Local promoters The Comedy Club and Live Nation BEC-Tero hit another home run on Friday with a show by top US comedian Jim Gaffigan, following their Jim Jefferies sell-out in January and preceding two Jimmy Carr shows this Friday. Fans of comedy, and of people called Jim, are having a good 2019.
Gaffigan was in town touring his all-new show, Quality Time, and as usual there was no deviation from his stand-up formula. There were no meta reflections on modern society, no searing political asides and none of the shocking quick-fire quips of Jimmy Carr. Gaffigan sticks sardonically to a few go-to topics: parenthood, his weight and eating. And while his comedy is simple, it never stops being funny.
Gaffigan is known for his clean material. Friday's Scala Theatre performance saw him drop a single profanity in the entire show, berating the audience as bastards for an imagined slur about his weight. In fact, the night was so free of profanity that it made you realise just how often you, your friends and most other comics swear.
Gaffigan inhabits the Land of Dad, where life's mundane ups and downs possess a wry humour that can be expertly mined. And if life sometimes isn't mundane, as his wife's recent tumour surgery attests, even this can be gently turned into a self-deprecating riff with Gaffigan as the anti-hero about to lose his wife and, literally, his shit. This more serious routine aside, his delivery suggests material honed at the dinner table for his wife and five kids, as opposed to, say, Frankie Boyle, who presumably polishes new quips by Skyping the ghost of Bill Hicks.
Beginning with a routine delivered so quietly it commanded attention, Gaffigan immediately had the Scala audience on his side, and for the next hour they were never more than a couple of sentences away from a decent laugh.
He kicked off with a bit on Thailand, alleging that its famously delicious food was guilelessly stolen from surrounding countries. Then the Bangkok heat was compared to a trip to Las Vegas that was so hot, "I could hear the Sun". He forgot the name of durians, so asked: "What's the Thai fruit that sounds like a Jewish holiday?" referring to the previous day's Purim feast, then declared that the fruit smells like someone microwaving an onion.
From there, we learned that Gaffigan's recent surgery taught him the appendix has so little scientific purpose it's the Kardashian of the body's organs. His recent graduation to XXL sized-clothing was played for laughs, as was his assertion that if you ever see a fat guy wearing an untucked shirt (as he was), someone close to him has recently seen it tucked in and pointed out how bad it looks. That segued somehow into a reminiscence of a family safari and a mostly imaginary bear attack. An extended routine about horses was punctuated by his third-person commentary on the show, delivered in a prissy voice: "Is he still telling horse jokes? Will he ever stop?"
So, no surprises, and the gags don't sound terribly amusing written down, but Gaffigan has a way of wringing delightful absurdity from ordinary life. Decades in the business have given him meticulous control of his craft that's buoyed by his ample charm. He's simply very funny.
