After seeing Javier Jarquin’s Card Ninja show last night, I just have to see his stand-up act as part of Nothing But Stand Up Dudes tonight. I don’t stay for Stand Up Divas, but I am seeing some of their solo shows during the festival.  

The venue, in the Christchurch Casino building, works well for this sort of show – intimate, but with plenty of seats, and a spacious bar if you want to come early or stay around for the next act. Tonight, audience numbers are very healthy, even if Jimmy Carr’s performance at the Arena across town is competing for audience patronage.

The Buskers Festival shows are certainly drawing the crowds this year as word spreads about the quality of the acts (one of tonight’s performers has added an extra solo show because his scheduled performance has sold out), and the long and lively queues in evidence as I wander around the various venues in the festival area, are bringing a real summer carnival atmosphere to the city. This is just what we need amidst the mayhem of the ‘rebuild’, which comes in for some hilarious scrutiny from tonight’s international visiting performers.

The format of Nothing But Stand Up Dudes will be familiar to anyone who, like me, is a fan of Live at the Apollo, with a host (MC), himself an established comedian, and three guest comics, each of whom has a 15-20 minute time-slot.

Although Brit comedian Stuart Goldsmith proves an ideal and comically engaging host, who gets the audience well warmed up for the following acts, Harley Breen (first guest up) simply slaughters us with his irreverent, shameless and, for some, at times, perhaps cringe-making style and material. He plays up the crass Ozzy to the hilt, but his ability to conjure the most luridly graphic sexual images, with language to match, is genuinely funny as well as full of dark truths that only the art of true comedy can expose.

But it’s not just the material – the delivery is so full of character, spontaneity and vitality, not-to-mention an extraordinary sense of timing, that the pleasant and polite gentleman holding the bucket at the door for tips as we leave an hour later, is almost impossible to reconcile with the offensive ‘bloke’ we witnessed on stage. When his time’s up and he thanks us for our responsiveness, we feel disappointed that the time has gone so quickly – until …

Up next is Larry Dean from Scotland whose totally different style we quickly adjust to and find ourselves responding to just as loudly and willingly. One sign of a true comic talent is an ability to introduce material of the moment, and Larry Dean’s take on a couple of very sharp earthquake jolts these last two days, from someone who’s never previously experienced any tectonic movement at all, really hits home with a Christchurch audience. His ability to make us laugh so much at his reaction to this new experience is very welcome, and he is our favourite person, however pale, thickly-accented and un-blokish, for the next fifteen minutes.

There is also a genuine feel of truth to his other material based on personal experiences – that wonderful ability to show the funny side of ordinary or awkward situations is most impressive when delivered as well as this. I’m looking forward, more than ever now, to his solo show on Friday night (his Thursday show is already sold out). 

Finally, the man who got me out again on what is supposed to be my one night off in my schedule of Buskers Festival reviewing (it’s a tough life), and Javier Jarquin does not disappoint. His stand up manner may not have quite the ‘spontaneous delivery’ and technical skill, or the ‘tour-de-force of theatrical virtuosity’ that I talked about in reviewing his Card Ninja show – that is something very special indeed – but he does maintain the high level of comic entertainment that tonight’s show has already established.

Tonight, the language and content is more ‘adult’ than in the ninja act, but a fascination with superheroes remains and a more low-key style is a fitting foil for the hyper-characterisation of his stand-up colleagues on this stage. Jarquin’s final contribution to Nothing But Stand Up Dudes is tonight (Monday), before another well-known New Zealand personality, Dai Henwood, takes over from Tuesday. But, if you miss Javier Jarquin here, DO see Card Ninja if it’s not already sold out.

I dare say that those who attended Jimmy Carr will have enjoyed that show, but I don’t regret missing it for Nothing But Stand Up Dudes. 

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