Brad Zimmerman’s show is a treat. Here is a comedian whose study of the art has taught him what works to create surely one of the most challenging of theatrical presentations. The audience sits happily rapt through an hour with Brad at Cuba Street’s S & M bar.

A Dunedin reviewer described him as “disarmingly gentle”, he tells us. This is a reference to the fact that he doesn’t ‘do’ audience participation. “I’ll leave you alone.” This reviewer isn’t the only one to breathe a sigh of relief.

The story of the chicken in the show’s title is touched on throughout, but Brad masterfully keeps us waiting for the denouement until the very last moment. Meanwhile, he weaves us several stories – even interweaves them – thus achieving perhaps the most difficult of feats for the comic: some kind of coherence.  

Tales of his family are fair game. He reveals why he and his wife were unable to discover the gender of their unborn child and how it leads to sage advice later in its life. And we revel in his impersonation of the South African midwife who assists in the delivery.

Two of his targets are gays and the elderly. Brad manages to make us laugh without any low digs or insults. He lived with a gay couple for years. When he joins a gay dating website, just to see what happens … [spoiler avoided]. And old people get an accolade.

I shall avoid the temptation to hint at how it all ends. Suffice it to say that if Brad could teach us how to create such a tour de force from our own experiences, he’d make a million. 

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