That variety of performance, underlined with sometimes odd, sometimes more traditional humour, marked the Polson Higgs Opening Night Showcase for the 12th festival in the city.
The opener for the 11-day event gave a taste of some of the acts lined up for the next week and a-half.
It began with Beards!Beards!Beards!, two bearded gentlemen from Wellington's Trick of the Light Theatre who performed athletic knee-bends and numerous beard-changes while singing the story of a girl who dreamed of growing a beard.
Festival director Josh Thomas thanked a long list of sponsors, and urged the mostly full Regent to ''make it your festival''.
Punters were also urged to buy tickets for coming shows, before Discharge's show Benedict Cumberbatch Must Die took the stage.
BCMD takes a control-freak actor, a sex-crazed celebrity obsessive and a fan fiction writer who writes ''wildly unpopular'' prose about the English actor who seems to have struck a chord with the female sector.
There is some sharp writing in BCMD, including some ''constructive criticism'' for the fan fiction writer.
''Your stories are fundamentally bad, but not in a specific way,'' she is told.
Scottish stand-up comedian Vladimir McTavish (aka Paul Sneddon) took over with jokes about Scottish people, drinking, weather, drinking and the poor life expectancy of Scots.
The festival begins today with Pick-a-Path: Dance in the City, at locations around the city.
