The audience is seated for Melbourne International Comedy Festival show Happy Birthday Taylah Whelan, and it’s a full house. The entry door opens. A woman walks in. She scans the crowd looking surprised. Then she thanks us for coming to her birthday party. She’s turning 26. 

Right from the start Whelan spills snappy one liners that have the audience in fits of laughter. 

Whelan grabs a drink from under a nearby audience member’s chair and takes a swig. Then she looks at the label. It’s called A Drink that makes you Reminisce. At first she resists, then gives into it and climbs on the stage. And we are introduced to to the world of Taylah Whelan. 

Whelan has great energy and comedic timing. She is smart and dynamic, with a self-effacing frank honesty in her delivery. 

It’s Taylah Whelan’s fifth birthday. She’s growing up in Palmerston, a suburb of Darwin. ‘A Place for People’. It soon becomes apparent that it’s probably not a place for Taylah though. Her Irish mother has got her a friend – a talking cat she names Elvis. Dad is an awkward bloke who doesn’t know how to effectively communicate with his kid. 

Each time she has a sip of A Drink that makes you Reminisce, we travel to Taylah at a different milestone birthday. She is twelve, fifteen, eighteen, twenty-one, and twenty-six. Along the way we discover a little more about Whelan. We learn about the formation of her identity through theatrical self-deprecating and insightful delivery. Happy Birthday Taylah Whelan is a laugh out loud show. And did I mention the talking cat?

Happy Birthday Taylah Whelan is crated and performed by the title’s namesake. The show is directed by Kaite Head and produced by SKINT. Set and quirky cat design are by Max Arnold, and voice work by Elliot Wood, Ayesha Harris-Westman and Alex Donnelly

Dust off your party frock and get along to Happy Birthday Taylah Whelan for a cracking good laugh. The show is playing at the Motley Bauhaus in The Cellar till 1st of April. Tickets from Melbourne International Comedy Festival.