Rhys Darby: This Way To Spaceship

Some things that you won’t be able to do after seeing this show without thinking of Rhys Darby: use a hand dryer, look for a lost object, open your wallet, dance in a nightclub or watch dressage. With his cartoonish observational material coloured by gawky physical comedy and vocal sound-effects, the New Zealander has a way of infiltrating your everyday like that (okay, so you probably don’t watch dressage every day). 

Beginning with Bowie’s ‘Space Oddity,’ the show’s set is a spaceship, which Darby has snuck aboard to escape the pending Mayan-prophesised Armageddon. He’s clearly outgrown his cult reputation as incompetent band manager Murray in HBO’s much-loved Flight of the Conchords. Darby’s not too precious to invoke the TV series—"Jermaine?” he quizzes the spaceship’s suspiciously familiar sounding computer voice—but the large crowd feels like his own. One guy even gives him a homemade tinfoil robot.

Darby’s two funniest routines are lengthy set-pieces, one about pestering his school careers advisor to let him be a sound-effects guy, and another about his unconventional bachelor-days nightclub dance skills (ending in true love). But laughs don’t come on strong across the hour. Like Conchords—which isn’t always strictly laugh-out-loud funny—his appeal lies in fuzzy, good-natured loveability.

It’s appropriate that he tails his set with a joke about playing with his sons (and enjoying it more than they do). Darby’s like the kind of goofily hyper-fun dad youngsters dream of and teenagers dread. But while lift-off and landing are well achieved, this imaginary spacecraft ultimately proves a little underpowered to make it past that third star.