Darby James’ award-winning show seemingly started before the actual kick-off time, with the guy himself sitting on the stage and smiling as the audience took their seats. This friendly trick meant, therefore, that when he began to speak and sing (at 6.00pm), the punters were completely on his side right from the word go.
“Cis gay man” Darby (clad in a sweet sailor suit) explained how, during the later stages of the Melbourne (or Naarm) lockdowns in 2021, he happened upon an ad requesting males just like him for, of course, sperm donation. There were a bunch of opening gags along cutely rude lines, but then things got darker and thornier, as Darby explained how his decision to get involved pushed him into all manner of crises, as he reflected on moral, ethical, legal and other issues surrounding the idea of fathering a child he might never know.
The tone ambitiously shifted often: we leapt from the first of many songs (which might have been called Why The F*** Not?), to more troubled ditties that should have been titled A Legacy and Vulnerable, to a quick running joke about Billy Joel’s Uptown Girl. Darby then gets into how, as the process went on (and he had to produce rather more than one sample), he considered what right he had to assist in the bringing of life into a messed-up world, which led to a showstopper tune surely known as The Violence Of You.
Raunchily funny, and yet sometimes almost brutally honest, this very personal journey was seriously spunky stuff.
Image credit: Norrington Media
