Malthouse Comedy celebrates a decade of laughs with Hannah Gadsby, Lou Wall, Rob Carlton, Garry Starr and Elf Lyons.
Malthouse Theatre has revealed the first wave of its 2026 Malthouse Comedy program, marking the venue’s 10th anniversary as a major hub of Melbourne International Comedy Festival.
After delivering its biggest year yet in 2025, Malthouse Comedy returns with some of Australia’s finest comedic talents plus UK chameleonic clowning extraordinaire Elf Lyons taking to the stage from 26 March to 19 April 2026.
Malthouse Theatre – Malthouse comedy 2026
- Where: Malthouse Theatre, Melbourne
- When: Thursday 26 March to Saturday 19 April 2026
- Tickets: On sale here
- Full lineup announcement: January 2026
Stay up to date with what’s happening in and around Melbourne here.
View this post on Instagram
Hannah Gadsby presents their most unpredictable show yet in The Evening Muse, a live talkshow like no other where different content each night invites audiences to join Gadsby on a mission to reconnect with the world. Making their Malthouse Comedy debut, Gadsby doesn’t venture out much these days so they’re inviting people in instead, with guests and who knows what might happen.
Following a smash-hit, sell-out Australian tour and West End season, Garry Starr returns hell-bent on saving books from extinction by performing every Penguin Classic novel ever written in Classic Penguins. Winner of Most Outstanding Show at Melbourne International Comedy Festival in 2025, the show takes audiences on a literary adventure through beloved works of fiction from The Little Prince to Moby Dick, performed naked but with flippers.
Lou Wall, nominee for the 2025 Melbourne International Comedy Festival Award for Most Outstanding Show, premieres their hilariously unhinged new hour Where Are All the Tall Grandmas? Wall dives headfirst into the disappearance of tall, old women everywhere in this comedic investigation into height, heritage and what it truly means to live large.
Logie-winning actor and masterful storyteller Rob Carlton brings his award-winning narrative chops to Malthouse Comedy with Virgin in a Knife Fight. Featuring four true tales of chaos and courage where he’s both hero and idiot, Carlton turns real life into sharp, funny and heartfelt comedy spanning Salzburg knife fights to courtroom mayhem and moving stories of fatherhood.
UK icon and winner of the Sky Arts Best Comedy Award, Elf Lyons brings her cult classic, critically acclaimed, one-woman punk reimagining of Swan Lake to Australia for the first time with Swan. This giraffe-limbed, Gaulier-trained harlequin’s acclaimed solo performance involves ballet, violence, wrestling, nudity, an evil owl, magic, 45 bras and a very loose grasp of the French language.
Tickets are on sale now with the full Malthouse Comedy 2026 program to be announced in January.
For more information, head here.
