In my reviews of Calypso Nights and Tap Head I commended Barnie Duncan as a master of unpredictability, subverting expectations, with the comic timing to make the corniest joke sound good to the ear. His notable mime and dancing skills also enhance his shows, as does the surrealism that permeates them. All these qualities and more are present in Bunny.

While Tap Head juxtaposed comedy with the loneliness of a solitary cold tap, Bunny pits it against very personal grief. Barnie made the show a year ago, for the Auckland season of the International Comedy Festival at the Basement Theatre, soon after his mother died. Clubbing is the antidote he craves, even more so in Lockdown times. The comedy arises as he tries to lose himself in the late-night club scene, and as he shares the whimsical permutations of his creative mind at the stand-up mic.

Barnie is bopping to looped pulsating music and adding bits with his electric guitar beneath an digital ticker board reading “Haere Mai – Welcome” as we take our seats. The ticker’s a tickler with wittiness, too, throughout the show. “Life is an illusion” is an early message and “relatable absurdity” is his own description of what follows. His use of a loop pedal is a signifier of how loopy this show will get.

A lot of what he says and does seems random until he calls bits back. “I feel so sorry for the kids of today. In my day …” is a recurring theme that critiques nostalgia as a coping mechanism for grief. Barnie’s satirical take on it, offered in an American accent for some reason, rivals Monty Python’s Four Yorkshiremen sketch.

Imaginative riffs include what happens to the ZZZZZs of sleep. And not only does Barnie riff on an air guitar at an air mic, he also sits on an air loo – thereby discovering his glute intolerance.

Fascinating factoids enrich the show. Tear ducts, for example. If you want to know how a butterfly makes a turtle cry, see Bunny. The way Emperor Penguins bring new life into the world is wonderfully rendered and a delicious means of sharing how becoming a parent has compensated for losing one.

The last few minutes are challenging: has he lost the plot? Is he stuck in a loop? The pay-off, which trusts us to have tuned into the subtext, is as subtle as it is powerful.

Why this show is called Bunny is anyone’s guess – a conflation of Barnie and funny, perhaps? – but there is no doubt Barnie Duncan’s latest show proves that pain + truth = comedy. It’s a show you can cuddle, like a bunny.
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