The late-night crowd have little to no idea what to expect from these brave young Wellingtonians, making their NZ Comedy Festival debut in this opening Auckland weekend.  Imogen Stone, Degge Jarvie and Zane Jarvie shuffle awkwardly on, off and on again, setting the presumably intended tone of inept embarrassment early. It continues at such a rate that I’m concerned there won’t be enough synonyms for ‘awkward’ to review it. 

After introductions that include Degge quickly invading the audience’s space and labouring a pun that one would logically reason and hope must surely be the worst one of the night (no such luck), we are supplied with prepared photocopied handwritten lists of the various concepts being expressed to us this evening – twenty four in total, give or take a couple that evidently had to be scratched last minute. 

While in recent decades I believe we’ve grown exponentially more confident in our society and in the eyes of the world, it seems the fit young trio’s primary agenda is to celebrate the old-school classic Kiwi-style lameness from which our historically amateurish tall-poppy lopping cultural cringe was ignobly born.  

A series of snappy costume changes range from garish to grand and downright absurd as the players seem to take an almost scientific approach to the classic hit-and-miss structure of sketch comedy.  About half to two thirds of the eclectic, non-sequiturial vignettes are throw-away filler gags, a handful have more degrees of impressive ingenuity about them, while a couple of thematic circus set-pieces from Imogen legitimately wow the crowd. 

The spectrum between groanworthiness and greatness is one of the widest I’ve seen in one show, including some would-be-raunchy burlesque near-nudity to arguably sweeten the deal.  The unsettling effect of the dominant funny-cause-it’s-not humour reaches quite profound, Andy-Kaufmanesque levels of uncertainty in knowing quite how to take it: where does the deliberate anti-comedy end and the genuine anguish begin?

Zane in particular tends to get rather beside himself about how badly it’s going, not helped a whole lot by a bemused though sporadically responsive audience. 

We’re definitely enjoying ourselves though, and many of the worst bits – absolute stinkers: fair warning – are nonetheless genuinely and warmly received.  It’s a solid effort in the throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks format, and however much you allow yourself to enjoy the terrible, terrible puns and consciously woeful comic timing, Imogen’s gymnastics alone are worth the ticket. 

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