In her second stand-up offering this Fringe, Australian comic Thao Thanh Cao’s Confessions of a Comedian stands separate from Marmalade in ways that are hinted at in the titles. The two shows have been picked up for second showings on Saturday, 24 August, and I’d honestly recommend seeing them both for a masterclass on how a comedian crafts unique narratives from a shared source.
As with Marmalade, the show’s opener was Tallinn-based Vivek Ravi, playing to a tougher crowd on his second night supporting (I suspect there were more Kadris and fewer of their exes filling seats). His jokes received an equal amount of laughter and groans, which speaks to his ability to provoke a crowd into making noise — a win for comics in Estonia, regardless of the direction.
Confessions opened with Cao sharing a review of her other show, which criticized her for pandering to racists, misogynists, and sundry other bigots — “Just so you know what you’re getting into,” she quipped, pinning the topic for later. Add in rapid-fire jokes around genitals and bodily functions, and it was clear the crowd could not expect a night of sensitive entertainment.
Entertainment, however, was the focus of the show — or rather, what people seek out for entertainment, and why. From true crime to TikTok, beach Speedos to bestiality, Cao examines what makes us laugh and why. Her unique pacing and placid demeanor underpin clever storytelling with some punchlines landing long after the joke was first set up.
Cao vocally opposes a lot of the comedy cows currently held sacred (wokeness quotas, cancel culture, not punching down); but in practice, it’s more comedic sleight of hand. The critic cited in the first few minutes of her show missed the point: despite the seemingly rightwing rhetoric, Cao never lets her punchlines rely on the existence of differences. Instead, she targets the absurdity of hyper-focusing on those differences in the name of acceptance or avoiding them entirely so that people are ultimately excluded in the name of inclusion. The critic’s problem wasn’t actually with Cao’s show but with what’s living rent-free in their head.
Rather than treading carefully around sensitive topics, Cao stomps through them while wearing a target on her own back. Examples include a personal tale of encountering pedophilia that elicited gasps as well as laughter and an extended set about the deaf-mute American Helen Keller in which the only punchline that relied on Keller’s disability highlighted the absurdity of people suggesting there was anything she couldn’t accomplish.
Cao’s blend of sincerity and vulgarity accompanies the audience through topics both shocking and solemn. Her physicality is muted but impactful: what she does, she does very well. But whether or not you like what she has to say, tell her publicly rather than personally — while she does comedy for herself, it pays better in front of an audience.
You can find tickets for Cao’s shows on Saturday, 24 August, as well as the full Tallinn Fringe schedule online.
Author: Laurie
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