While I wouldn’t classify myself as one of Aunty Donna’s most devoted fans, having only discovered them recently, it’s easy to see why the Australian comedy sketch troupe has charmed audiences with their often surreal sense of humour and skewering of social norms.

Primarily known through their Youtube channel, I was worried that their on-screen antics wouldn’t translate well on stage. And while there is something lost through the lack of filmic editing (namely the ability to cut to visual punchlines), seeing them live has its own rewards. [More] 

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These Big Boys – Broden, Mark and Zach – don’t really need a review to ensure them an audience. They do very well on their second night at the Hannah Playhouse, coming on to a full house of avid fans whom this reviewer found were already acquainted with their antics on You Tube.

Hailing from Australia, the three met at Ballarat Drama School six years ago and performing has kept them together since. Maybe we’d expect a show bawdier in nature from across the ditch but this one is refreshingly dependent on fun of an inoffensive kind.

They have an onstage rap accompanist – an apt musical choice for their jagged moves and accompanying repartee. Their humour is light, sometimes even silly, and topical enough to satisfy a general taste.

Their comedy is as much physical as verbal, and their energy and lack of inhibition endearing. We get jokes about shoppers, Uber drivers, the Dompost, the Vatican. They discover a lady’s handbag and treat us to an examination of the contents. 

The greatest delight in a show of this kind stems from the easy camaraderie which forms its backbone. You can imagine their onstage relationship extending into their offstage lives. The three send up each other’s differences – everything from appearance to clothes to language: “My favourite words are the instructions on the Dolmio jar,” declares the Italian. 

The Aunty Donna of the title not only does not appear but is referred to only once or twice, and then mysteriously. ‘They give a different answer about her every time,’ their manager tells me.

Well, you’re allowed one mystery in a show that’s otherwise blatantly and delightfully uninhibited.

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