9-Year-Old Musical Comedian Review — Nathan Roach at The Spare Room, Sydney Fringe 2026
"We are such stuff as dreams are made on." Nathan Roach, then, is such consummate stuff as musical comedy is made upon. 9-Year-Old Musical Comedian played The Spare Room at the Erskineville Town Hall as part of Sydney Fringe 2026 — a solo hour in which Roach, now 26, performs the songs of his 9-to-18-year-old self. James Wily on kindness, callbacks, and the strange grace of alchemising childhood ambition into something universally relatable.
9-Year-Old Musical Comedian Review: A Dream 17 Years in the Making
A solo hour by Nathan Roach at The Spare Room, Sydney Fringe 2026.
"We are such stuff as dreams are made on." Nathan Roach, then, is such consummate stuff as musical comedy is made upon. 9-Year-Old Musical Comedian played The Spare Room at the Erskineville Town Hall as part of Sydney Fringe 2026 — a solo hour in which Roach, now 26, performs the songs of his 9-to-18-year-old self. James Wily on kindness, callbacks, and the strange grace of alchemising childhood ambition into something universally relatable.
We are such stuff as dreams are made on. Nathan Roach, then, is such consummate stuff as musical comedy is made upon. (N.B. That's on, not of, by the way: please refer to your copy of The Tempest for further reading, 4.1.164-ish.)
When Nathan Roach was 9 years old he wanted nothing more than to be exactly like the New Zealand musical comedy legends, Flight of The Conchords. The next nine years of Roach's life would be spent in dedicated pursuit to this most admirable profession. And, equipped with his acoustic guitar, a pithy slideshow, and both a pre- and postpubescent oeuvre of comedy songs, written by Roach between ages 9 and 18, the now 26-year-old comedian fondly reflects on his dilettante quest in his hour-long solo show: 9-Year-Old Musical Comedian.
Performing in the Spare Room at the Erskineville Town Hall, my Thursday night showing of 9-Year-Old Musical Comedian seemed to be filled with the perennial Independent Sydney Fringe Audience — without whom none of the festival would be possible. You know, the kinds of people who either know Roach personally, or have another show on in the festival themselves. (N.B. Someone behind me said something about one of their actors having to practice their Werner Herzog impression? Infuriatingly, I did not ask them which show this was.)
Roach saunters in to start the show from the main audience entrance, wearing an inoffensive all-black t-shirt, denim cargo pants, (where was his Legionnaire's cap?), presumably shoes of some description, and launches straight into his first song: Egg and Bacon Rolls. It's a jaunty tune about God's gift to 9-year-old children that's perfectly sweet, humble and abound with such delicious lyrics as: 'I bought some eggs, You bought some bacon, I bought some rolls, We took a stroll.'
This was then followed by an emphatic chorus, where it seems that 9-year-old Nathan must have thought it was very lyrically engaging to say 'Egg & bacon rolls, Egg & bacon rolls' over and over and over again. Which it was. Great stuff; made me hungry.
This is not Roach's first comedy rodeo. He is a fairly experienced comedian in his own right: co-starring in the online sketch-comedy duo, Gorse, a frequent performer at Improv Theatre Sydney, and his personal IG is replete with short-form sketch content. This show is, to my knowledge, his first time riding the particular bull that is 'the solo show'. It's a transition that Roach makes quite cleanly, as he oscillates between performing his younger self's musical comedy songs, and painting vivid pictures of exactly what was running through his adolescent mind when he wrote that song.
Kudos goes to Roach because The Spare Room is a scary place for a first-time solo performer: 5m (w) x 2.4m (d), no backstage or exits (apart from the main audience entrance into the room), a simple curtain backdrop, minimal lighting options, and a stage area that's carpeted and completely level with the audience.
The whole space has a particular barebones energy of "just a guy, a guitar, and his microphone" to its proxemics that makes Roach instantly become the most interesting thing in the room; essentially, it's all Roach from here.
This has the double-edged impact of immediately drawing us in to the minutiae of Roach's storytelling, as he confidently embodies the casual intimacy and presence of spirit that a mate telling you a really great story at the pub has, whilst also, making the pico-second length silence when a laugh is obviously anticipated feel almost nuclear in its fallout, (which rarely happened). So Roach's comic persona needed to do a lot of heavy lifting for the show to work.
