I am thrilled to announce that I am the guest (not counting the other guest) for the first episode of this bananers show hosted by the wonderful Demi Lardner.
Watch and see my invention, Creature, serve as my body.
Brennan Lee Mulligan's Endless Dungeon: A minimal context Summary
Basically a list of my highlights from Endless Dungeon, the DnD live show DM'd by Brennan Lee Mulligan and featuring Demi Lardner, Zac Naoum, Jordan Raskopoulos and Tom Cardy as players.
(Spoiler warning. I went to the Sydney show on 15 Oct)
(also many apologies in advance as I have forgotten a lot of the names. I am only familiar with Brennan and Tom Cardy. I promise to rectify this by checking out Dragon Friends asap)
The player characters were:
A tiefling warlock (named Doy Doy??) who sold her soul to a devil of Asmodeus for a bike ;
The ‘Chosen One’ ie. the fantasy equivalent of the gifted student who peaked at school and it's all been downhill from there (zombie monk);
A wereshark swashbuckler who carries around a cannon filled with the ashes of their dead wife;
A goblin cleric who's god is basically running a pyramid scheme.
Highlights (honestly too many to count):
Brennan’s first bit of narration, which explained why the dungeon is endless
The guy who gives the main quest is called Sir Rubbish
The Chosen One lost his ass (and his life) in his first encounter with the big bad
The philosophical cousins to the wererat: the whyrat
Sexual gelatinous cube librarian
Every time Brennan said “piss and shit”
Every time Brennan said “cunt”
The wereshark is a Megalodon!
They made a lil pirate hat for the holy avenger sword
Tom Cardy’s character flipped around a nat 1 by pulling a literal Switcheroo. This very clever set-up was then almost immediately ruined.
The plan for the penultimate fight was to shoot the enemy pirate captain out of the cannon filled with the ashes of the wereshark's wife. But said cannon was pointed at another party member. In an incredible act of benevolence Brennan made up some bullshit (involving magical cobblers tools) to grant the Chosen One the ability to swap places with anyone else on the board. Instead of sacrificing himself to save their tiefling in front of the cannon, he swapped places with the enemy pirate inside, because he wanted to be shot out of the cannon instead.
They used Cobblers tools!!
In trying to get two wererats to fuck, the warlock, rather than using a spell like Suggestion, or Charm Person, or Command (they had all three), instead used Mage Hand to encourage handcuff play, with mixed results.
“hI, i'M icE”
Brennan forced the final boss fight to last one round because the Princess they were saving had so little faith in the party she would rather suicide bomb their ship to prevent the big bad from successfully reaching her kingdom (which is called Trashlandia). (But also they were running out of time and had to wrap up the story within like 20 minutes.)
Reference to a gorilla from a South Australian zoo.
The bike, the motorbike, and the fucked up bike with banana handlebars
Arguably the most unstable party member (Demi) dealt the final blow on the big bad. Their method of execution was um. Interesting (quite fucked up).
Also
Big props to the sign language interpreter. I have no idea how one person conveys all the chaos happening onstage.
The woman narrator who bookended the start and end of each segment was also excellent.
Tldr; Amazing show. Incredibly chaotic. Part of me still questioning how much of it was a fever dream.
Your comedian break downs have been a fascinating read! I'm Australian and I'd love to hear your perspective on aussie comedy because from my experience living in the UK it doesn't always seem to land with non-aussie folk! Ones I've shown other people that they haven't seemed to enjoy as much as me are Aunty Donna, Demi Lardner (a personal favourite) or on a slightly more structured note, Aaron Chen on Guy Mont Spelling Bee. No pressure though obviously!
I love Australian comedy! There's clearly a rich tradition of experimental alternative comedy over there, and a lot of my favourite comedians at UK festivals are Aussies who moved over - Alice Fraser, Bec Hill, Sarah Bennetto, Aidan Jones. Tim Minchin of course!
