Nikki Glaser (Courtesy of her Instagram)
After attending the Great Outdoors Comedy Festival at the Garrison Grounds back in 2023 to see Jerry Seinfeld I wrote in their Feedback Survey that I would love to see more women included in their future lineups, and they certainly delivered on that Sunday Night when I saw Nikki Payne, Steph Tolev, Fortune Feimster, and Nikki Glaser perform in front of a gigantic crowd on the hill. The four comedians were well chosen for a festival set, as they all complemented one another very well, and as Fortune Feimster said when she came onstage, her less raunchy storytelling style was sandwiched in between Tolev and Glaser in a way that created a different vibe, but still worked really well within the overall ambiance of the evening.
Nikki Payne who hails from Lower Sackville, and who has been a fixture in the Canadian Comedy scene for years, didn’t open the show with a ten minute set so much as a ten minute warning to the crowd, especially those in the VIP section who had been drinking in the hot sun all day, to not embarrass her in front of the celebrities. Warning us that as one of us she knows that underneath our wholesome veneer of fiddles and lighthouses we can also be obnoxious drunken hooligans (that’s why we’re called Haligonians after all), and that we needed to be on our best behaviour if we ever want the likes of Fortune Feimster and Nikki Glaser to return. What’s so funny to me about this is that Payne found an abrasively delightful way to capture how I think a lot of us were feeling all weekend. There were so many famous people in the city, and many of us were desperate to make a good impression on them because, as Payne pointed out, beyond musicians on tour, no one else really ever comes here, especially for work. Between the emergency alert for the manhunt in Bedford on Saturday and the emergency alert for the bomb threat on Monday morning I found myself thinking, “Shit. I hope the celebrities don’t think this is what Halifax is like all the time.” I love Halifax so much, but why do I care so much that they have the best time here and go away loving it too? Why do I want everyone to be the perfect ambassador for the city? I don’t want to be embarrassed in front of the famous people either. Payne’s threats worked- the crowd couldn’t have been better behaved.
Steph Tolev was born and raised in Toronto, and she has been working in stand up and sketch comedy since 2009 when she and Allison Hogg formed the sketch duo Ladystache. They won multiple awards and toured to festivals around the country and to the Fringe in Edinburgh. As a stand up she opened for Bill Burr on his tour in 2022, and was featured on his Netflix special Bill Burr Presents: Friends Who Kill the same year. In 2025 she filmed her own Netflix Comedy Special Filth Queen. She also hosts the podcast Steph Infection where she’s chatted with folks like Robby Hoffman, Leslie Jones, Atsuko Okatsuka, Bill Burr, Jodie Sweetin, Gerry Dee, and Alana Johnston about everything and anything related to the human body. It was a treat for me to see Tolev here in Halifax having been in Toronto during the early days of Ladystache and seeing her and Hogg at the Comedy Bar there a few times. As the title of her special Filth Queen suggests Tolev is known for the colourful and unique ways that she weaves the vulgar and profane throughout both her storytelling and her crowd work. Her set in Halifax, while wearing an amazing lobster print jumpsuit, could make other comedians known for bawdy humour blush. But, what I found even more significant and impressive is the speed at which Tolev packs in her jokes, whether they are prepared ahead of time, or she is reacting in real time to the space. The audience was struggling to catch their breaths from laughter that was incessant as she zigs and zags from one topic to the next, centring largely on depictions of the human body and sex that are so real, but not often depicted as such, that people are literally screaming out in recognition. There is something different still in our culture about hearing male comedians being gross and hearing female comedians being gross, because on the one hand we all have so much experience in our everyday lives with men and boys being gross that there’s very little that is new or insightful to say about it, whereas women still largely operate in society as though we float above the disgusting realities of nature, so having someone so aggressively calling bullshit on this entire concept is actually really refreshing.
