Jarred Christmas starts his show with a whirlwind of enthusiasm and energy, before he confesses he is really tired and thus we spend the next portion of the show hearing about parenthood. For similarly positioned audience members there is laughter of recognition but everyone can appreciate his some of his trials as a dad. 

This promising start, which is full of Christmas’s usual fantastic facial expressions and voice impressions, takes a slow decline as he flits from one idea to the other, sometimes introducing ideas that we think will lead to a joke and then abandoning them altogether for a subsidiary point.  At times, this makes him hard to follow.

He spends much of the middle section reminiscing about the nineties, which is isolating for those who were not teens then, and anecdotes about his school days will make any woman cringe. 

Highlights are Christmas’s dance routine, which is a thing to behold, and his unique perspective on everyday life. This includes a few handy hints for making the everyday a little bit more fun. 

Considering most of the audience are young (and because they are at comedy, probably liberal), his concluding rant about how great marriage equality is, is a little superfluous and angry. Christmas tells us things we already agree about with no personal insight. Yes, marriage equality is something we should be incredibly proud of (if only it had happened years ago!), so please stop yelling at us. 

If you are Christmas’s age or in a similar life situation, this may be a great night out but otherwise, it is just okay. 

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If you’ve always been feeling like your life just isn’t that intense and have been thinking for some time that you’d like to take a course in using effing linguistic intensifiers to intensify things up a bit, or even a course in linguistic-effing-infixes, or maybe you’d just like some encouragement about the effing intensification you’re engaging in at the moment, this might be the show for you, because there certainly are a lot more effing intensities than I’m accustomed to hearing in every day life. Don’t take your toy dog with you (luckily we left him at the office) – it might alarm his sensitive ears. 

Jarred Christmas covers whimsical nostalgia for the technology of the 80s and 90s, whimsical nostalgia for the music of the 80s and 90s, whimsical nostalgia for the time when he wasn’t a responsible adult parent and his whimsical nostalgia for New Zealand.

Given that Christmas is a UK resident, perhaps New Zealand is the only place he can really let out all his hidden, pent-up, heartfelt nationalism and patriotic yearning, so if you enjoy getting competitive with Australians, or you’re not aware that ‘August’ is a boys’ name, again, this may be the show for you. 

It’s manly man’s humour: lavish dick jokes with both stereotypical and stereotyped asides to “the ladies”. The only difference between this and the classic sexist racist homophobic white male comedians is that Christmas is clearly left-wing, supports gay marriage, keeps the gender stereotyping in check, isn’t overly racist and was once in a pantomime with Priscilla Presley (a story that leaves me with many questions I want to ask his insurance company!).

This is a particular style and culture of comedy that many people like and I hope those people have a good night, otherwise you can always admire Christmas’s very beautiful website or go to FanFiction Comedy instead. 

If Christmas’s 8-year-old niece wants to do a show in the Festival some time, I’d definitely buy a ticket to see her show.

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