By Tilly Daniels
There are plenty of comedians who insist that children are the toughest audience in entertainment. Richard Higgins and Matthew Kelly would argue that’s exactly why they chose them.
“We make joyful, silly, and slightly chaotic theatre that treats kids as the smartest people in the room,” says Higgins, one half of Australia’s acclaimed comedy duo, The Listies.
Beginning July 1, New York audiences will finally discover what families across Australia, the United Kingdom, Ireland, New Zealand, and Asia have known for nearly two decades: that a show filled with dad jokes, puppets, absurd songs, PowerPoint presentations, audience participation, and inflatable tube men can also be remarkably smart.
After seventeen years of sold-out performances and international acclaim, The Listies: Make Some Noise arrives at AMT Theater for the duo’s long-awaited American debut. It’s a milestone that Higgins admits has lingered in the back of their mind for years.
“We’ve done Edinburgh, Dublin, Korea, Malaysia, New Zealand… and every time we came home we’d think, ‘What about New York?'” He says. “New York felt like the big one, the one you want to get right.”
For New Yorkers accustomed to sophisticated children’s programming, The Listies may seem like an unlikely fit. Their shows celebrate glorious disorder. They encourage shouting. They invite kids onstage. They delight in jokes about imaginary breakfast cereal made entirely of toenails. Somewhere amid the controlled mayhem, there are songs, clowning, and enough audience interaction to make every performance different from the last.
Yet beneath the anarchy lies an unexpectedly disciplined philosophy.
“We don’t think about kids and adults as separate audiences,” Kelly explains. “We just try to make something that makes us laugh. The aim is to write jokes that both a ten-year-old and a hundred-year-old would laugh at, even if they’re laughing for different reasons.”
It’s a surprisingly sophisticated approach that echoes the great family entertainers, from the Marx Brothers to Jim Henson, who trusted younger audiences to appreciate wit rather than simply noise.
The duo didn’t originally set out to become children’s performers. When they founded The Listies in 2008, they were creating comedy for adults. Somewhere along the way, they discovered children offered something many grown-up audiences had lost: complete commitment.
“When you ask adults for a volunteer, nobody raises their hand,” Kelly jokes. “And the one you pick cries. Kids? They all want to be chosen. That’s kind of amazing.”
That enthusiasm has shaped everything about their work.
Unlike many children’s productions that follow a rigid script, The Listies embrace unpredictability. One performer constantly pushes the show toward chaos while the other desperately attempts to restore order. Sometimes it works. Usually it doesn’t.
The comedy often depends on the audience becoming collaborators rather than spectators.
“We’ve always embraced the unpredictability of performing for kids,” Higgins says. “The chaos is held together because our goal is making sure everyone has an incredible time.”
Perhaps that’s why their reputation has spread far beyond Australia. Along the way, they’ve collected a Sydney Theatre Award, Edinburgh Fringe’s Primary Times Award for Best Production for Children, Melbourne International Comedy Festival’s Golden Gibbo Award, and the rare distinction of becoming the only children’s act ever nominated for the festival’s prestigious Best Show Award.
Now they’re bringing something else to New York besides the performances themselves.
On weekends throughout their engagement, Higgins and Kelly will host comedy workshops for children ages 7 to 12, inviting young comedians to invent ridiculous advertisements, write original jokes, explore clowning, and discover how humor works from the inside out.
It’s a natural extension of work they’ve already been doing at festivals throughout Australia and Scotland.
“We’ve discovered that kids are funny,” Kelly says. “We want to learn from them too.”
For the duo, comedy isn’t simply entertainment. It’s a creative skill that teaches resilience.
“You can’t be stressed and think of a joke,” Higgins says. “Comedy teaches you to look at the world sideways. Maybe the best thing you learn is to just try, and if it goes wrong, that’s not the end of the world. Sometimes failing leads you somewhere even better.”
It’s an unexpectedly thoughtful message wrapped inside jokes about inflatable tube people and absurd Australian catchphrases.
In many ways, The Listies arrive at a moment when family entertainment is increasingly divided between digital distraction and carefully curated educational programming. Their work occupies a different space entirely, one built around the unpredictable energy that only live performance can create.
No algorithm knows which child will shout the funniest answer. No streaming service can recreate the collective joy of hundreds of people performing a ridiculous dance together because two comedians dressed as inflatable tube men asked them to.
The Listies believe those shared moments are precisely what families remember.
“We hope audiences walk out louder than they walked in,” Higgins says. “We want every member of the family to laugh and leave having shared something ridiculous together.”
That may sound like a modest ambition.
But in a city that prides itself on sophisticated theater, perhaps the boldest thing two Australian comedians can do is remind New Yorkers that sometimes the smartest comedy begins with embracing a little glorious nonsense.
The House of Oz Presents THE LISTIES: MAKE SOME NOISE
DATES: July 1 – 19, Wednesday through Sunday
TIMES: 2 PM
PRICES: Kids 12 yrs & under $16.50, Adults $21.75 (with fees)
To purchase tickets or for more information, please visit the AMT Theater show page for The Listies.
Tickets for The Listies comedy workshops can be purchased through the AMT Theater workshop booking page.