I particularly love their long-form work; I wonder if the Australian comedy festivals encourage creativity in producing hour-long shows? Even a relatively conventional comedian like Damo Clark produces hour shows that go beyond the normal confines of standup.
If people haven't warmed to the acts you named, I suspect that has less to do with their nationality, and more to do with their unconventional approaches to comedy. Demi Lardner is incredible, but her work is very unusual. For some people, that's why she's so great - surprising us with punchlines we could never have predicted. For others, it's so odd it's alienating.
Let's analyse some of Demi Lardner's comedy to work out what's going.
I'm going to look at the first two and a half minutes of Lardner's 4-minute performance at Melbourne Comedy Festival's Upfront, a showcase for female and non-binary comedians.
Here's the full clip.
And here's a transcript. Paragraph break every time there's a laugh:
[Lardner arrives on stage] [crouches] [cackles like a demon]
Hey guys, how you bloody going, you alright?
They’ve let a small urchin boy on the stage.
This is a lady gig.
Hey, um, I was hoping that I could, uh, teach you, uh, just a bit of a game, um, it’s - it’s a game that you can only play in public, you can only do it like kinda when you’re out and about, and all you have to do, right, to start the game, is just find someone who’s like taking a selfie on their phone? Like they’ve got their little bloody, they’ve got their arm up here and they’re doing their little face. And all, all you have to do to start this game, right, is just find them, and then go like 50 metres away, right, so you’re over here, and just get in the background of the photo ... and just like do whatever you want and just like kinda just just be real far away and get in the photo, and then when they’re done taking the photo, like they’re putting their arm down, all YOU have to do to play this game is just, from 50 metres away, just sprint up to them and be like [voice change] DELETE IT I look like a SLUUUUUUT
Nooooo get RID of iiiiiit!
I look faaaaaaaaat.
Don’t fucking tag me in thaaaat.
[normal voice] And then you just fuck off and
they never see you again, but they have a photo of you. It’s a good game.
[music starts] [Lardner looks confused]
[Lardner looks judgementally at an audience member]
[Lardner shrugs, continues to stare judgementally]
[Lardner points, indicating the music]
[Lardner shrugs]
It’s your own lunchtime you’re wasting.
[Lardner alternates staring and shrugging]
[Lardner walks forwards with hands on hips]
[Lardner puts her hands at the bottom edge of her T-shirt, looking confused and shocked]
[Lardner lifts her top; the word “PERVERT” is attached to her stomach; the word “pervert!” plays over the music track]
It’s not really appropriate.
[Music sting plays: “Impressions”] Here’s some impressions, guys, here’s my first one. [Recording plays: “A farmer who’s forgotten the word shearing”] I’m gonna peel my sheep.
[Lardner mimes squeezing a sheep]
Eh, this one’s ripe.
[bowing] Thank you, thank you, thank you.
I'll level with you - I intended to analyse the whole clip, but there's already far too much to look at. This is really complicated. Deep breath!
[Lardner arrives on stage] [crouches] [cackles like a demon]
Straight away, this is an incredibly odd way to start a set. Most conventional comedians want to make a good first impression - audiences laugh more at comedians they find likeable, so a disarming opening can help a lot.
Lardner starts by adopting a bizarre pose, and producing an unsettling laugh.
This achieves a number of things:
It establishes a tone - this set is going to be strange and unconventional;
It establishes Lardner's status - she's powerful and in control, and doesn't give a fuck what we think of her;
It establishes that Lardner will be adopting non-naturalistic choreography (i.e. she's not pretending to be a regular person who's just wandered on stage).
Hey guys, how you bloody going, you alright?
Lardner stage-whispers this line, and turns her head downwards. This creates the effect of making Lardner look and sound like a friendly character in a children's show.
This is a 180-turn from the cackling demon we first saw, and that gets a laugh. The tension created by the unsettling beginning is broken by this over-the-top performance of kindness.
