Melbourne International Comedy Festival review

After delivering her tried-and-tested club set, some of which propelled her to minor fame via Australia’s Got Talent, He Huang spends most of her festival hour complaining about her job as a comedian.

We get story after story about gigs that didn’t go well and audiences who didn’t like her – with focus apparently more on getting the gripes off her chest than generating laughs here. The vibe is very much like a one-woman version of those self-indulgent podcasts in which comedians talk to each other about their job.

Many of her bad experiences stem from bad material, which she repeats here to the same effect as when it bombed first time around. Thus she complains about not being able to use the n-word even though rappers do – the tedious complaint of the ‘can’t say anything these days’ brigade – before wondering why that train of thought didn’t amuse a black New York audience.

This is part of a section in which the relatively deadpan comic talks about ‘acting black’ to get the swagger she thought she needed to succeed. For a comic who later complains about having to simplify her identity to fit a ‘Chinese comedian’ stereotype – including having to adopt a comically exaggerated accent – it’s rather weird for her to generalise all black people as ‘cool’.

Huang’s adoption of that confidence comes as she tries to figure out what it takes to make it as a comedian in the States. Indeed, what comes across in many of her stories is that she’s driven by a desire to be successful and famous rather than having any deeper artistic motive, which is ultimately unfulfilling.

Eventually she gets to that point about becoming disillusioned with the one-dimensional version of herself she has to present as a road comic, needing to make an impactful first impression to myriad audiences night after night. In that stage persona, she’s had to flatten her real personality to fit or confound stereotypes rather than express the real her.

That she feels that way does beg the question why we still don’t get to experience what really makes her tick when she’s got an hour in front of a festival audience. Instead, those workplace grumbles that she’s becoming a factory churning out comedy product are mixed in with so many of the jokes she professes to dislike – there are plenty of ‘Asians have small dicks’ jokes here, for example.

She says she wants to move on, but this show focuses  so much on the past, she’s not seizing the chance to do so. More crucially the gags are often missing – especially surprising when she drops in the fact she had two script consultants on this show. They did not do a good job.

• He Hueng: Temu Joke Factory is on at the Chinese Museum at 6.20pm (5.20pm Sundays, not playing Mondays) until April 19.

Review date: 2 Apr 2026
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Melbourne International Comedy Festival