Booth the Clown and Jak Darling: Delightfool

Booth the Clown and Jak Darling’s Delightfool is an absurdist queer cabaret exploit, featuring stand-up, mime, musical comedy, magic, and flightless birds. Jak Darling is gorgeous, embodying the feminine in a series of elegant mid-century gowns and a Freddie Mercury-esque moustache. They bring sultry vulnerability, masterful storytelling, and piss gags. Booth presents as more of a crass uncle type, and their astonishing physical control and comedic precision allow them to make a meal out of simple jokes.

There is plenty of raunchy, shock-value comedy. But the more dreamlike and bizarre acts are what I find most effective. Booth’s sailor vs seagulls mime features a sublime and surprisingly beautiful underwater sequence, during which the character comes close to drowning. Booth utilises the audience’s growing concern for maximum comedic payoff. Later, in an act of supreme silliness, Booth and Jak wrap themselves in sheets and transform into a pair of white emus lip-syncing Delibes’ Flower Duet.

There are subtle undercurrents of grimmer themes; the story is set against the backdrop of an impending storm. Radio newscasts repeatedly warn that the situation is deteriorating, a motif that resonates with climate catastrophe and rising queerphobic hostility. This sits nicely in an Isherwoodian understanding of cabaret as a queer artform, and bastion of genderplay and joy. Eventually the storm builds to a cacophony of wind and noise (composer Kodi Rasmussen) that threatens to destroy the theatre and imperil the final act.

But Booth and Jak manage to pitch a tent, creating an opportunity for shadow play as their figures are backlit against the tent fabric. Through the darkest hours of the storm, the audience spy on their vulnerable soul searching before they emerge to announce that the storm has passed, and the magic tricks can proceed as planned.

Delightfool is delightfully silly, well crafted, and brilliantly executed. Booth and Jak are darlings, and well deserving of their 2025 NZ International Comedy Festival Billy T Award nomination.