Melbourne International Comedy Festival review

Billy D’Arcy is every inch the archetypal male stand-up. A 28-year-old straight white dude in T-shirt and overshirt, straggly hair and neater beard, holding forth on dating apps and fat Americans. I bet he’s got a podcast.

He’s confident. Of course he is. His lively force of personality no doubt crushes for ten minutes on a bill of nervous newbies, as it does for a brief period here. But over much longer, his paucity of ambition becomes painfully apparent. He’s got little to say, but an upbeat way of saying it.

So he’s single….

The dating chunk offers some promising thoughts on men being too demanding on what they seek in a partner and the telltale signs of what their demands indicate. But while this train of thought suggests a counter to D’arcy’s slightly blokeish image, it splutters to a halt before too long.

He sometimes gets in a muddle about being progressive, too. No good setting yourself up as an ally of women’s sports, praising the achievement of the Matildas national football side, if the payoff revolves around you calling them all lesbians.

Still, he tries, with material about how wrong it was to use ‘gay’ as an insult at school, and how weird it is that women like true-crime podcasts as they are most likely to be victims. But it’s all very superficial.

He frequently delves into crowd work, which always seems like padding as he never strikes gold, telling people they have a crap haircut, a crap hoodie, a crap beanie or a crap job. He returns to chat to a mulleted man time and time again, even though their interactions are always tense.

A Raw comedy finalist six years ago, D’Arcy has plenty of performance skills in his toolbox, but he needs to figure out why he wants to be a comic and what he wants to say with his platform, else he’ll be destined for mediocrity and irrelevance.

Oh, and I checked. There is a podcast. Up to 1hr 55mins a week, in which D’Arcy ‘recounts his weekend and then rips on some celebrities’. 

Review date: 11 Apr 2023
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Melbourne International Comedy Festival