Delightfool
Fringe Bar, 26-32 Allen St, Te Aro, Wellington
22/02/2024 - 24/02/2024
Production Details
All works (producing, devising, performing) created by Booth the Clown and Jak Darling
Jak Darling and Booth the Clown are DELIGHTFOOL!
This glorious duo is here to provide a top-notch cabaret full of comedy, wonder and queer delight!
However, things go awry when a storm disrupts the show — forcing our two heros to look beyond their sparkling surfaces and tackle their internal turbulence.
Will our delightfool darlings perservere through the storm?
The Fringe Bar- 22nd, 23rd and 24th February. General Admission $20.00 Concession $15.00 Fringe Addict $16.00. https://fringe.co.nz/show/delightfool
Booth the Clown and Jak Darling (cast).
Original photography by Afrina Razi.
Comedy , Theatre ,
50 minutes
A ribald hour of wit, sparkle and innuendo with a touch of vulnerability
Review by Margaret Austin 23rd Feb 2024
The packed and noisy crowd at the Fringe Bar is an early testament to tonight’s pair of performers in Delightfool. The fools are Jak Darling and Booth the Clown, and they barge their way through to the stage with a raucously suggestive energy that is catchy, by the way – you’re likely to stay awake most of the night after this contact.
Energy is the main ingredient of this show – Darling and Booth have it in spades. It’s top-notch cabaret complete with scintillating song, dance and costume changes – and it’s naughty. If you’re unashamed, it’s amazing how much naughtiness you can get away with. Darling ought to teach it.
A full-length orange gown on a gracefully slim body plus a moustache (Darling) and chappish black ’n white shirt ’n shorts (Booth) give us a Charleston for openers. We’re divided into Booby Babes and Dashing Darlings before the pair enlighten us as to their gender fluidity and that being referred to as ‘they’ is just fine. But they’re single and avowedly not looking for a relationship. That said, if anyone out there is also not looking for a relationship …
That’s the preface to an hour of wit, sparkle and innuendo that would be hard to beat anywhere. Booth the Clown takes a shower and their inventive use of the shower head is, well, inventive. That number is rivalled by Darling, in full length blue gown now, plus ukelele, teasing with a provocatively ambiguous song, each ribald rhyme rivalled by a resonating strum.
The two continue to take turns onstage though are interrupted by occasional loudspeaker announcements of a coming storm. That theme introduces Booth in a nautical number, in which staying afloat involves mime skills that could put us all at sea.
There isn’t exactly a denouement, unless you’d count a few moments at the end of vulnerability and self-doubt expressed by our fools. It’s an unexpectedly human touch to conclude such a brazen show of self-confidence. Two sides to every coin to quote an old cliché. Although it’s difficult to imagine these entertainers as anything but the bold pair we’ve so enjoyed, it’s nice to know they may be – somewhere – just like the rest of us.
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