Rhys Darby in full flight
COMEDY Rhys Darby
4 stars Review: David Zampatti
Astor Theatre
New Zullind's favourite band manager, Rhys Darby, has returned to Perth after a four-year absence, this time for a couple of nights at the Astor. On the back of his memorable stint as Murray Hewitt in Flight of the Conchords, he was hot property back then. The house-full signs up at the Astor confirm he hasn't cooled off in the interval.
Rhys Darby Live is a distillation of stand-up segments from his more skit and character-driven shows, although we meet one of his aliases, the park ranger-cum- personal bodyguard Bill Napier, in a quick routine to warm up the crowd and introduce a clever support by Jamie Bowen.
The main course is an autobiography, or something resembling one. We learn Darby spent time in the New Zealand army, met his wife of 10 years, Rosie, in a nightclub, and honeymooned at a beach-and- jungle resort in Thailand.
From there, it's pretty much mayhem. Darby is the complete comic package; his face is expressive and sometimes reptilian, his voice insinuating and his physical comedy wild and hilarious.
He chucks his entire bag of tricks at his stories, from his career as a pickpocket honey trap for the police to his promotion to NZ's three-man SAS because he could impersonate the sound of the machine guns for which they had not been issued any ammunition.
A jungle stroll on his Thai honeymoon turns into something out of Lewis Carroll when the cocktail he drinks at a tree-top Tiki bar has one of the more entertaining mushrooms as its main ingredient, leaving him "spangled off my chops", consorting with sad-faced caterpillars and trying to get under the ocean he mistakes for a massive doona.
He muses on fist bumps versus handshakes and the evolution of taps in public toilets, on how you call cats and how spouses call you. Finally he takes us to a club to show us his dance moves: Feed the Chickens, Delivery Boy, and James Bond Ski Jump. All the girls but one scorn him. Meet Rosie.
Darby gets every reaction, from knowing sniggers to hysteria, from an audience in the palm of his hand. With the comic weaponry at his disposal, it's hard to imagine he'd ever fail to get them there.
