Peekaboo!

2026 Billy T Award nominee Samantha Hannah is back from maternity leave with a killer new show this NZ International Comedy Festival. Peekaboo! is about parenthood, pregnancy, and finding joy wherever you can. If that sounds heartwarming and life affirming to you, well, you’re nearly right. “I like to use the ring camera to watch my partner almost miss the bus”, Hannah says wistfully, as security footage of the father of her child plays on the projector screen behind her. The audience chuckles as he lollops up the driveway, half-breaking into a run. He’s late, and just as he rounds the corner, an impeccably timed bus sails past. Hannah looks back at us and grins. She’s practically glowing with joy.

Under the pretence of developing a ‘family friendly show’, Hannah gives us storytime and sex jokes, toy boxes full of bubbleguns, body horror, a giant teddy bear that has to be seen to be believed, and a little bit of ‘screentime’ (as a treat), all the while revelling in the absurd specificities of how we communicate with adults and children. The game for the audience is in the gleeful sense of transgression that ensues when Hannah crosses those boundaries. “And how old are you?” she asks the man sitting next to me. “29?” she gasps encouragingly, “You’re a big boy!”

There were some technical hiccups on opening night, but Hannah is so enormously funny and quick-witted that I’m not convinced flawlessness would have improved the experience (watching her ‘gentle parent’ the stage technician through their botched cues almost killed me).

Hannah has total control of the room, never misses a beat, and by 10 minutes in, the audience was so completely on her side that she got away with eviscerating national treasure Lynley Dodd live on stage. An absolute icon.