Comedy Review - Arj Barker: Power Hour

Images courtesy of the Melbourne International Comedy Festival.

Arj Barker has been in the game a damn long time, and I’m starting to get the impression that he’s mastered this comedy schtick. But with the heights of a 20+ year career in the field, comes the lows of a comedy festival at peak hour.

I miss those days where you’d get to the venue early and settle into your seats with a drink before being treated to a fine show and a few yucks. Now, the show and yucks were there eventually, but may I ask, does each performance of the festival allow precisely 3 minutes’ break between them? The show was running 10 minutes late, the door didn’t open until T-minus 60 seconds before Arj graced the stage and multiple people asked me if we were waiting at the wrong door. While I assured them, we were fine, but I also was unsure. A sign might’ve helped, but at least I knew we were lost together.

When Arj was among us, his looseness before an audience was in full force as he opened the show with a suspiciously off-base admission (which I dare not share for sake of spoilers). What a great way to snap us out of the humid lobby and right into the hypnosis of his gags. 

And they were good gags for the majority of the show, with the ones that didn’t quite land somehow still paying off – but maybe that’s just my love of the awkward shining through. When Arj role plays a woodland creature on the phone it was his weakest joke, when anatomical deformities were injected for new life, it still didn’t quite hit… but when I realised this was the longest dedication to a single punchline in the entire show, audience chuckles had subsided, but the slapstick continued nevertheless. I loved it.

The man captivated the room’s attention for the full Power Hour and really at a comedy show can I ask for more? He kept on a strict beat, whether it was half-time when he plugged his merch, 15 minutes before the show ended when he plugged his merch, or when the show ended as he plugged his merch. 

Maybe that’s what I mean when I say he’s been in the game for a while. I was caught up debating whether I’d seen a pretty good set or whether I’d seen the concentrated effort of a veteran taking it easy.

As Arj exited the stage a small man in a nice suit came before the crowd and requested we leave immediately. The next show was starting, and another crowd was ready to bust the entrance off its hinges. The show had come full circle and I guess that’s what big time stand up is all about.

Power Hour is showing at the 2022 Melbourne International Comedy Festival between the 30th of March and the 24th of April. For tickets and more info, click here.