American Arj Barker has been a comedy stalwart for a while now. His shows, however, have always been unreliable in terms of content and delivery. Sometimes an interesting insight seems to almost accidentally be broadcast during his routine, which, regardless of material, always contains elements of rambling self-indulgence.
His latest production is mostly a poorly conceived mess. For a show that’s only an hour long in duration, you really shouldn’t spend a good 15 minutes of it devoted to the biological origins and purpose of flatulence. Frankly, even a minute of fart-related material is a minute too much for a comedian of any calibre. It’s just so frat-boy juvenile and shouldn’t be proffered as the mainstay of a performance.
Apart from this over-extended obsession, Barker also talks about masturbation and pornography (surprise!) as well as the deaths of several friends and biosecurity laws in New Zealand. There’s no overarching theme, with a harmonica-delivered song about Melbourne coffee, in between gratuitous attempts to push his new movie (which he’s starring in, called The Nut Farm) and his range of stickers (on sale in the foyer!).
There’s a bit of waffle about how to calibrate consciousness (hence the title of the show), perhaps to balance out all the talk about bodily excretions, but it’s basically Barker just wondering aloud. The comedic quotient of this attempt at high-brow philosophising is negligible.
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So in short: unfunny, protracted fart jokes and lacklustre material that’s just unworthy of a comedian who’s trodden the boards too many times and should have known better.
Tickets: $45-$55.90
Arj Barker: The Mind Field will be performing at the Athenaeum until 21 April 2024 as part of the Melbourne International Comedy Festival (MICF 2024).
