Te Radar on 30 years of comedy and his Retrospectacle revival

Retrospectacle sees Te Radar going full circle to celebrate his 30 years in comedy.

The comedian explains why he’s performing five different shows in one week.

We’re supposed to be talking about Te Radar’s new comedy show Retrospectacle which is, in fact, five old comedy shows, but I’ve become distracted by the spectacle behind him. He’s Zoomed in to chat from his home in West Auckland and behind him in his office are all manner of macabre knick-knacks and curios.

“That skull was in Hercules,” he says, turning and pointing at the grinning human skull on the bookshelf behind him. “It’s from the early 90s, that creative period where suddenly everyone was at art school and working. A friend was working on Xena so I got all these great props. It’s just foam rubber.”

Sat beside it on the shelf is a lamb. Another prop? No, this one’s the real deal.

“A friend knew I collected taxidermy and said, ‘Hey, there’s a stuffed lamb in a shop in Milford’. So I drove up and bought it and it’s the lamb that the Young Farmers gave to Robert Muldoon in 1976. Since then I’ve started doing all of the Young Farmer of the Year events and I’ve met the guy that gave it to Muldoon back in the day.”

He pauses and then in conclusion says, “So it’s just this full circle of things.”

Inadvertently, I’ve stumbled across a handy opening metaphor. This is because Retrospectacle sees Te Radar going full circle himself to celebrate his 30 years in comedy. The show, which begins next week as part of the New Zealand International Comedy Festival, sees the comedian revisiting and performing five of his award-winning comedy specials from his career.

From Tuesday he’ll perform a different show each night. He begins with 2005′s Timor ODDyssey, the breakthrough special that chronicles his failed attempt at becoming a war correspondent after blagging his way into the Timor war zone. The next night it’s Eating the Dog, his 2009 deep dive into the stranger side of Aotearoa’s history, followed by 2012′s Antarcticana which recounts his time in Antarctica. Things get trippy on Friday night with Intoxicana, a look at Kiwis’ relationship with drugs and booze, before he wraps the whole thing up on Saturday night with a performance of last year’s Cookbookery! which cooks up a comedic storm by braving New Zealand’s vintage cookbooks and the mad recipes within.

Phew. If that sounds like a lot, well, it is. Five completely different shows, performed over consecutive nights are a peculiar sort of madness. But then Te Radar has always operated in that realm that straddles the fine line between genius and madcap.

“I’m deep in the midst of trying to edit scripts down,” he replies when asked how the preparation is going. “Often people struggle for material, but these shows are nearly two hours with an intermission. I’ve got to cut them all down to about an hour. But even with getting it into my head that these are shortened versions for one night only, it’s really hard to cut out great stories. You don’t want to lose the subtlety and the nuance that make the stories really relevant.”

Then, sounding very much like someone who’s just realised the scope of their task he says, “It’s been quite a process.”

What makes it even more impressive/bonkers is that most of these shows weren’t written down. For the majority of his career, he’s been relying on memory to get him through and not forget the gags.

“My weakness has always been writing scripts, writing jokes. I can’t sit down and write content. When I started doing stand-up, I would pretend that I could sit down and write material but it just wasn’t going to work for me.”

Te Radar has been relying on memory to get him through and not forget the gags.

In those early years, he’d create shows by just going on stage and essentially winging it, improvising, riffing and creating material on the spot. The following week he’d keep the best bits - or the bits he remembered - and build from there. Eventually, he’d have a routine.

“I did for a long time that,” he grins. “I loved that they were never written down. It made them ephemeral.”

But those days are long behind him. A few years ago his life changed with a single, simple purchase.

“The best thing I’ve ever bought is a binder. I use it all the time,” he says, shuffling some things around on his desk and then pulling up a hefty-looking binder, stuffed with documents. “It’s a thin veneer of professionalism, a binder, and often in this life, that’s all you need.”

As he opens it up he says, “What have we got …” before exclaiming, “Ah! These are multiple versions of earlier drafts that I haven’t quite thrown away. I’ve got to go through these and put a big red line through things. Thirty years into comedy and I’m still developing my processes.”

He puts the binder back on the desk and circles the conversation back to the task of remembering his five routines in time for next week’s shows.

“The thing is, these are stories that I love telling and good stories, once you find them, they tell themselves,” he says. “So it’s probably easier to remember them than what other comedians are doing. I guess it’s like sport. You train those muscles.”

Then he laughs and says, “And my muscles are good at making it look as if I appear to have remembered everything … because people won’t know if I haven’t!”

The Lowdown

Who: Comedian Te Radar

What: Te Radar: Retrospectacle, five of his award-winning comedy shows performed over five nights.

When: At the Comedy Festival from Tuesday. Tickets to the week’s shows are on sale now.

The New Zealand International Comedy Festival is back in Auckland and Wellington. Over the next three weeks, the New Zealand Herald will review some of the top shows throughout the festival.