They’ve let a small urchin boy on the stage.
This joke, on paper, is a classic opener - a line to start the show, to put the audience at ease. Audiences enjoy comedians joking about their own appearance, since it shows the comic is self-aware and humble.
But Lardner delivers this line in an incredibly strange way, creating a dissonance between the accessible joke and the alienating performance.
(NOTE: This is an Australian comedian performing to a predominantly Australian audience; it's very possible that some choices made by Lardner make sense for this audience, but might be invisible to me. For instance, maybe her strange voice is a recognisable impression of an Aussie celebrity! If so, I beg your forgiveness in advance.)
Lardner's impression here is deliberate, but odd. She's doing a very particular vocal and physical impression, but who is it? It doesn't really matter; the point is that the odd impression enriches the moment.
This is a lady gig.
Lardner waves a finger ... but smiles. This is another unexpected performance choice.
The joke is that this character she's created is complaining about an urchin boy (i.e. Lardner) being on stage at a gig for women; but the smile undermines the idea that the character's annoyed.
We're 15 seconds into the show, and Lardner's got four laughs already. More crucially, she's established that everything she does is on purpose. Every word, every voice, every position in which she holds her body. This is a controlled, deliberate, thoughtful performer.
And then she says this:
Hey, um, I was hoping that I could, uh, teach you, uh, just a bit of a game, um, it’s - it’s a game that you can only play in public, you can only do it like kinda when you’re out and about, and all you have to do, right, to start the game, is just find someone who’s like taking a selfie on their phone? Like they’ve got their little bloody, they’ve got their arm up here and they’re doing their little face. And all, all you have to do to start this game, right, is just find them, and then go like 50 metres away, right, so you’re over here, and just get in the background of the photo ... and just like do whatever you want and just like kinda just just be real far away and get in the photo, and then when they’re done taking the photo, like they’re putting their arm down, all YOU have to do to play this game is just, from 50 metres away, just sprint up to them and be like
I'm cutting away before the punchline, because - what the hell is this?! After demonstrating the care and attention applied to her comedy, Lardner talks for absolutely ages without punchlines, tripping over words and saying "um" and "uh", without pausing - she even breathes in inappropriate places.
It's another 180-turn. It's still a magnetic performance - we can't look away, despite the lack of obvious jokes.
And laughs come anyway. Laughs start coming when Lardner impersonates someone taking a selfie. She allows half-pauses here. She disguises these pauses as tripping over her words or grabbing a breath, but they're there to allow space for laughs - without giving the game away that she's still in total control.
I really like Lardner putting her arm up to represent the selfie - it's effective to occasionally stretch up (and indeed to duck down) in comedy, making the most of different levels.
[voice change] DELETE IT I look like a SLUUUUUUT
An absolutely WILD change here. The speed at which Lardner snaps from storyteller to over-the-top character. Her physicality changes too - from a more natural standup performance to big, exaggerated movements.
I'm not an expert in this kind of performance, but if you'll indulge me:
I suspect the reason this works so well is because the setup- involves Lardner proving she can do normal standup, and that the bizarre performances are a conscious choice. The "normal standup" section is charming, but isn't structured like normal standup (that is, the punchlines aren't clearly delineated) - which is important, because you don't want the audience to enjoy the standup so much that they're disappointed by the actouts (i.e. the characterised performances).
Audiences enjoy impressions, and Lardner's is delightful. She also changes her cadence - stretching out words, and adding vocal fry.
Nooooo get RID of iiiiiit!
Unlike most of the comedy I've analysed so far, there isn't a single obvious reason why most of these lines get a laugh. They're big, bold swings that are self-evidently funny, but each person who laughs might be laughing for a slightly different reason.
Here, for instance, Lardner smiles towards the end of the line. Is this Lardner smiling at her own impression? Or is Lardner impersonating a girl who is herself smiling at the person who took the selfie?
