He likes to move it, move it Rhys Darby is a curious comedian. Standing with a microphone in one place, monotonously speaking another social monologue, or running around the stage in an attempt to start a hall, talking about kettles or cutlery - this is not about him. No, his method is different. Traditional colloquial comedy, this New Zealand guy, whom you could see, for example, in "Rock Wave", boldly interferes with energetic acting miniatures. It sounds tempting, but what it translates into in practice, you can see in the live performance “Imagine it!” 2009.
Although it will be true to note that few comedians, even if we mean phrase books, completely abandon acting in their performances. Take at least one of the most popular comedians of recent years, Louis C.K., and he in recent works includes pantomime in the numbers much more often than in early programs. But inclusion is one thing. If it doesn't come in, well, you can make up for failure in a moment with what you know. Another thing is to build the lion's share of the performance at the game.
Darby himself calls himself "physical comedian" - literally this is not really translated, but the meaning, in general, is clear - an active comedian, a comedian in motion. And it's true. All his style, all humor is based on constant activity, playing, playing and flirting with what was said through various body movements. The conversational genre here serves rather as a means of transition from one miniature to another. This mix looks cheerful, maybe even fresh, but, unfortunately, not as funny as I would like. The New Zealander is invested in actions, and plays, by the way, sanely, but the fact is that even in miniatures there should be a similarity of a punchline, of course, equivalent in strength to an ordinary, verbal joke. This is exactly what Rhys so often lacks - precision, percussion. From many miniatures he comes out as if without making the final twist. Darby happily returns to some pantomimes, although the same robots the comedian turns to quite often are bored by the end of the show. At the same time, colloquial chords are written kind of lazy, but often work even stronger than miniatures - due to the effect of surprise.
Strongly knocked down story with a semantic core of Darby, by the way, there is. His show is a traditional program from the series “This is who I am”, which is not too surprising, especially for the first one in a hurry. But what is truly amazing is that what is clearly imprinted in the memory are the huge wet spots on the comedian’s back and armpits at the end of the show. The output turns out to be a comedy from the category of freakish: it will not always be funny, but if everything is boring, then you can look. At least to understand that you can do humor in this way.