SOME COMEDIANS have an art of making the perfectly absurd seem perfectly normal. One of these is Dylan Moran, star of TV’s Black Books and erstwhile raconteur on stage, who hit Auckland for the first of three shows last night. At the same time, Moran’s absurdism is also the sign of a highly polished show which threw curve balls to the packed crowd left, right and centre. [Read more]

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In the Comedy Festival programme a quote from the Times in the UK claims that attending Dylan Moran’s show was "about as perfect an evening as I can recall" …that reviewer’s idea of perfection, apparently,  is being reminded of a wide range of examples of the crushing disappointments of life by an angry whatever-goes-between-young-and-middle-aged-man-going-on-grumpy-octogenarian who’s most endearing quality is the undiluted purity of his hatred for humanity redeemed only by his ability to make a tidy living complaining about it all. 

Obviously, I loved it.  Just reading that personal record-length opening sentence over it seems clearly infectious, this will to bitch with unashamed pedantic verbosity.  I’ve seen Black Books of course, so I was ready for the surly pessimism and the quietly definite obnoxiousness.  But viewing it as a performed character in a sitcom written by other people, I also half expected something different, someone more real, well not real, he was real, just maybe someone more …genuine, and maybe a bit more, well … friendly?

But no, he’s about as different to Bernard Black as Eminem is to Slim Shady.  And hey, if he ever makes a Rap album he can call himself D&M, and his alter ego could be B&B!  Ha!  I kill me.  And I know I’m making his review all about me now but it serves the hilarious grouchy prick right.  In any case, I was less than surprised when an IMDb search revealed that Moran did in fact pen seven episodes of Black Books.

He has a sly trick to win us over at the very start, with dubious claims that Auckland is his spiritual home (is that why he physically resembles Sam Hunt’s younger brother?) and he’s worked all over the world in London, New York, LA, Europe etc., all in preparation for this night.  Which is funny because it’s true really – anything you ever do, your entire life has led up to doing the next thing. 

What possibly elicits more of the perverse admiration we came in with, is his vitriolic take on Australia (‘it’s a gigantic rock on fire!’), slagging it off town by town and showing a particular, personal disdain for Perth.  Of course, being the dedicated journalist I am, thank you, I got the notion to google search for review copy, just to see how he went down over there; whether maybe his contempt for Perth and all it lacks was evident to the unwitting Perthian audience.  This excerpt from Myspace is typical of the comments available:  "I went to see Dylan Moran when he was in Perth and he was soooo friggin hilarious! I laughed so hard that I cried the whole time!". 

I suppose it’s more likely when he moves on from telling all of us here not to go to Perth or Tasmania or Germany, to the next place on his global rampage, well not so much rampage as a rueful sort of trudge, he’ll be strongly advising them not to come here, with his ‘I did, so you don’t have to!’.

Copyright © in the review belongs to the reviewer