Either can work - either way, it's funny. But the point is, this kind of performance allows for multiple interpretations. The ambiguity isn't an obstacle to laughter.
I look faaaaaaaaat.
The joke, of course, is that this would be an incredibly weird thing to do. Each new line is funny, since Lardner's delivery makes every new word hilarious to hear. But also, we might at this point also laugh at the fact that Lardner's character apparently knows the photo's made her look fat when she clearly hasn't seen the photo.
Don’t fucking tag me in thaaaat.
Paradigm shift! Lardner's character's gone from asking for the photo to be deleted to accepting that it'll be kept and uploaded, so now she's asking not to be tagged.
We gather that the selfie-taker hasn't spoken yet, so the character has no additional information. How do we read this? We might interpret it as though Lardner's character wants to be in the photo and wants it to be uploaded, and that she's protesting in order to preserve her innocence.
Maybe. Though this isn't at all necessary for the laugh. The joy of comedy like this is that it allows for more different readings than conventional standup.
Perhaps this a feminist exploration of the relationship between women and photography. Or maybe Lardner just enjoys doing vocal fry. Either way, the work is rich enough that the audience can read into it whatever they like, and in the meantime the performance is so charming and exaggerated that the laughs will come regardless of how we choose to interpret what we're seeing.
[normal voice] And then you just fuck off and
Lardner snaps back again, and by saying "you just fuck off", resolves a bit of tension. On some level, we're all wondering how this part of the set will end - so we feel a kind of relief when we reach this reveal, and that makes us laugh.
they never see you again, but they have a photo of you. It’s a good game.
I think the laugh here comes partly from the sense of finality from Lardner's delivery, as well as the reveal that part of what makes this a good game is that it means the stranger has a photo of you. The implication is that Lardner's motive all along was wanting strangers to have her photo.
[music starts] [Lardner looks confused]
Lots of funny stuff here. The music is tense, which builds anxiety. Lardner looks confused - but it's an exaggerated confusion.
(Quick explanation of terms: Lardner-C is the comedy character we're watching, Lardner-H is the human being Demi Lardner)
Lardner-C is confused, but Lardner-H isn't. Lardner-H is simply playing a character who's confused. We can tell she's not actually confused. The performance allows the audience to realise that Lardner-H KNEW the music would play, resolving tension around the music.
We don't yet know why the music is playing, but we know it's on purpose. There's a plan. That's good. This breaks the tension, so we laugh.
[Lardner looks judgementally at an audience member]
Another odd, ambiguous moment. Why is Lardner looking so cross at a stranger? We don't know, but it's a funny thing to do, and gets the laugh.
[Lardner shrugs, continues to stare judgementally]
The shrug implies Lardner's waiting for something. She wants something from the audience member. But there's no way to know what she can possibly want; this disconnect gets the laugh.
[Lardner points, indicating the music]
For anyone in the audience who hasn't worked it out yet, Lardner's communicating in mime that she holds the audience member responsible for the music playing.
[Lardner shrugs]
A second shrug suggests Lardner-C is still waiting for something (something we know can never come), so we laugh at the extension of the bit.
It’s your own lunchtime you’re wasting.
HUGE laugh here!
In a desert of ambiguity and weirdness, this sentence is an oasis of comprehension. Ohh, she's being a teacher!! RIGHT! I get it!
We laugh at the relief of understanding what this performance represents.
[Lardner alternates staring and shrugging]
At this point, we get rolling laughter from the audience. Instead of the ordinary punchline / laugh / punchline / laugh sequence, different people are laughing at different moments at Lardner's protracted performance. As some laughs end, others have already begun, creating an atmosphere of delerium.
[Lardner walks forwards with hands on hips]
Only a small laugh here, but an important beat - this is a new action, so we pay more attention. A change! Why?
