Arj Barker- Comedy Festival

Arj Barker’s Eleven begins with a bluesy harmonica solo – at which he is very adept – and this musical motif recurs throughout the show creating a loosely chaptered one-hour set broken up by a smattering of blues-styled pastiches…

Arj Barker’s Eleven begins with a bluesy harmonica solo – at which he is very adept – and this musical motif recurs throughout the show creating a loosely chaptered one-hour set broken up by a smattering of blues-styled pastiches.

His stage presence makes him inherently likeable. He has clearly familiarised himself with snippets of New Zealand culture and vernacular but he avoids making it feel forced. The comedy content runs the full gamut from his views on mother nature to ghosts and UFOs, with myriad non sequiturs featuring prominently in between.

Barker is not there to antagonise the crowd, quite the opposite in fact; his delivery and manner is warm and inclusive even when he shuns the microphone in favour of belting punchlines out au naturel to the back of Skycity Theatre. You could nearly be forgiven for thinking this was clean comedy – his manner is so affable – but then the profanities and sexual references remind you that it’s not the case. However, I certainly wouldn’t call the content controversial – most people are in agreement on avoiding rogue ping-pong balls in Thailand!

Barker commands the stage and the crowd as a consummate comedy professional; his humour is accessible and makes for a great hour of stand-up. If he can be faulted in any way it’s that Eleven comes across over-rehearsed; at times you feel he is nearly reciting it verbatim and this eliminates any illusion that some witticisms are off-the-cuff. However, in a way this reinforces his integrity as a professional comedian.

Despite the simplicity of his subject matter, Barker invariably surprises the crowd with the scenarios he conjures with his elastic mind. You do not get lost in any sort of over-intellectualised verbosity; instead you lose yourself in his abstract and hilarious imagination.

By Rachael McKinnon, 1 May 2011.

Arj Barker
Eleven

Auckland:
Dates: Sat 30 April & Thu 5 – Fri 6 May, 9pm
Venues: SKYCITY Theatre, Auckland
Tickets:
Adults $36.50
Conc. $33.50
Groups 10+ $33.50

Wellington:
Dates: Wed 4 May, 8.30pm
Venues: Opera House, Wellington
Tickets:
Adults $36.50
Conc. $33.50
Groups 10+ $33.50

Bookings: 0800 TICKETEK (842 538)