Sean Burnett Dugdale-Martin
Barnie Duncan’s title of his newest body of work refers to an old term that isn’t in circulation much anymore. His mother would use it to describe things of male-adjacent grubbiness: untrustworthy or inappropriate men, gross mens bathrooms, etc.
The show consistently revisits a recording that Michael Jackson made (the psychic from Palmerston North in the 80’s) predicting Duncan’s life for his Mother around the time of his birth. Some parts of the recording are eerie in the sense that they are vaguely accurate. The language used by the psychic isn’t specific about events, but he talks more about moods, strengths, aspects the baby will no doubt be drawn towards. Most of the predictions have turned out to be amusingly accurate! We discover this through cleverly orchestrated autobiographical retellings punctuated afterwards with excerpts from Michael Jackson's prediction.
Intermingled with these recordings are absurd, tangential vignettes that sprout easily from Barnie’s incessant sense of play. Jokes evolve live before your very eyes! Duncan bounds into absurd, physical scenes, which transform into something not quite in the same world as where the scene started- but then suddenly there’s a throwback to a moment from the beginning of the show. Barnie’s sense of clown is like ballet. He makes it look effortless, bouncing from one idea/joke/story to the next; the moving parts invisible after years in the trade.
He tells us a story of when he was clowning in a bar years ago without a plan. He ended up kissing someone during the performance. He tells us he regrets this happening. He rectifies the experience by explaining everything that was unbalanced about the event, along with elaborating on what the person he kissed had to say afterwards. This particular anecdote stuck with me because of what it evoked in contrast to the other revisited narratives.
At one point he says, almost throw-away, “clowns are always trying to find out what they can get away with.” I appreciate how much Barnie spoke about clowning in this show, as I’ve not seen a Duncan show where he so explicitly talks about it. What’s disconcerting is that this is also the show where he talks about gross men; mainly guru’s from his parents past and Russel Brand, and how they got away with doing horrible things.
The combination of these ideas, both consistently revisited, had me feeling as though this show is about what his mother was trying to evoke with the saying “Oookie Pookie”. That both are forms where men try and get away with Oookie Pookie stuff, and Duncan marks himself as no exception. This isn’t to say clown is exclusively about men trying to get away with Oookie Pookie stuff. The show just made me think of the catalogue of male entertainers, of which we could all name at least one, that perhaps used their charm to get away with public indecency or inappropriate behaviour.
I would not say that anything Duncan has done is anywhere near the level of bad that Russel Brand and some of these imprisoned guru’s have done. I find it interesting that in a show based on the premise of predicting a child's life from astrology comes themes of men seeing what they can get away with, almost as if it is also something we can predict with a vague sense of accuracy about charismatic men.
I wonder if Michael Jackson was seeing what he could get away with. Is it such a coincidence that that sentence is still relevant even without making explicit which one I am referring to?
Oookie Pookie for me, underneath the clowning, has many questions about our life journeys and to what extent they can accurately be predicted. Is the show actually about this? I’m not sure. Duncan performs with a style of absurdity that begets multiple interpretations. I’m sure another audience will get another meaning. This is one big reason why I think Duncan is so good at what he does. The show could be thought about for days afterwards in an effort to decode the deliberate combinations of particular jokes, anecdotes and mimes, or simply because it was blisteringly funny.
Once again Duncan has me pondering after the show as much as he had me laughing during it. Go see a Barnie Duncan show. Sit forward. Then see it for a second time. Take someone else and ask what they thought about it afterwards. Go see a different one of Duncan’s shows, think about what connects them. Watch closely and laugh along. I guarantee you’ll find it funny. More info here.
Intermingled with these recordings are absurd, tangential vignettes that sprout easily from Barnie’s incessant sense of play. Jokes evolve live before your very eyes! Duncan bounds into absurd, physical scenes, which transform into something not quite in the same world as where the scene started- but then suddenly there’s a throwback to a moment from the beginning of the show. Barnie’s sense of clown is like ballet. He makes it look effortless, bouncing from one idea/joke/story to the next; the moving parts invisible after years in the trade.
He tells us a story of when he was clowning in a bar years ago without a plan. He ended up kissing someone during the performance. He tells us he regrets this happening. He rectifies the experience by explaining everything that was unbalanced about the event, along with elaborating on what the person he kissed had to say afterwards. This particular anecdote stuck with me because of what it evoked in contrast to the other revisited narratives.
At one point he says, almost throw-away, “clowns are always trying to find out what they can get away with.” I appreciate how much Barnie spoke about clowning in this show, as I’ve not seen a Duncan show where he so explicitly talks about it. What’s disconcerting is that this is also the show where he talks about gross men; mainly guru’s from his parents past and Russel Brand, and how they got away with doing horrible things.
The combination of these ideas, both consistently revisited, had me feeling as though this show is about what his mother was trying to evoke with the saying “Oookie Pookie”. That both are forms where men try and get away with Oookie Pookie stuff, and Duncan marks himself as no exception. This isn’t to say clown is exclusively about men trying to get away with Oookie Pookie stuff. The show just made me think of the catalogue of male entertainers, of which we could all name at least one, that perhaps used their charm to get away with public indecency or inappropriate behaviour.
I would not say that anything Duncan has done is anywhere near the level of bad that Russel Brand and some of these imprisoned guru’s have done. I find it interesting that in a show based on the premise of predicting a child's life from astrology comes themes of men seeing what they can get away with, almost as if it is also something we can predict with a vague sense of accuracy about charismatic men.
I wonder if Michael Jackson was seeing what he could get away with. Is it such a coincidence that that sentence is still relevant even without making explicit which one I am referring to?
Oookie Pookie for me, underneath the clowning, has many questions about our life journeys and to what extent they can accurately be predicted. Is the show actually about this? I’m not sure. Duncan performs with a style of absurdity that begets multiple interpretations. I’m sure another audience will get another meaning. This is one big reason why I think Duncan is so good at what he does. The show could be thought about for days afterwards in an effort to decode the deliberate combinations of particular jokes, anecdotes and mimes, or simply because it was blisteringly funny.
Once again Duncan has me pondering after the show as much as he had me laughing during it. Go see a Barnie Duncan show. Sit forward. Then see it for a second time. Take someone else and ask what they thought about it afterwards. Go see a different one of Duncan’s shows, think about what connects them. Watch closely and laugh along. I guarantee you’ll find it funny. More info here.