which expertly moved to garden kinks.
Kelsey de Almeida was next up and was my favourite of the night. He reminded the audience of all our lockdown girlfriend/boyfriend mistakes – we have all been there. His next piece on relationship dynamics, including sugar daddies and dirty talk, was stellar. He closed with some top-quality self-deprecating humour, and once the crowd interaction started, the room exploded with laughter.
The next performer was a vocal master and delivered some side-splitting observational comedy. He was a Brit who understood Australian real estate better than the locals and had a better accent than Crocodile Dundee. He completed a detailed assessment of the wildlife and city yuppies, produced several killer accents, and somehow introduced yodelling.
After a short intermission, Darius returned to the stage and really got the crowd involved. Things nearly got out of hand as a few ladies were fired up – Darius only just got things back on track, which made it so much more fun.
Ronnie Neville then provided more quality, detailed observational comedy. He covered the joys of the Cash Converters experience, family holidays, and Australian Hornbags.
Ian Coppinger closed the show, keeping the self-deprecating humour flowing and the crowd in stitches. He delivered an assessment of the woke, Australian town planning deficiencies, the joys of Australian capital cities, and even Australian toilet access. No topic was off limits.
Best Of Fest was an awesome taste of the incredible comedic talent on show at the Fringe, and you would be crazy not to attend. Even better would be to see the individual shows where that incredible talent really gets to tell their full story.
