Reviewed at the Playhouse, Sydney Opera House on Wednesday October 15, during Just For Laughs Sydney
Jim Gaffigan is an essential comedian. He is essential viewing, and he writes about the essentials of life. Family. Love. TV. And, most prominently, food.
For the entrée, the crowd is warmed up nicely by local-via-New-York comic, James Smith. Smith is a great choice to open, as his laidback annoyance at his own generation brings solid laughs to the already excited room.
Now it’s time for the main course. Enter Jim Gaffigan: the everyman. The shlub. The comedy nerd hero. And in this case, the rock star.
From the get-go, the audience is hungry for anything he says. And he wastes no time in delivering. Gaffigan serves a tightly written menu of anecdotes. Jokes fly by every few seconds, tossed out with his trademark conversational delivery – equal parts bewildered and tired. Gaffigan is a rare act in that he appeals to the alternative crowd and mainstream audiences. His bizarre perspective and character voices feel as at home in the Opera House as they would in a stadium, or a small club. He would be funny anywhere, for any crowd.
Every touring act does the obligatory Australian references to open the show, but Gaffigan’s takedown of Sydney’s counterproductive bar lockout law is by far the funniest and most insightful local reference gag I’ve ever seen.
If you’ve never had a taste, Gaffigan’s setlist might look uninspired on paper. But like a good meal, it’s all in the presentation. Offhanded jokes about his weight become an absurdist museum tour of self-loathing, and an extended riff on fish is packed with so many jokes, twists, turns of phrase and asides that the audience is laughing as much at the material as they are at the shock that he’s getting so much mileage from the topic.
And that’s what any Gaffigan connoisseur knows and loves about the guy; he takes a seemingly ordinary subject, and turns it into an absurdity. It’s this unique observational brain that has made him one of the most successful and respected comics in the business today.
And for dessert? Hot Pockets, of course.
