Prepare yourself, says California standup Arj Barker, for an hour of enjoyable light entertainment. But he's underselling himself: this show, from the star of HBO's Flight of the Conchords, is cracking comedy. The anecdotes and reflections are gloriously dopey. His self-importance is so hopelessly misplaced that you want to hold its hand and take it home. And the delivery is note-perfect, a masterclass in the modulation of tone and timing for comic effect.
Barker's on-stage persona is deliciously amusing. On the one hand, it's the classic know-all who knows less than he thinks, convinced he's a step ahead of his audience ("What you don't understand is ... ") and alarmed that the world isn't hearing his bright ideas. News bulletins should lie to discourage terrorism, say, and after Avatar, 2D movies should be put out of their misery: "That's about as exciting as reading a book!" But like Avatar, Barker has extra dimensions. He knows we know his character is a goofball, so he steps out of that conceit and deconstructs it. But he's a goofball about that, too – the silliness here is multilayered.
He also maximises the impact of material that, by definition, wouldn't look that smart on the page. He addresses throwaway subjects – the naming of planets, the efficacy of fonts – as if they are national emergencies. His theory about climate change ("Perhaps there's something wrong with the sun") is made funny by his emphasis on the last word, which explodes with the impatience of a man to whom the truth is screamingly obvious. Elsewhere, he throws his head back and bellows out punchlines, as if he can no longer bear to keep all this insight to himself. The title of Barker's show is Let Me Do the Talking; I'd gladly have let him do it all night.
