Yuki Nivez: Active Bitch Face
The Balcony Bar – The Austral Hotel
Mon Mar 15, 2026

Back in the steamy top floor comedy precinct at The Austral, I sat down with a full capacity audience to watch Yuki Nivez (Roast Battle Japan Champion) claim her title as one of the best deadpan comedians I’ve seen of this Fringe season.

Her opening, indicative of her Japanese upbringing, is a humble apology in advance for anything that might be lost in translation, English being her second language. In the next breath she explains in perfect English the arrogant volume of westerners who believe English to be the first-spoken dialect of all globe-dwellers.

Nivez initially comes across as conservative, but her crude humour creeps up on us and within a few sentences we’ve traversed through the generational and gender disparity in her culture to the hilarious linguistic hurdles that can see you falling flat on your face when L and R play switcheroo (a common dilemma in Japanese English) in a conversation about elections with a first date.

Throughout her show Nivez engages the audience with the kind of jousting that catches you unawares and it felt at times that perhaps the humidity kept some from keeping up with her wit. Over the course of the hour she took us from her old worldly home village and her distant relationship with her Samurai-descendant father to her love affair in Bondi and her progressive world as a globe-trotting feminist comedian.

What sets Nivez apart from other storytellers is her clinical precision and use of silence to create and release tension in the space. Her stories build slowly, then without a moment’s notice she pivots to the punchline in monotone with a sublime wry grin, leaving us wondering before the cleverness of it cracks like a whip.

Just when we think it’s time to close the curtains, she reveals the full extent of her artillery. Again showing humility – she asks permission to take her humour into darker territory. A slippery and deadly combo (excuse the pun) builds like a high-tide then floods the audience with disbelief – she took it there! A perfectly worded analogy unpacking scenes of suicide and sodomy lands on the table like a royal flush leaving punters aghast then hysterical.

If you’re looking for a night of quick wit, charm, and truth-telling, don’t miss Yuki Nivez, she’s the perfect trifecta!