Laugh! Festival: Rhys Darby & the Time Machine

by SUSAN BUDD

Rhys Darby is amazing. He whirls like a dervish, dances like John Travolta, has a face like rubber and a voice box capable of producing extraordinary sounds. And he does it all simultaneously with a zany but coherent story.

With a shock of blond hair that could rival Harpo Marx and wide, innocent blue eyes, Darby looks like a choirboy soon to lose his soprano voice. He can still do soprano and all the rest: drumbeats, telephone answer machines, creaking machinery and the pathetic miaow of an incarcerated cat.

Darby is the champion of the Ohakune Dance-Off and it is easy to see why as he goes through his Saturday Night Fever paces. It may seem irrelevant, but he gets the payoff when, sent to the nasty, robot-ruled future by a time machine, he faces competition with a robot.

The plot has a dozen twists and turns, and as many characters, but Darby sails through supreme.