Review: Rhys Darby – The Legend Returns at Regal Theatre
Rhys Darby – The Legend Returns at Regal Theatre
Monday, 28 April 2025
Rhys Darby, Kiwi comedian and star of screens both big and small, graced this year’s Perth Comedy Festival with new show The Legend Returns. This self-professed youthful legend brought to the stage a masterclass in physical comedy and absurdist storytelling, a performance that could easily be viewed as a loving, respectful tip of the hat to comedic forebears such as The Goons and Python.
A one-man show with a cast of twenty, Darby had the ability, within a few seconds, to fully sketch each role distinctively, to return to them a short time later with characterisations still fully formed and very much lived in, any time offstage spent chasing their own adventures and concerns.
Darby began by nominating new, youthful Gen X sports for the upcoming Los Angeles Olympics. Narration switched between himself, his rivals, and the commentators, the latter as taciturn as any Kiwi asked to describe an All Blacks loss. Darby deliberately panache-shambled his way through these events and summarised the piece, saying if he did it just a bit worse than tonight, he would be in medal contention in three years’ time.
This imagined trip to the Olympics was just the entrée for the evening, as Darby pivoted to another tale as main course and dessert, warning Perth of the coming AI revolution. It would catch up with this state in a few years, the audience was assured. Darby stated there were currently a dozen companies progressing humanoid robots, but Elon Musk made the easiest singular target to go forward with, obviously.
From the manicured lawns of too-perfect California—“Damn my success,” Darby lamented—to the Texas Badlands, where SpaceX launches from, the room was taken on a fantastic voyage, in which our intrepid host was all that stood between humanity and the robot apocalypse.
Tonight’s journey of adventure and derring-do was populated by Darby himself and perhaps three other supporting humans, the remainder of the troupe a menagerie of technologies, from jetpacks of the 1980s through to today’s Falcon Heavy. Each of these pieces of kit were given their own personalities, backstories, needs and desires. After Darby’s robot vacuum became a stand-in for a stroppy teen, the evening only grew more surreal when he not only drove a Cybertruck but, for all purposes, became that benighted vehicle, requiring only the slightest adjustments in body language and posture.
At several points, Darby broke the fourth wall in mirth, telling the audience how spectacularly silly the scenarios described were, even for him. The dramatic tension had met equilibrium and stuck, all disbelief suspended, and the boisterous ride continued.
Towards the finale, Darby raced around the stage, loaded several rockets, ascended the control tower, and launched them; magically switched from close-up to wide angle; and flashed both forward and back in time—all as he played multiple robot personas, with nothing more than his own extremely animated self, providing an education in chaotic minimalism.
Darby’s sound effects were also to the fore, so much so that the performance could easily be reimagined as an old-school radio play—with the narration and exposition as spoken already, minimal retooling would be needed to translate the formats seamlessly.
The Legend Returns began as a slow burn, which built to a wonderful crescendo. With Darby’s superb characterisations across every role he inhabited, the performance was a multi-sensory experience of high-wire energy, yet somehow still espoused the laconic less-is-more aesthetic that has become part of his brand.
The audience even easily forgave Darby’s self-described youth on each and every imaginary Olympic run sheet he signed up for. Overall, an absolute bucketload of fun.
PAUL MEEK