Category: Reviews

I saw Stuart Daulman at the Comedy Festival on Easter Saturday. I don’t know my way round the comedy world really so I hadn’t heard of him, but I’m told he is well known.

I saw him in the Quilt Room at Trades Hall. He did a selection of set pieces under the general title of “Family” or something like that. Not actual stand up. I got a few laughs, he earned the twenty something bucks. Having said that I was left dissatisfied with the show and would likely “prefer others” , as the racing guides put it, in future.

The format was that the show was framed by conversations with his family, hence the title I guess, and then an inner frame where he was an American special forces commander giving a pep talk to the troops before and then at the end of the show after an action. No biting satire here, no shadow of Abu Ghraib etc, just gentle mockery of American enthusiasm and sentimentality. Inside that the best piece was of a harassed pub owner covering for his regular Trivia Night MC. It showed some empathy and was quite funny. Hands down the worst piece was when he donned a lizard mask and gave a speech as a Liberal MP. I mean, I don’t like the Liberals either but the mask pretty much was the joke. It was like the worst bit from the worst day of the worst student comedy revue you ever saw.

Other bits were in between. There was a tradie, the main joke being that he was noisy and also apparently that he earned good money. I won’t be an arsehole and describe all the bits. And I repeat that I did laugh from time to time But the thing about political comedy, and the inclusion of the lizard bit made it impossible not to view it through that lens, is that one has to at least be able to humour the presuppositions it is based on. You don’t have to agree with them but you have to find a place of sympathy with them., or at least interest in them.

And the presuppositions here seemed to be of facile middle class Laborism right down to the friendly attitude to the American military. And even that could have been funny if it had engaged with other points of view.