Does the Fun Ever Start?

In this freewheeling hour of comedy, audiences find themselves laughing at all the awkward consequences of adult life, or lack thereof. Django Nicalls and Clinton Haines take up all our adult obsessions, pressures and failures, and in their oddball raconteur vein remind us never to take ourselves too seriously.

Nicalls kicks off the hour by relaying the virtues of a daily existence made of sleep, eating Ben and Jerry’s ice-cream, and spending hours watching Breaking Bad. His routine, which loosely revolves around various hapless individuals, takes us on various entertaining segues that include: an endearing fantasy of picking up a girlfriend by espousing the superiority of the Swiss over cheddar cheese option at Subway; an existential reckoning of what really happened when Mr Burns was shot; and the suggestion of publishing a children’s book that puts to bed the idea that a child can do anything they dream of by positing the more cynical reality involving two things they may be good at, if that.

Haines’s idiosyncratic comedy relies on the awkward factor: think awkward pauses, deliberately ‘unfunny’ or lame jokes, in-between moments, jokes which rely on abrupt endings or petering off. This is emphasised by jittery gestures such as his continually looking at an imaginary watch on his wrist, adjusting the microphone, and peculiar gazes during his routines: essentially he serves up some meta-comedy about performance, whether intended or not. The pop culture references also abound with a ‘Batman reads Where’s Wally?’ routine and its inverse version; King Kong scoring an ‘ape out of ten’; and a Wonder Years interlude. The eccentricity is augmented by staged music and video elements, including a cop show satire featuring a bicycle cop.

While there are a few ejaculation and faecal matter jokes that will prove cringeworthy for some, and some not so effective ‘odd for odd’s sake’ moments, overall Does the Fun Ever Start? takes on the subjects of employment, marriage, consumerism, politics and no-hopers, and all their rawness, with a very special breed of awkward humour that agitates convulsive laughs from the audience.

Rating: 3 ½ stars out of 5