Excruciating Darby brings house down

Kiwi comes home: New Zealand comic Rhys Darby warms up another crowd.

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Rhys Darby is known to New Zealand and to parts of the world that watch American cable television as Murray, the gormless but ultimately harmless manager for Flight of The Conchords.

The highly successful Kiwi folk- parody duo transplanted to the United States to play a version of themselves in the show Flight of The Conchords.

This year New Zealanders have also seen Darby in the Jim Carrey movie Yes Man and the all-star British comedy The Boat That Rocked.

Returning home and returning to his roots - stand-up comedy - Darby had a packed Opera House in Wellington in stitches with his regular routines based around mime, sound effects and physical comedy that includes silly walks, funny dancing and occasional contortions and pratfalls.

Imagine seeing one of the people from your high school Theatre Sports team if they had achieved bit- parts in a couple of Hollywood movies.

Darby cobbled together a show that wasn't sure if it wanted to a be series of chats about the movie and television roles he has been fortunate to net during the past two years, or a greatest hits retread of the comedy that made him known once a year during the annual comedy festival shows that tour the country's main cities.

Silly walks, sound effects and squeaky voices should not really be the basis for a 15-minute Comedy Gala routine, much less a headlining 90-minute show.

But the audience is putty in Darby's hands, as he allows his limbs to go putty-like; at one point, absurdly, and for no apparent reason, he mimicked the sound and movements of several dinosaurs, even inventing a few creatures of his own.

It was the most painful comedy I have seen - excruciating to look at and listen to. It brought the house down.

Darby makes the camp absurdities of Hi-De-Hi look like Masterpiece Theatre. But we cannot mock him. He's achieved something.

He's genuinely famous now and, wisely, touring to cash in on that while it lasts. This victory lap on home turf was lovingly lapped up.

WHAT:

Rhys Darby: It's Rhys Darby  Night

WHERE: The Opera House, Wednesday until tonight

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