[COMEDY/Stand-up ~ AUS]

Daniel Muggleton: Blinded By The Whites
The Lark at Gluttony, Wed 21 Feb, 2024.

The synopsis for this show refers to its tracksuit-clad front man as a ‘foul-mouthed prophet’ – it wasn’t
wrong.

One-minute Muggleton is the guy you don’t want to take home to your mother and in the next breath he’s probably the most insightful bloke you’ve met. I’d liken the intimate experience of this gig to hanging out in your loungeroom with a mate you haven’t seen in years, (mostly because he’s not fit for public consumption) watching the reasons to love him unfurl whilst mentally self-flagellating for your lack of moral fibre.

Despite not having much of a crowd or a vibe to work with (for which we were playfully berated throughout his set) Muggleton’s storytelling and witty anecdotes captivated the majority, and before the 25-minute mark he’d covered everything from white privilege and the housing crisis, to bucks parties and creepy fashion-statements. As you could imagine, there was plenty of interaction with particular members of the audience for the latter.

While his set was full of pearlers like ‘White people are so into diversity when they’re doing it’, it occasionally felt like Muggleton was so preoccupied with shocking the audience with faux pas that the punchline was lost in a mire of moral bankruptcy. A classic example of this was when he professed his appreciation for the West Australian tradition of spending Australia Day on a boat. A couple in the audience walked out during this part of the story. True to form, Muggleton went on to explain that it wasn’t the celebrating he enjoyed, but the fact that white Australians were leaving the land to its traditional owners for the day – a potentially wonderful analogy that soon became watered down by a rant about the boats returning to shore for a re-enactment of Invasion Day.

On the whole, this show ticked all the necessary boxes that a good comedy should. It was a thought-provoking, immensely uncomfortable and hilarious account of human existence in all of its madness and Daniel Muggleton is no-doubt – the foul-mouthed prophet you’ll hate to love.