Whether Buckley is a good boy or bad boy or not is highly debatable. Holding the record for Perth’s most ill-behaved jack russell terrier, Buckley’s many crimes against manners and decency are astounding. But can a dog really be born bad? As every pre-service teacher will tell you, “there is no such thing as a bad boy, only bad behaviour”. I believed this once too, but these days I’m not so sure. Returning to Perth Fringe for a second year is Bad Boy Buckley, a chaotic hour of acidic screwball comedy from the manic mind of Patrick Marlborough. In this show, the democratic process will finally decide, is Buckley good or bad?
Leading the panel discussion, Patrick Marlborough is joined by fellow political commentators Annabel Crabb (ABC columnist), Paul Keating (former Prime Minister), Penny Wong (Minister of Foreign affairs), and Gorbash (Chieftain of the Orcs). They are summoned to the screenstage through Patrick’s laborious manipulation of deep-fake software- not AI, but comic impressions filmed with a face-swap app and stitched onto the bodies of the panelists. There are also dozens of cameo appearances from politicians, public figures and Australian Idol contestants, who not only debate the dog’s good-standing, but weigh in on topical issues such as daylight savings, the Government’s mandatory e-scooter policy or wanted criminal Guy Sebastian. All the characters are absurdly hilarious, with the exception of Gorbash the Orc, who Paul Keating (nude for some reason) accurately describes as “as dry as a dead dog’s dick”.
While most Fringe World soundtechs can’t even figure out how to turn the microphone on, the AV man here, Ben Mulvey, is responsible for over 300 video and sound clips, all which must be triggered at the right time. It is the most technically highwire no-budget comedy show I have ever seen. You would expect such a timing-reliant performance to be rigidly scripted, but Patrick frequently goes far off topic, to rant about Warhammer or Dune or the queer YA pantomime performance. Somehow Mulvey can always recognise the cues buried under the barrages of stories, references and jokes.
Bad Boy Buckley. Photography by Brandon Ward.
Depending on the audience, every night is different. Friday night’s show, taking place during a 45 degree heatwave, had a smaller audience of mostly over-50s who loved the jokes about retired politicians and public television personalities, but were silent at the many references to World of Warcraft and Neon Genesis Evangelion. The following night with a millennial crowd, it was the exact opposite. With Patrick’s fixations on anime, video games, forgotten prime ministers, mid-2000s Australian cultural figures, disgraced comedians and his dog, there are so many incongruous elements at play at any given time. This doesn’t always make for a cohesive aesthetic or comprehensible message. The only way to make sense of it all is to say “well, that’s Patrick”.
Patrick, a novelist, journalist and comedian, is probably the funniest person I know. Sure I have some funny friends– they might whisper a wry observation in my ear every once in a while, but there is nobody really making anything with as much ambition, creative drive, and/or death-drive as Patrick. He is also the riskiest person I know. His provocative writing endlessly calls for his own cancellation– not so much from people with weird hair, who he mostly sides with, but from those who ensure his own livelihood as an artist– the mining corp arts funders, Fringe administrators, and the remains of the publishing industry.
His 2021 show On Fringe repeatedly broke the gag-order clause in the Fringe World artist contract, which prevented artists from criticizing Fringe’s partnership with Woodside Energy. The show also forced us to witness 300 slides of graphic Shrek porn. Then in 2022 there was Killing Rove, the second in the Rove Quartet (starting with Rove Live, then Killing Rove, then Rose Samsara which was my show, and finally Rose Live). The show was produced with the aim of receiving a lawsuit from Rove McMannus. But Bad Boy Buckley is the riskiest show so far, because the debate is not really about Patrick’s dog Buckley, but about the nation of Israel.
Buckley, ridiculously, is the stand-in for Israel here, and the un-biased panelists are all leaning towards the good boy vote, as are Biden, Trump, Albo and all the other world leaders who call into the show to pledge their support. Written at the beginning of 2024, the show reflected the general atmosphere of fury and despair surrounding the ongoing genocide in Palestine, with the perpetrators being supported and financially aided by all our supposedly progressive leaders, media figures and institutions. It was depressing to witness scenes of unimaginable horror being repeatedly denied as ‘necessary’, not that bad, or untrue. As the Warhammer 40k slogan goes, “in the grim darkness of the future, there is only war”.
There is a phantom chokehold on journalists, politicians, and organisations from criticising or cutting ties with the IDF, with threats to funding and careers if they do. Patrick, who had to disguise Israel as his dog to even get the show approved, satirises this censorship by wearing a blinking dog collar that shocks him violently whenever he mentions a risky word: innocuous phrases such as pal, river, sea, and ‘killing kids is wrong’. Like every second big election, the mood becomes increasingly dire as the votes roll in, electorate after electorate deciding that Buckley is a ‘good boy’; Patrick becoming distraught. But somehow, despite the bleakness of the subject matter, the show remains consistently funny, absurd and gloriously stupid.
Bad Boy Buckley. Photography by Brandon Ward.
Patrick’s comedy brings to mind the aesthetic category of the zany, described by Sianne Ngai as a “notably stressful style” characterised by mania, overexertion and the turning of play into work. Zany figures such as Jim Carey, Conner O’Malley and the clown dad from Day of the Locust, are always both simultaneously entertaining and repelling. As Ngai says, “there is something strained, desperate, and precarious about the zany that immediately activates the spectator’s desire for distance”. Working so hard to produce our laughter, the zany often ends up risking injury to themselves or others.
It is true. Patrick’s shows, so fast, chaotic and dense, always feel like you are watching someone experiencing a terrible crisis. Written and created the week before and requiring punishing amounts of video-editing, logistics and self advertising, it is quite understandable that every show culminates in a mental breakdown on stage, sometimes real, no one knows. Mild slurs, threats of suicide and calls for political assassination are screeched or sobbed, always producing steady, uneasy, laughter. For anyone else, this would be cause for major concern, but for those familiar, well, ‘that’s just Patrick!’
Bad Boy Buckley is the best grimdark screwball comedy you can see at Fringe. Almost all other comedy seems lazy, cynical or unambitious in comparison. You will likely walk out bewildered. You will likely walk out tired. And you will likely walk out feeling bad: the only hopeful message here being a call for political violence from the 2003 Australian Idol runner-up Shannon Noll. “Sometimes,” he says, “the best thing to do is to pick up a brick, and crack some skulls”.
Bad Boy Buckley is on for one more night on the 3rd of February, starting 9pm at DADAA Fremantle. Find tickets here
Patrick Marlborough can be followed @cormac_mccafe. His first novel Nock Loose is being published in June 2025. You can also find his music at Bang Bang Bart.
****The writer Rainy Colbert does not necessarily agree that political assassination is a constructive idea.