OBSERVER: Help Me Please

After a copious amount of cheese and beer, the Swiss Club crowd waits in anticipation for Dan Rath’s Comedy Festival show, Help Me Please.
And they are not disappointed when the comedy begins.
“I’m unwell,” Rath states, delivered in deadpan style. Rath then launches into a set of quick-fire gags dispensed at lightning speed.
Rath pivots through jokes like a train careering down the line without brakes.
Starting at one station, say water bottles, before too long, we’ve hurtled through Scientology and arrived at mullets as cultural appropriation.
Pivots, a word Rath describes as his aspirational method of schtick, is one way to refer to Rath’s style of meandering through a series of absurdist, existential meditations.
Yoga power dynamics, ASMR, flags, Netanyahu, Uber drivers, and meal prep all become subject to rapid-fire hilarity.
All delivered poker-faced, with Rath’s signature fidgety tic of staring at his feet while running his hand through his hair.
Laughter is followed by angst when you realise the tragic irony of what you are laughing at.
Who knew ADHD, PTSD, and clinical depression could be so funny?
The jokes keep coming, like the one about the cushions with “Keep Calm and Carry On” or “Live Laugh Love” embroidered by an indentured, enslaved, probably child worker in a sweatshop somewhere in the world.
Or the joke about Greta Thunberg and being on the spectrum.
Cue a well-timed punchline, and the crowd erupts.
There’s a reason Rath has won multiple comedy awards.
Rath is a master of self-deprecating, anxiety-inducing, side-splitting laughs.
Review by Kathryn Keeble