Melbourne International Comedy Festival review

Authoritarianism and the expansionist ambitions of the Beijing regime are played for laughs in Nathan Chin’s hugely entertaining debut.

Taking a leaf from the book of the Chinese Communist Party, he instigates a social credit score, rewarding the audience for being good comrades and chuckling heartily at his jokes – or punishing us for disloyalty if we don’t.

Quite how we ended up only marginally above zero is a mystery, as it’s no Marxist propaganda to report that Chin’s a genuinely funny guy. He’s mischievous, cheeky and adept at engaging the crowd as he juggles both misplaced generalisations and uncomfortable truths about both Chinese people and its restrictive rulers.

He enjoys playing the Asians and white people in the room off each other, such as teasingly trying to goad the latter into doing something racist, against their liberal sensibilities, or talking about the minefield of emoji skin tones. There’s an edginess to some of this, but done in the spirit of safe-space play.

Every stereotype is casual racism, he argues, but he’s quite willing to capitalise on them for a joke, whether it’s Asians being good at maths, tiger parents or even dog-eaters.

Because the hour is based on a foundation of universal assumptions such as these, it’s often not doing much pushing at boundaries. Chin’s not above a dick joke, or several, and some of the material – about budget airlines or footy being essentially homoerotic with all those well-toned male bodies – is decidedly hack.

But he is very good at it. The hour bounces along at a sprightly pace, buoyed by his command of the room, and there’s often something a little more interesting going on beneath the broad strokes. Those knob gags, for instance, also speak to what Chin calls ‘discrimination in the dating market’.

The show also features a through-line about Chin being approached to spy for the CCP, but although it sounds promising, it doesn’t really pay off as the story’s ultimately too thin to be stretched over several instalments. 

It’s one of a few things in Chinese Comedy Party that a more experienced comic might fix or avoid – but as a calling card for a relatively mainstream comic with bit of grit to the material, it does a fine job. 

• Nathan Chin: Chinese Comedy Party is on at Victoria Hotel at 6.30pm (5.30pm Sundays, not Mondays) until April 19.

Review date: 1 Apr 2026
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett