Dante’s Wombat Presented by Ebenezer Brittlebank

Presented by Ebenezer Brittlebank Producer: James Buxton Ebenezer Brittlebank and Trim Xebec are proud to announce the upcoming comedy show, Dante’s Wombat, an entirely unique and artistically ambitious new work premiering as part of the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, a discipline-defying bridge between the north-east alternative scene and Melbourne’s art establishment across two iconic venues:

Melbourne Recital Centre (Primrose Potter Salon)–Saturday 18 April 2026 8:00pm Dante’s Wombat

Northcote Town Hall Arts Centre – Friday 10/04 & Saturday 11 April 2026 7:30pm

Single tickets: $25-$40

 

 

This new local voice, heralding a potentially monumental seismic shift in comedy performance with a show featuring many and varied aspects of Naarm-Melbourne (along with ballet, biscuits, arthritis struggles, western suburban tales, and quasiliterary exploration of little things that make life meaningful), was selected by Melbourne Recital Centre through open registrations, the first successful applicant ever in the four years the MRC has been open to festival shows.

There are over 500 comedy performances expected at this year’s comedy festival, and only one that merges comedy literature and performance art to produce a completely new kind of experience of a surreal, almost-Lynchesque lyrical explosion that no other show in the world, no other work of art can offer. It is, in fact, a show full of ‘firsts’, quite big and very small, something Ebenezer notes in his performances.

 

 

There has already been media attention given to stand up comedy’s place in the arts this year, with an ABC article interviewing two established comedians practicing traditional stand up. Ebenezer Brittlebank is an example of the next generation of comedy performers and an entirely new kind of performance that blurs the line with practically all other art forms, an example of raw creativity and potentially a glimpse at where comedy is heading next.

This incredible raw uncompromising creativity is on full display when Eb, a filmic brain usually denied full access to cinematic resource, was given free rein in a film studio. A promotional video directed by Mike Palethorpe was filmed and distributed for cinema release by Val Morgan in arthouse and indie cinemas throughout Melbourne (including Cinema Nova and Palace Westgarth).

It opens with an assortment of biscuits pinned like insects, leading to absolutely nothing to indicate what the performance will involve. An approach to promotion that opts for mystery and with hints of something deeper, rather than the standard forthright approach favoured by most stand-up comedy marketing campaigns.

 

 

The audience will be in for something beyond anything they’d expect from a stand-up performance, and this small festival run may be the start of something BIG.

Show blurb:

Everyone gets it sometimes: sometimes a snuffling by your head at night, sometimes a distant grunt in a cold dark alley, sometimes an enveloping marsupial warmth when you’re feeling blue; but it’s only when you walk with Ebenezer that you can finally catch a glimpse of the rarest of creatures, that waddling scar-faced vat of bestial beauty in the stinkin’ bloody flesh!

Expect surreal suburban observations, quasi-literary mischief, and the odd singsong, along with bursts of physical comedy woven through fractured, dreamlike personal narratives. This gloriously strange collage of neighbourhood minutiae, arthritis, art, ballet, biscuits, books, tassels, and subterranean aromatics is equal parts absurdist confession, philosophical floundering, and spontaneous experiment.

 

 

In Dante’s Wombat, fresher than fresh local produce, delivers what is sure to be a blistering debut hour, portraying a perspective so askew that it almost approaches the profound, the mystical, the cinematic, the, well… just a raucous plunge into the odd and endearing little things behind everyday existence, really.

Join us as Eb emerges from the depths — dirty, wriggling, and unabashedly ripe — to share, with orchidaceous warmth, the comic potential of confusion itself through an hour of lyrical chaos.

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For more information click HERE