[Lardner puts her hands at the bottom edge of her T-shirt, looking confused and shocked]
This is a real change of state. Lardner no longer looks like a confused teacher. The reassurance we got earlier from the "lunchtime you're wasting" joke is replaced by further anxiety that we don't know what's going on.
[Lardner lifts her top; the word “PERVERT” is attached to her stomach; the word “pervert!” plays over the music track]
Lots going on at once here. The audience laughs and claps because:
The music stops, creating a sense of finality;
Lardner turns around and walks away, reinforcing that this bit's over;
There's something very unexpected yet satisfying about hearing the word "pervert" in the music and seeing the same word on Lardner's stomach;
It's funny to accuse an innocent audience member of wrongdoing;
It's funny to accuse someone of perversion for looking at Lardner's bare stomach, which wasn't on display until the accusation of perversion was made.
Once again, it's ambiguous what this means. Meaningless nonsense, or a metaphor? A deliberately thought-provoking piece of art based on Lardner's own ideas, or a deliberately opaque piece of art onto which the audience can project their own meaning?
Comedy's allowed to have this kind of depth and ambiguity as long as it still generates laughter.
It’s not really appropriate.
A strange vocalisation at the end of this line, along with Lardner's facial expression, gets a laugh. We've gone back to naturalistic performance, so we're relieved.
[Music sting plays: “Impressions”] Here’s some impressions, guys, here’s my first one. [Recording plays: “A farmer who’s forgotten the word shearing”] I’m gonna peel my sheep.
A big part of the laugh here comes from the pace and smoothness of the setup. The music sting plays with Lardner's expression frozen from the end of the previous routine. The moment the sting ends, Lardner unfreezes, delivering the next line like a seasoned TV presenter. The next recording plays slightly too close to the end of Lardner's line (Lardner seems to have a gadget in her hand to control the sound cues; such tight timings would be incredibly difficult to manage with an external tech - as impressive as many techs are!), and the "impression" is performed incredibly quickly after the cue.
This creates a breathless rhythm, making the abrupt stop after the punchline much funnier.
Most impressionists will pause before an impression, taking a beat to prepare for the switch. Lardner subverts our expectation.
"I'm gonna peel my sheep" is a great punchline too, of course. A strange word in an unexpected context, creating a surreal and kind-of unpleasant image.
[Lardner mimes squeezing a sheep]
There's a seediness to Lardner's impression, so the squeeze is funny.
Eh, this one’s ripe.
We thought Lardner's character was squeezing the sheep because she was a creep, but she was checking for ripeness - changing the paradigm by going from a farmer who says "peel" because she's forgotten the word "shearing" to a farmer who says "peel" because she treats sheep like they're fruit.
[bowing] Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Another laugh for a sense of finality.
A final word on why Lardner divides some people:
There's so much oddness and ambiguity in this work that we the audience must find something to latch onto. Often, we're laughing at images and ideas that Lardner's triggered in our minds without mentioning them explicitly.
Some people's minds don't work like this - others will have minds which do work like this, but for whatever reason don't gel with Lardner specifically. This is why the most famous comedians tend to be very direct and simple in their communication, with no room for ambiguity. That way, the audience doesn't feel they're missing out on something.
Anyway, I loved this set - thanks so much for recommending Demi Lardner!
Directors & Writers: Emma Hough Hobbs and Leela Varghese
Mini-review:
It's not every day that I come across a film as original as this. Not all of its ideas gel together well, but its unabashedly queer spirit makes for an infectious experience. The colorful animation suits the story like a glove, even with the obvious budget constraints, and the music is a delight as well. I particularly enjoyed the details in the background art, like the jokes and Easter eggs hidden in signs and such. Like I said, some of its ideas are kind of heavy-handed, but the setting more than makes up for that. Like, I can't really think of a movie that's even remotely similar to this one in that regard. Anyway, Lesbian Space Princess serves up a hilarious sapphic space adventure that's filled to the brim with creativity.
