Pleasance Courtyard
Starting as an off-beat and innocent comedy show that could be mistaken for stand-up, Rhys Darby’s The Legend Returns quickly devolves into unmitigated and hilarious chaos, covering everything from the feud between Australia and New Zealand to the next Olympics and the dangers of AI.
The Legend Returns is at its heart a critique of artificial intelligence, Silicon Valley and modern technology in general, told through the extended step-by-step plan of how Darby would save us all from the robots. Stylistically, The Legend Returns can be counted as a peer alongside movies like Hot Fuzz or Shaun Of The Dead, which both perpetuate and make a tongue-in-cheek mockery of their respective genres. One thing is absolutely clear, Darby has created a blockbuster of a Fringe show within the confines of the stage.
There’s something for everybody; stand-up, mime, impressions, improv, character and physical comedy, basically anything and everything that could produce laughter to ensure that we have the time of our lives. And this unbridled energy and hilarity is maintained throughout, at no point are we offered rest, respite or cover from the sheer magnitude of comedy within this show. The absurdity throughout and its contrast to the mundanity of some situations often plays into how funny we find a particular punchline.
“Unmitigated and hilarious chaos”
It is such an honour to see Darby on the stage. Never has a performer been more in his element or shown such controlled mastery over the art form than he does throughout this show. Even though it’s obviously all planned and carefully crafted- because what else could we expect from a performer of Darby’s calibre – the hour of unmitigated chaos that we see unfold onstage simply does not support that assumption. It’s such a high-energy and octane hour, with Darby constantly darting, moving and committing to the bit across the stage to the point where we have to keep our eyes glued to him to ensure that we don’t miss anything. Although multiple jokes, plot and gags are established from the get-go, Darby constantly keeps us on our toes despite wielding an armada of Chekhov’s guns. He lays these innocuous details that come back to bite us later on, constantly building up the humour within a particular moment. We are offered nuggets of wisdom in the underwritten theme of this show that Darby establishes very early on of “when technology say it’s coming, it will come,” a rather haunting bombshell that seems all the less frightening by the end of the show, not only because of the absolute hit piece that Darby has created that undermines anything potentially scary about technology in order to show that AI has no place in the arts, but also just the fact that AI could never write anything as insane or funny as The Legend Returns.
Nothing on par with The Legend Returns has existed or will exist again. Darby’s show is a constant source of laughter, one that energises and leaves us laughing long after it’s ended. It is Rhys Darby at his absolute finest. An absolutely unmissable and must-see show.
By Katerina Partolina Schwartz
Photo Credit: Robyn Von Swank
Pepper & Salt 
Leave a comment