Victorian comedian Wil Anderson is back at the Adelaide Fringe, continuing his 25-year-long streak of performing stand-up during the mad March festival season. After last year’s massively successful show, Wilogical, Anderson is back to bring the laughs and a reflection on post-pandemic life with Wiluminate. Unsurprisingly, Wiluminate is a hilariously political take on recent events.

Starting off with his tribute to the late Dave Grant with the opening Black in Black riff, Wil kicks off with a look at interstate lockdown life with an intimate story involving delivered flowers. Providing quite a humourous twist that comes back later in the show, Wil also describes the inspiration behind the name of his memoir,  I Am NOT Fine, Thanks, as well as re-adjusting to a maskless world. This leads to some pretty great riffs involving a story of attending a Kendrick Lamar gig and comparing COVID to Michael Myers. Anderson’s enticing storytelling and manic energy are incredibly infectious, often leaving the audience with wide smiles and gut-busting laughs throughout most of the set.

As expected by most of his material and political stances, Wil also throws his two cents toward recent news stories. Refreshingly, it did not involve Elon Musk or Sco Mo, but instead, the political correctness of changing certain words in Roald Dahl books, or soup being thrown on art during climate change protests. Trump was mentioned briefly from quite an admittedly different and humourous perspective. So if discussing the pandemic, vaccines, or lockdowns are not quite in your wheelhouse, Wiluminate might be a bit of a tough sit, however, its tough not to enjoy Anderson’s terrific insight as it never quite feels preachy or look down at those who may disagree.

Overall, Wil Anderson is back with another hilarious and progressive outlook on the bizarre world we live in. If you’ve seen Wil’s stand-up before, or have never seen his comedy in person, I can absolutely recommend catching Wiluminate.