Austin Harrison confidently leads easy-going, improvised yarns, playing one dad for all. He begins numbering us his children in the hundreds, so far this tour.

He elicits burger rings and snags, tonight’s items of nostalgia. Kiwiana.

Dad asks us for our memories of childhood. Throughout the evening he gains the night’s material, asking us for that injury or holiday we remember, for the milestone we’ve just hit, and he revisits this material through the yarn: in-jokes.

Asking for a milestone, one audience member says she’s newly engaged. Harrison shows initiative and spontaneity, asking to lead her up the aisle, ‘Can we practise?’ Good to his word, they actually do so. The audience sets the scene, humming a march, one member pretending to be a dove.

I want to understand this show. I think of a takahē puppet feeding the chicks. If it’s synthetic, if yarning to Dad is a simulation of redress for neglect, does it work? I get the impression it doesn’t But whether or not his Dad game models redemptive fathering in earnest, it’s primarily a collective flash back to times past. 

‘I never had a problem with my back,’ a friend tells me after the show, upending a whole story built around him volunteering a back injury at 7 years old. 

This delights me. It shows people can engage as they want. It’s not compulsory therapy.

Different audiences would produce different dynamics, but do they alter Harrison’s Dad character? Tonight he’s a Dad with regrets, a well-meaning, caring father, up for a laugh, on the audience’s side.

Harrison leads with confidence, with a failproof smile, and caters to a range of ages, from thirty to eighty. There’s polite back and forth between Harrison and the participants, neither gets carried away or on a roll. Even so, Harrison’s laid back delivery puts us at ease. 

At ease, he sustains his character, has a likeable, unhurried pace, his delivery is easy to follow, he gives clear directions in character, puts no one on the spot and adapts, thanking a participant who has shown he’s ready to move the show along by prompting, ‘Dad, can you quiz someone else?’

I admire Harrison owning the lulls/fails. He’s open. Of a ‘fact’ about his (that is, our) family introducing the practise of barbecuing to New Zealand, in our lifetime, landing no applause, he looks at each of us. 

‘I don’t think you’re taking that in as you should.’ 

The audience laughs.

No punch lines though, more like pat lines. 

Harrison rounds the night off improvising rhyming verse for a nominated bedtime story, revisiting many of the stories and lessons learned over the course of the evening. Inventing this verse, Harrison adapts well. Landing on the rhyme ‘sump’(for a place for rabbits to hide behind), he himself looks surprised then satisfied. An audience member rubs his chin, ‘’Stump’ would have been better.’

Harrison runs with the swap. There’s a good ‘yes-and’ vibe here tonight. Our Dad is proud of us.

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“I’m Dad,” announces Austin Harrison on entering the stage space at the Circus Bar. So he is – to all of us apparently. Whether we know it or not. Such is the premise for an hour’s worth of improvised dialogue, initiated and inspired by a loving father figure.

“This is a redemptive apology tour,” explains Dad. “I’m here to see my kids.” We’re in for some good ole Dad loving, and on the way some memories – eagerly supplied by various sons and daughters amongst the audience.

The first one is Gabby’s recall of an accident on the stairs at 12 years old which resulted in his being wheelchair bound for several weeks. He and Dad exchange memories of the incident in such detail that I’m wondering if Gabby isn’t one of Harrison’s improvisation students!

The same goes for Teresa’s tale of being abandoned in sand dunes, her absence apparently unnoticed, something Dad is justifiably apologetic about. From sand dunes we go to digging holes on the beach, and Jimbo gets accused of being good at something at least!

To top it all, Dad spots son Russell in the back row. Russell’s just turned 65, and Dad (a self-confessed boomer) feels especially affectionate towards this son of his, relishing the recounting of the most exciting experience of his youth. It was a seminal moment evidently.

Dad’s doing really well I’m thinking; we’re all feeling pretty loved up, but his time is just about over. We’re going to get a bedtime story as a send-off, and Dad takes up the suggestion of ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’. It’s a devilishly delightful denouement in poem form and incorporating elements from the anecdotes we’ve just heard. Some of the rhymes don’t make it, but that’s just like the human love Dad’s been talking about.

In any case, he’s proud of us.

Copyright © in the review belongs to the reviewer