Review by Steve Bennett at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival

Stuart Daulman is an absolute cult. Half of his late-night audience in on the joke before the show starts, a baffled third still stony-faced even by the end.

He channels the old-school variety entertainer with cheesy smile, bow tie and an arsenal of lounge-singer classics to smooth out the dodgier gags. And of those, there are plenty, from poor puns on Game Of Thrones to deliberately trite observations about ’flipping Donald Trump’, all delivered with a schmaltzy drawl. 

Daulman – a member of TV’s Fancy Boy and live sketch troupe Wizard Sandwich – has a cheeky glint in his eye as he forces this stuff through, while some of the dad gags have a ‘so bad they’re good’ quality to them to keep things entertaining. 

However, it’s the sort of parody we’ve seen before, even the simmering tension behind the eager-to-please light-entertainer facade. Even if Daulman does bring a distinctive knowing vibe to the caricature, he’s no Neil Hamburger.

The show’s tone is unbalanced, wavering between mocking that variety world and Daulman seeming to want to belong to it. The songs go on indulgently long and are sometimes delivered quite sincerely. When he’s joined by ‘chanteuse clown’ Sharnema Nougar the gag is that he hogs the mic… when he’s flying solo, he’s just singing old-school standards, the pretence of comedy benched for a few minutes.

Daulman has worked some material about his father’s dementia into the show, to provide context and weight – though there’s such a high count of corny puns there’s no danger of A Very Good Year being mistaken for heavyweight.

It’s a fun conceit, and certainly a lot of fans are buying into it. But as a show, it probably needs more elements – like a real-life Variety Hour would – to stop the joke wearing thin over an hour.

Review date: 3 Apr 2017
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett