Dylan Moran has such a following now that he can get away with almost anything. It is as if his audience is split between 50% who have been told to go and see Dylan Moran by the other 50% waiting for a version of Bernard Black from Black Books.

For the first ten minutes Moran mumbles and bumbles his way through rants, feigning road-burn; but the audience loves it. And his inimitable leaps in logic from a woman sitting at home "putting jam in to envelopes" to a modern man having no insight to pass on to his own children beyond "watch out for the snakes on level six!" start to come in to effect.

The show very swiftly taps in to Moran’s favourite theme: assessing the human condition and the need to understand why we are here, where we used to be and what will entertain, educate and distract us before we go to whatever comes next.

He warns "if you’re offended in any way please enjoy it – it’s proof that you’re actually alive" – that in itself is proof there’s a method to the madness; his elegantly disheveled look matching the structure of the show. What seems, at first, to be a random spiel is actually crafted; there is improvisation, riffing on the familiar and the abstract, but it’s the overriding existential theme that gives shape to Moran’s lines.

And he is full of them, from "Tequila is not even a drink, it’s just a way of getting the police around without using a phone", to his decision that "the universe, if it had a voice, would sound like James Earl Jones". ("Arnott’s biscuits would sound like Michael J. Fox").

Moran’s use of one of comedy’s most difficult emotions to manipulate and manage is what makes him leagues above so many imposters. When he seems hacked off with the world – language is changing; there’s no logical reason to believe either science or religion for the way the world is – it’s because he actually is angry. And he knows (brilliantly and passionately) how to articulate that.
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Expectations are high when you fork out $70* to see somebody make jokes. They are even higher when you enter the spectacular, grandiose Civic Theatre auditorium. You gawp at the arena and wonder how its hollow, blue-lit stage could possibly bear the weight of this anticipating auditorium. How strong will the script be to support our expectant smiles? How charismatic will the performer be, to break through the almost-visible ‘forth wall’ that a playhouse of this magnitude begets?

If you know and love the Dylan Moran gig, you won’t be disappointed by this show. He is consistent in his method and develops a reasonable rapport with the audience (in the first half at least). The letdown of his performance at last year’s International Comedy Festival was his marked disdain for and lack of engagement with the audience. Therefore, it came as a relief last night when the crowd-driven pantomime-like beginning broke through Moran’s sardonic dividing wall: it was the fanatical and forgiving familiar audience who bolstered his humour.

If you are not familiar with the comic, you will probably fall for his surprisingly imaginative drunken blatherings. Bear in mind: it is his choice of images and metaphors which are inventive and surprising, rather than the subject matter of his show. The subject matter is painfully cliché. After a quick, vague nod at New Zealand culture (possums, short trousers and Invercargill), he chooses religion, politics, gender differentiation, relationships, aging and consumerism as themes. However predictable the content is, it seems to please the audience and Moran’s description of the ‘Toyota Hiroshima’ 4×4 drives, which are so popular among New Zealand urban mothers who use them to plough through schoolchildren, earns him decidedly raucous laughter.

If you’ve seen Moran quite a few times and have an analytical attitude to his comedic style, you will find his formula to be easily calculable: it amounts to odd couplings of adjectives and nouns that keep the mind spinning with bizarre images like polishing onions with your toes while keeping the door shut with a mountain of Turkish Delight. My friend compared the show to last year’s performance by saying: "This year, the adjectives and nouns were better." 

If you love the Moranic style, you’ll forgive him for satirising male / female stereotypes for half an hour and following on to say that "too much emphasis is put on the difference between the genders", without even making fun of the irony. The show absolutely will make you laugh, but $70 is a lot to pay for formulaic comedy that is almost as indolent as the comic.
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*Mr Moran’s PR people chose not to issue press passes in Auckland. This review was volunteered by someone who did pay for her ticket.
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Copyright © in the review belongs to the reviewer