I will say that the draw for me for this lineup of comedians was Fortune Feimster. I was introduced to her through the Handsome podcast, which I have been listening to every Tuesday for the last three years. It’s one of the three podcasts I started listening to weekly the summer after my mom passed away in attempt to fill my very empty house with laughter and silliness, and Fortune Feimster, along with Tig Notaro and Mae Martin have been a huge part of my grief journey. I’ve seen all of Feimster’s Netflix specials and so, of course, I was extremely excited to get to see her live in my hometown. Tolev’s frenetic pace really worked to build the audience’s energy up to greet the two American stars. Fortune Feimster has a much more laid back style where you feel like a friend is relaying to you all the funniest things that have ever happened to them. She told a story about a mishap she had while in Greece on a romantic holiday with her then partner that ended up going completely off the rails. She also told the story about how her mother, the famous Ginger Feimster, once bid on a tour through the Frito Lay Factory for her twelfth birthday party, while also sending her to an unhinged “nutritionist” at their church at around the same age- sending her confusing mixed messages. Feimster has had a rough go of it lately in her personal life; she recently got divorced and her mother is being treated for a quite aggressive form of liver cancer. Feimster flew from Halifax to North Carolina to spend some time with her mom after the festival before continuing on with her own Taking Care of Biscuits Tour. To see her continue to find the humour in stories from her life with her former wife Jax, to honour her mother’s hilarious and sometimes outrageous legacy, and to mine her new reality as someone living alone in her 40s and helping to care for older parents is inspiring. This stage of life can be heavy and sad, but Feimster’s ability to shine some light on the absurd, the ridiculous, and the levity is good for the soul. I definitely wasn’t the only Handsome podcast fan in the crowd. There was a huge response when Feimster asked us what word you can’t say charcuterie without. I would have yelled out “Fortune Marie,” but I was afraid of Nikki Payne coming into the crowd and making an example of me that you can take the girl out of Fairview, but you can’t take the Fairview out of the girl. I really hope that Fortune Feimster will come back to Halifax sometime with a full length set. She’s delightful, and having her here was everything I hoped it would be.
Nikki Glaser, of course, closed the show, and I know that for many having Glaser here was the biggest draw of the festival. I loved having the opportunity to see her live; I enjoyed her set and laughed a lot. I know those who are longer-time fans than me were having a blast. I will say it’s a weird time to have a hill full of Canadian fans watching American comedians perform because while welcoming individual Americans here most of us are earnestly hoping that everyone will go away with a positive impression of our city and us as a people, collectively as a country, though, we could barely have more disdain for the United States. Glaser’s set was definitely an insightful, irreverent, brash and hilarious take on a very Hollywood/Los Angeles centric experience that has pervaded much, if not all, of the US. We see its effects here in Canada too, of course we do, but it’s not as pervasive, especially not here in the Maritimes. So, for us here in Halifax we are having a different experience listening to this set- in a way we can relate to everything Glaser is saying because we see all of it on social media, and on television, and in the film industry, but it isn’t as much, necessarily, our own immediate experience, so we also have a bit of an objective distance from it. And in this current political context that distance is enough for us to draw a line between what is Glaser’s cultural American experience, versus our own Canadian cultural experience, and I don’t think that this divide would have been as pronounced for folks two years ago. Glaser was caught off guard, for example, when she mentioned that Kim Kardashian would be in her upcoming film, also starring Fortune Feimster and Brenda Song, and there wasn’t a raucous cheer- she could feel a bit of a (polite) pushback from folks who couldn’t care less about that kind of American socialite experience. Glaser reminds me a lot of Joan Rivers, I’m sure she’s compared to her all the time, where she isn’t afraid to sound like she’s being a mean bitch on the surface, but if you really listen to everything that she’s actually saying, she’s making really astute observations. She really pushes the envelope, like Rivers did, to nearly the extreme where folks can feel discomfort sometimes in not knowing if it’s appropriate to laugh, even though it’s always clear that she’s not intending any harm. There were a few jokes where I felt like she crossed a line for me, but overall she is exploring the perils of aging online, as a public figure, in Los Angeles, in America, and how women are damned if they do and damned if they don’t in every possible scenario. This is obviously true, and Glaser was able to frame certain scenarios through her humour in ways that I hadn’t considered before. She also isn’t just roasting others, she’s quite self depreciating, which endears her to the audience, despite the fact that she must have loved her time in Halifax because she was easily the hottest gal in town while she was here.
You can tell from Nikki Payne’s introductory set that Haligonians are still pinching themselves to have something like the Great Outdoors Comedy Festival here. The weather on Sunday was ideal, the people who were seated around me couldn’t have been nicer, there was tons of food to eat (and drinks!), and so much laughter and gratitude that we get to have this kind of an experience without needing to travel to a bigger city. I’d happily see all four of these ladies again, and I look forward to finding out what the lineup is for the festival next year. I also really appreciate the festival’s dedication to taking care of the natural environment we are in, and making sure that after the sets are over all the garbage is removed, and the only lasting remnants of the festival are those we take home with us.
Nikki Glaser has a slew of American tour dates coming up, but also 3 performances in Vancouver at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre September 26th and 27th. Fortune Feimster is on tour throughout the US through November 20th, Steph Tolev is also touring in the States, but she will be in Edmonton at the Francis Winspear Centre October 17th, and in Victoria at McPherson Playhouse October 14th. For more information, check out their websites and connect with them on your favourite social media platforms. You can find out more information about the Great Outdoors Comedy Festival at this website.
