Puppeteering laughs: Randy Feltface returns to Spokane Comedy Club stage

The last time he was in town, Australian puppet comedian Randy Feltface remembers ending the night next door to the Spokane Comedy Club at Gamers Arcade Bar and “basking in the glory of fresh air.”

This time, Randy is making his trip even more memorable by flying into Seattle then driving across the state. After his run of shows Thursday through Saturday at the Spokane Comedy Club, Randy will head down through Yellowstone National Park toward Salt Lake City before his tour picks up in Washington, D.C., in early May.

Randy is on the final U.S. leg of his “First Banana” tour, a show which he wrote in February 2024. He brought “First Banana” to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival last year as well as to tours throughout Europe, the United Kingdom and much of the eastern and southern United States. He’s excited to bring the show, now well-tuned, to Spokane, where he said audiences continually show up to support him.

In “First Banana,” Randy, voiced by Heath McIvor, explores the idea that global evolution should have stopped when the first banana appeared 10,000 years ago. While the same idea is there, Randy said the show as a whole has changed significantly from last year’s version, thanks, in part, to the audiences he’s performed for.

“The audience will tell me what’s funny, what’s boring and what’s unnecessary,” he said. “Also, it gets to a point where it’s like, ‘What’s most entertaining for me?’ because I want to enjoy doing the show every night … It’s a pretty tight 60-minute banana lecture with a lot of very silly side steps.”

Though Randy has been performing stand up for 20 years, he only started getting a foothold in America in 2019 after appearing on the comedy competition show “Bring the Funny,” where he made it to the second round.

Randy said he doesn’t know how many fans have stuck with him since then, but he knows he gained a lot of new fans during the pandemic, when he uploaded specials he filmed in Australia to YouTube.

“This country is an amazing country for comedy, so the fact that I’m able to have a bit of space here is pretty incredible,” he said.

Though he’s had horrible gigs over the years (“I definitely paid my dues,” he said), for the most part, audiences around the world have been receptive to Randy, finding him to be disarming.

There’s an absence of familiarity to the purple puppet, which means audiences don’t get reminded of someone they know while at his shows.

“I’m lucky in that I’m unique looking, and you just revel in the silliness of it all,” he said. “There’s so much fun to be had at the moment. I know this probably comes up a lot, but now is not the time for taking things too seriously, so if I can have an hour of mostly silliness, then I hope people are able to appreciate that and enjoy that given the times we’re living in.”

Randy is quick to shut down mentions of altruism, or artists kindly giving their time and energy to help audiences escape the real world for a bit, saying it’s more a two-way street. While he’s glad if he can help audiences relax a bit, he also would lose his mind if he weren’t able to perform.

Speaking more about his appearance, Randy said he believes it helps in moments when he pushes the boundary or “sweetens the tea” a little.

It’s his hope though that people are so engaged with the show itself and the messages he works to get across that the novelty of his appearance quickly wears off.

It’s a double-edged sword, he said, as being a puppet can draw people in, but it also means that he can’t just rely on his looks in order to say whatever he wants.

“People forget pretty quickly what I look like, and they don’t give me a hall pass if I say something that they find unpleasant or controversial,” he said. “I think there is definitely something in there that can maybe soften the message a bit, but generally, if I say something that creates waves, people let me know about it.”

One such wave was, surprisingly, the fact that the Australian comedian didn’t know about H-E-B, a chain of supermarkets in Texas and Mexico, though Randy said he thinks the fuss over the clip, which has 3.8 million views on Instagram, was more about the crowd’s excitement to share their love of the supermarket with him than his lack of knowledge about American grocery store chains.

“I got a lot of fans in Texas now just from the fact that someone in the crowd brought up H-E-B, and I went with it,” he said .

Randy can acknowledge that some may find it weird that others are interested in watching a puppet perform, but he credits that interest partially to the fact that many in the U.S. have grown up watching “The Muppets.”

He might not be Kermit the Frog, Fozzie Bear or Gonzo, but the nostalgic feel is still there when seeing Randy live.

“I think there’s something deep in the psyche that it’s OK to spend an hour with a puppet because it’s fulfilling some childhood dream at some point,” he said.