Delightfool is astonishing and unique: a two-person extravaganza of song, mime, dance, magic, and emus. Billed as a cabaret, the emphasis here is much more on vaudeville than burlesque (as the term is often used in the local context). This is cabaret in the European tradition: a small-room variety show of the unhinged and unexpected variety, tied together in this case by a meteorological metanarrative that adds an additional sense of wonder and sweetness to the proceedings.

Alongside Lesa MacLeod-Whiting and Hoani Hotene, Booth the Clown and Jak Darling round out the Wellington nominees for this year’s Billy T award. Their offering, Delightfool, is likely to complicate the judging, because it is so different from most of the other comedy at the festival. This isn’t just a question of what’s on stage, but how it hits the audience. The laughter sounded different from other shows: people seemed to be making entirely different sounds. I heard a Wellington crowd cheer and moan sympathetically without prompting. Miracles happened. [More]

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Having won multiple awards last year at the NZ and Auckland Fringe Festivals, Jak Darling and Booth the Clown’s perfectly named Delightfool show is a Billy T Award Nominee in the 2025 NZ International Comedy Festival. Their return to Wellington’s Fringe Bar is welcomed by a packed house of eager fans.

But wait! The retro transistor radio planted centre stage warns us a Super Storm is about to hit town! However moustachioed Jak Darling, sensuous in an orange frock plus pearl necklace and earrings, and Booth the Clown, frisky in a natty black & white ensemble of white shirt, black waistcoat and shorts, plus pencil moustache, are blithely oblivious. They sashay up to the stage and treat us to a dazzling display of mimed juggling.  

Calling on all the other ‘Boothy-Babes’ and ‘Dashy-Darlings’ among us, they affirm their gender-fluidity, they/themness and singleness – despite being engaged if not quite married because misfortune has befallen the ring … The rhythm and flow of their fooling – their clowning – garnishes inspired comedy with piquant pathos as they romp through naughty and nautical scenarios with many changes of costume and judicious handlings of the odd un-mimed prop.

Recurring themes include Jak’s loneliness, Booth’s addiction to showering (counterpointed with Jak’s fondness for a particular genre of shower), the lost ring – and the storm. Booth survives a seagull attack, a capsize and a near drowning in a wondrous underwater sequence, all beautifully created through simple physicality and clever lighting (Haami on the Tech desk).

Jak regales us with their “queerest, most closeted moments”. There’s an extraordinary act involving a dish and a spoon that seems to have escaped from ‘Hey Diddle Diddle’, a shadow-play sequence allows us to eavesdrop on a serious conversation (in a tent?) that harks back to their honeymoon and poses a poignant question about puppy love …

The humour is childish yet adult, low-brow yet sophisticated – never more so than with the exquisite operatic performance by two dancing emus. And just as we think the storm has put paid to the promised magic tricks – (soiler alert) it happens!

Delightfool transcends and transforms the personal and global turbulence of our times in a truly delightful way.

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With a title like Delightfool, this reviewer speculated whether this Auckland Fringe offering would riff on the famous-for-centuries A Midsummer Night’s Dream, or be light-hearted cabaret-style jesting, relying on witty songs and clever footwork to entertain. Both choices would be in keeping with the entertainment offered by the Fringe, now in its 34th year.  

What began in Wellington in 1990 as a small iteration of Edinburgh’s famous Fringe, has birthed some of Aotearoa’s top talents – Gareth Farr’s Strike Percussion had its debut there, as did Flight of the Conchords, who captured America with barely a lift of Jemaine’s singular eyebrows.  

So, anticipation was high as my Companion and I trudged up Auckland’s Basement Theatre’s steep stairs to its Studio (formerly the Loft) for the opening night of Delightfool’s five-night season. Anticipation was well-rewarded, for this two-hander contains star talent.

The performers are Booth the Clown (they/them) and Jak Darling (surely a pseudonym, also they/them). In keeping with today’s multi-gender awareness, there are moustaches on both faces, skirts flashing, and athletic shorts much in evidence.

The exuberant show, complete with many sound effects courtesy of Liam, is not really cabaret, and not wholly theatre. It is deeply entertaining, however, from the moment where Booth the Clown declares it to be both gender-fluid and gender solid, and therefore “grammatically correct”. 

A bit of chit-chat about their relationship decides it is “like Hallensteins”, which provokes a roar of laughter from the packed audience.

Jak Darling, in this reviewer’s opinion, is an ornamental butterfly whose lithe frame offers the perfect shape for showing off a variety of evening gowns to good effect. A pale green floor length A-line is deliciously completed by a white rabbit fur shoulder-wrap; a scarlet knee-length body hugger slips discreetly away to show an enticing slice of glossy back. My Companion, no novice to either fashion or theatre, agreed that Jak’s fashion chic was not matched by their rather teenage humour, which relies heavily on body-waste references and subterranean desires like golden showers.  

Booth the Clown, however, has a more mature understanding of performance material and delivery.  Their shower-scene skit brilliantly combines uncertainty and erotica. Another skit involving water enacts a drowning with utter conviction. And Booth the Clown is funny – even when silent. While Jak models yet another lovely gown, Booth the Clown zooms onto the scene, dressed all in white, as a storm, complete with raincloud on their head, bustling about and raining on any passing parade.

A warm, poignant moment is displayed in silhouette, when the two sit behind a white sheet facing each other. “What if this is not enough?” one queries, and if it is not, “when are we going to be enough?” But laughter quickly resumes. “Doesn’t matter – you made me delightfool!”

Delightfool plays at the Basement Theatre until 7 September; this reviewer heartily recommends it, if only to catch Booth the Clown, an Aotearoan star, on the rise.

The original review has been updated at the request of the cast and friends. Updates by Lexie Matheson, approved by reviewer Sandi Hall.’

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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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