“There is something to be said for embracing the stupidest strains of human silliness while artificial intelligence makes us all feel increasingly dumb and irrelevant. Let it be known that Rhys Darby is saying it and embracing it in his long-awaited return to the stand-up scene.”
After thirteen years, Kiwi comic, podcaster, and TV icon Rhys Darby returns to the stand-up playground with a side-splitting show about how even today’s sharpest technology still can’t touch the dumbest stuff that humans can do.
He graced the Pleasance Courtyard last week to an audience that was so thrilled to be there, you had to wonder if they hadn’t just come to Edinburgh to see him. (They definitely weren’t there for Oasis.) It’s safe to say, the world of programmers (the artistic ones, that is, not the well-paid ones coding away in California) would be hard-pressed to find a better star act to crack open the first week of the Fringe.
Darby clearly could have spent far more than an hour up there, imitating helicopter sounds, rounding up his darkest, dirtiest thoughts for a middle-aged larynx heist, and imbuing anything devoid of a beating heart – from Tesla Cybertrucks to Rumba vacuums to Elon Musk – with his signature, contagiously funny humanity. There were so many moments when he was clearly just letting his imagination run wild and having the time of his life while doing so. And that, we all quickly and delightfully realized, was the whole point of the show.
Darby would have the most ordinary of us humans out there – those who have been made to feel dumb, outdated, and irrelevant by the robot revolution – believe that, while we maybe don’t make fans anymore (robots do that now), we can definitely make the poo that hits those fans. And we can have a bloody good time doing it.
Rhys Darby: The Legend Returns is a part of the 2025 Edinburgh Fringe and plays until… well, it’s over now, but catch Rhys on his 2025 tour.