Which it did. One of the truly admirable qualities of Nathan's performance was the inveterate kindness he seemed to emanate throughout it. His cadence was measured, kind and amusedly detached (but importantly: never unempathetic); his stage persona seemed to approach his material with a sense of curiosity and play, and without any judgement. Roach holds himself with the poise of a seasoned performer, and seems to genuinely be enjoying himself as he narrates his ardent emulation of comedic role models: Jermaine Clement and Brett McKenzie (and also Bondi Vet, Dr Chris Brown for a little bit).
In truth, the show seemed to be pretty evacuated of any sneering irony at all, which in this comedic economy is something worth noting. Roach was notably never cruel or dismissive to his younger self's ambitions throughout the show, which I found to be quite mature. Instead, Roach's approach felt nigh zen-like at times, coolly amused, and playfully curious as to the motivations behind his younger self's artistic ambitions. It invited the audience in to laugh with Roach alongside the visions of his younger self and more importantly, never at his younger self.
To me, this empathy was one of the main triumphs of 9-Year-Old Musical Comedian. And a lot of the joy of the show was watching Roach effectively alchemise his niche childhood passions into something that became universally relatable for the audience.
The show's funny. In case I haven't made that clear, and its humour revels in spelling out the naivety, and innate silliness, of a 9-to-18-year-old amateur (sorry: "emerging") musical comedian writing about his dead goldfish. But (again: importantly), the humour never punches down on young Roach. And it's always done in a way that exonerates it by providing the strong impression that young Roach was always in it for sheer love of the game. This is admirable, and cool, and it's the same kind of uplifting joy that one finds whenever you watch (good) improv comedy, or shows like Nirvana The Band The Show, and early seasons of SpongeBob.
I have a serious question for Roach. Where was his Legionnaire's cap? I mentioned this before, but his (lack of) costume baffled me. Why wasn't he wearing the same outfit that he is in his promotional material? I suspect Roach's casual attire was chosen to reflect the casual and low-stakes storytelling that he might have wanted to invoke, but I couldn't help but feel that a comic promise was lost to the audience who came wanting to see him in his silly outfit (namely: me).
Pictured above: What Was Taken From Me.
Laughs were consistently good throughout the show, but rarely great. Memorable bangers like: "while [my brother] was learning to perform open heart surgery, I was performing… to open hearts… with musical comedy", arrived at a rate that I wished was a little more frequent. Likewise, moments when Roach leaned into the sheer veracity of his younger self's passion, (namely, any of the musical performances) were when the show was at its best.
The show concludes with a touching clip of Roach performing one of his songs for one half of the Flight Of The Conchords: Bret McKenzie. And it's a stunning conclusion. It's a genuinely mythical full-circle atonement-with-the-father kind of moment that I found to be quite compelling, and rounded out the already strong hour of solo comedy on an ecstatic note.
However, the question as to what exactly this triumph was over, faintly niggled away at me as I left The Spare Room. I knew what this moment meant to Roach, the 9-year-old comedian, just not what it meant to the 26-year-old one standing right in front of me. As Roach ostensibly grows up throughout the show, the question of how these experiences (if at all) impacted his path to maturity, remain unanswered. Does he still want to become a musical comedian? Or does he just dream of performing non-musical comedy now? Has he given up on comedy? From his presence online, this answer is clearly no, but the show never seems to address this. Which is all to say I wanted a bit more of Roach to come through at the show's denouement.
Unfortunately, I am also 26 years old. And like Roach, similarly had (/have?) aspirations of performing comedy. So I recognise that there can be something terrifyingly depressing about failing to live up to a dream you once held so dearly as a child — as if a part of that child died when you finally told him that he was never going to have what he wanted more than anything else in the world. Growing up can feel like a complete waste of time sometimes.
This is where I would normally cue Plath's Bell Jar Fig Tree analogy and call it an emerging writer day, but lo, that would be too easy, and the acute meta-irony about Roach performing a live musical comedy show, about his failure to live up to his dream of one day becoming a musical comedian, gives an emerging writer cause to think.
9-Year-Old Musical Comedian is a show that sits us down with this child we once denied, and lets us have a good laugh with him. A laugh that's a reminder of what a joy it was to have dreamed with this boy in the first place. In fact, what a joy it was to have dreamed at all, and to be told that that time spent dreaming was never a waste. That those dreams are important because they might just end up making us into something more real. Nathan Roach was clearly made on such stuff.
And so must you be.
9-Year-Old Musical Comedian — a solo hour written and performed by Nathan Roach, drawing on musical comedy songs he wrote between the ages of 9 and 18. The Spare Room, Erskineville Town Hall, as part of Sydney Fringe 2026.
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