A nul point review from moi …
The blurby bit
We regret to inform you that Dave is back. After entering a coma in 2016, now he’s woke and asking the big questions, like… ‘anyone here from out of town?!’ The latest unmissable fiasco from comedy mastermind Zoë Coombs Marr, as seen on Channel 4 and her Amazon Prime special.
Winner: Herald Angel, Edinburgh Fringe 2019.
From the Edinburgh Fringe description of the show
Winner: Best Show, Melbourne Comedy Festival 2016.
Nominee: Best Show, Edinburgh Comedy Awards 2016.
‘A masterclass in meta humour’ ***** (Herald).
‘Daring, high-wire comedy at its best’ ***** (Chortle.co.uk).
***** (Mirror).
**** (Scotsman).
About the performer
Zoe Coombs Marr describes herself as ‘she/her with a they/them rising’ and performs as ‘Dave’, attaching her own hair to herself to fake facial hair. Zoe recently made a documentary called Queerstralia (geddit) about the history of LGBTQ+ people in Australia, described in this puff piece in the Guardian.
Being linked so deeply to criminality leaves many LGBTQ+ people to grow up with an ineffable knowledge that they are somehow different […]
From the Guardian article: Zoë Coombs Marr: ‘Making a queer history of Australia? What a terrifying, impossible task’
Never mind that the penal code is core to the Australian cultural landscape, whether it was handkerchief thieves transported by the British state, the mistreatment of the aboriginal people, or forcing migrating Italians and Germans into internment camps during the Second World War, just remember – of all those groups – the sheep shaggers had it worst!
The Opener
‘Hey, what’s up cunts?!’ is how Zoe Coombs Marr opens her show. ‘Cervix is the answer to that question. Not always, let’s not be reductive, or transphobic. Yip, that’s my opener.’
That was Zoe being Zoe, a progressive woke comedian, not Zoe being Dave, the white ‘cis’ heterosexual xenophobic male parody character she’s created (although I do use that term loosely) and despises.
Introducing Dave
Zoe spent the next ten minutes explaining that Zoe (that’s herself) would be later pretending to be Dave, a fictional parody character. Zoe would be present at all times whilst being Dave, and in case, for some reason, we had a fainting fit at Dave’s (who was really Zoe) regressive humour, we should know it was really her and that we were in a place of safety. (Funnily enough, Dave never addressed the audience as ‘cunts’ in an attempt at backward humour, so I feel a trick was really missed there.) Then there was a gag about breastfeeding her new dog. (Again, this was as herself, not as the misogynistic regressive Dave.)
And then the moralising started, as per the cult crib sheet, e.g. ‘transphobes were recycling the exact same scripts as the homophobes of yesteryear’. Zoe had stopped doing Dave in about 2016 because she felt he had become irrelevant and that the world of comedy didn’t need a ‘parody of a loveable bigot’ (which ‘Dave’ isn’t on all three counts, as you’ll see). Zoe explained that Dave only really had one joke; the biological differences between the sexes.
On the attack
It was brave and stunning of Zoe to pick on much more successful and funny comedians than herself. Zoe explained to us that it was fine for her parody character to say bigoted things (which he didn’t, unless you regard ‘Is anyone here from Spaniard?’ as offensive), but not okay for Ricky Gervais since he didn’t do it via a parody character. That’s how narrow a view of comedy she has, thinking the things a comedian says is literally what he believes.
The title of her show The Opener was in response to Dave Chappelle’s The Closer. As per usual for a progressive leftie, Zoe conveniently completely forgot that Chappelle is black but that’s intersectionality for you, entirely optional dependent on an opponent’s politics.
She also complained that Dave Chappelle wasn’t funny and that he hadn’t been a victim of cancel culture because he still had a show on Netflix. I’m sure she is actually aware though that Chappelle literally had shows cancelled and that Netflix employees held a walkout, demanding that his special be labelled with a warning that it was ‘transphobic’, pressuring executives to remove it entirely.
More seriously though Chappelle was attacked during a performance by a man wielding a knife disguised as a gun. The assailant, Isaiah Lee, identified as bisexual and wanted to let Chappelle know that his material against the LGBTQ+ community was ‘triggering’. But yeah, sure Zoe, there’s no such thing as ‘cancel culture’.
Zoe (whilst being Dave) also literally shrieked like a harpie that ‘Graham Linehan got cancelled. BY. HIS. WIFE.’ Hmm.
All-over-the-place being Dave
To be fair, after Zoe finally finished her interminable introduction to the character of Dave, she was very funny managing about ten seconds in character, announcing ‘I’m single’ and then deep breathing into the mic. The show was performed literally at the same time that the Dispatches documentary about Russell Brand premiered on Channel 4. So much more could have been made of that, but she did manage a few very weak references.
Once in full Dave mode – still with constant references that he was really Zoe and that it was a parody – we discovered the character was much more badly drawn than anticipated. Unable to maintain a gruff voice, Dave also didn’t meet her own internal logic for the character, as when Dave was asked what a woman was, he became embarrassed and strangely unable to say ‘cunts’. Worse still, the diatribe she did manage was similar to the energy and content of Nish Kumar’s rant against Gervais from a couple of years ago. Yes, that bad.
Dave also did a rant about ‘terfs’, thinking it might be something to do with turf (?). Dave (really Zoe) thought the skit was so close to the edge that any terfs in the room would need to leave (happy to report my bum cheeks literally spread in response). Dave told terfs to ‘FUCK OFF!’ and described them as ‘British women with short fringes’. Again, this sounded more like a Zoe joke than a Dave joke and although Zoe inserted a timely ‘meta’ joke about slippage, the comedy couldn’t get off its flatline.
Dave also had a moment of panic when he deadnamed X (formerly Twitter), experienced angst about being ‘cis’ and had an epiphany that he was able to use ‘they/them’ in the singular. None of which made any sense whatsoever.
Ill-conceived overly long jokes about penises
Dave got into his stride doing dick jokes, which although rang true for the stereotype male comic she was trying to conjure up*, Zoe forgot that Dave would have been ironically reminding the audience that women have penises too. Which just shows how little she had thought about the issues, the material and the fact that Dave was a slave to biology.
* Well, not exactly, since normally comics joke about penis-size, not balls-store-piss jokes**, but I digress.
** Yes, you read that correctly.
Sermonising at the end
Bringing us full circle Dave (who was played by Zoe) allowed Zoe back on stage again to be Zoe. Absolutely seamless it was. Zoe pledged to never shut up about LGBTQIA+ issues ‘as long as my community is being attacked’.
And then she pole danced as Dave (or possibly Zoe) to Tatu’s All The Things She Said. She had clearly practiced her moves and had a wonderfully pained look on her face as she spun. Finally, something genuinely amusing.
A message to Zoe
Do you know what would actually work as a parody, would be if Dave said that he preferred big fake boobies over real ones and then you had him have an epiphany that ‘trans women’ have the same. But there’s no way you could do a joke like that, so you are stuck with your contradictory political point scoring instead, which wasn’t even remotely funny. ‘A masterclass in meta humour,’ my arse.
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