Show reviewed: 11/03/26

Show rated: Let love in, 4 stars!

Wedding Ring and SuffeRing was not what I expected when I agreed to review a show that I thought was conceptually going to be a “standup comedy boxing ring” between couples Jelin Palm & Nick Palm and Sarah Stewart & Mark Stewart. However it was still a delightful show that explored the dynamics of long term relationships from multiculturalism to that intimate place of knowing someone too well…

Nick Palm is a rambunctious funny man who hails from Papua New Guinea and is married to the lovely Jelim Palm, a clever Chinese-Australian comedian. They opened the show in individual sets talking about the challenges that come with being married in a cross-cultural relationship and how they are handling the twenty year mark of partnership. They are both brutally honest but ruthlessly funny. A lot of the situational humour in their set are based on issues around culture collisions and society, so if ethnic and matrimonial based humour isn’t your thing, this isn’t the show for you.

Sarah Stewart and Mark Stewart have an enduring partnership of forty years of marriage, which makes sense when you consider that the gift for forty years of marriage is rubies with your suffering (all the better to hide the blood from fighting over who gets the tv control perhaps?) Sarah is a vibrant and engaging storyteller with a bit of an acerbic wit that belies her warm personality and obvious fondness for Mark. Mark is dry and delightfully funny as he and Sarah bicker about the most mundane things, though at times they almost veer into too much information territory. Almost.

You get the sense that there’s so much affection that while these two couples may have tiny daily battles, they are winning the war in the long term together. This is a show that at its core is about knowing someone so intimately and vulnerably and still having them lovingly accept you for all your flaws and foibles. If that isn’t relationship goals, then what is?