Chris Parker loves to perform and he’s making a success of it. The TV and stage credits and awards in his CV – Jono and Ben, Hudson and Halls, Camp Binch and so much more – provide plenty of evidence for both of these propositions. Now he brings us Iconique, a one-man comedy show currently on at Bats.

The show starts with a song in which Parker spells out his aspiration to be a living icon. It’s a good introduction to the style and material of the show – energetic, camp/ sexy, and ready to mock anyone or anything, including – you might say, particularly – Parker himself.  

The song also introduces us to one of Parker’s great strengths as a performer – nothing seems to faze him. If a prop or a gag doesn’t work, he improvises so adeptly that you’d think the original lapse was a deliberate ploy to feed him with more material. Confident and quick-witted, he’s also outstanding at working in close with the audience, as a couple of late arrivers discover to their cost on opening night.

The show combines a number of comic modes, presented in a fast-moving medley. Parker mostly uses a standard format where themes – the internet, porn, the latest electronic devices, Instagram – are set up and given the observational humour treatment. There are also running gags. His relationship with his independent-minded virtual assistant Alexa is a popular favourite, as is my own fave, kindly stooping to befriend straight people. The original songs are a highlight. 

The main thread running through this material is Parker’s experience as a gay millennial living in the contemporary world. It’s a world in which it’s possible for a cool Auckland urbanite like Parker to forget, occasionally, that not everyone around him is gay. The dark side of his experience is there, you understand, but it’s not in the foreground. This is comedy, not a lecture, and there’s a strong sense that Parker is out to entertain rather than hammer home socio-political points.

Parker is an experienced performer with a range of skills at his command, and he’s putting on material that he’s done before this year. In other words, he knows what he’s doing. I’m still left wondering whether he will modify his approach for later performances.

On opening night, the first part, maybe the first half, is delivered at machine gun speed. That’s understandable from the point of view of building momentum and carrying the audience along. On the other hand, not everyone, including your reviewer (particularly your reviewer?) can keep up. There’s a possibility that a lot of good gags, particularly the asides, aren’t getting through. Of course, that could be a deliberate ploy.

There are also a few technical glitches which Parker may want to iron out, including a non-functioning visual display for his big closing number.

Not all the gags are to my taste (didn’t enjoy the grandmother story), but it would be amazing if they were. Whatever – this show earns an enthusiastic response from the noisiest, whoopingest audience I’ve heard in a long while.

Has Parker achieved icon status yet? His models include Judy Garland, Pink and Che Guevara, so the answer has to be – possibly not, so far. He’s got a rich vein of material and he knows how to work it, so let’s hope he keeps trying. 

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On opening night of Chris Parker’s sold-out Auckland run at this year’s NZ International Comedy Festival, he was there to make an impression.

The Christchurch-born, Auckland-based comedian’s red satin bell-bottoms and slinky scarlet shirt should have alerted anyone unfamiliar with his at-times-absurd, always-theatrical stage presence that they weren’t in for an hour of the awkward and/or self-deprecating humour that serves as a security blanket for so many millennial comedians.

Parker – a Drama School evangelist – is a performer, utterly uninterested in apologising for being himself. [More] 

Copyright © in the review belongs to the reviewer