Gay comedian Jonathan Duffy has a new exciting comedy show, It’s been a while, that premiers tonight at theater Tjarnarbíó. GayIceland got in touch with Jonathan and started by asking in what ways it will be different from his previous shows.
“Well, the previous shows I have done normally had a theme to them, they were focused on a particular issue like my last one, I wouldn’t date me either was all about dating. This show is basically a catch up. It’s all the things I’ve been doing over the past year and some interesting observations I’ve made. Despite some people possibly thinking I had disappeared, I’ve actually been doing a lot. I went back to Australia to visit my family, I made my own Late night chat show, and I’ve even been a fat dude trying to train for a half marathon. It’s going to be a catch up of epic proportions. Just a microphone, me and my charming demeanour.”
Jonathan says that he hasn’t done a solo show for the public in about a year and that’s one of the reasons he decided to put a new show together. “Just before I left to tour with my friend Hulli, i.e. Hugleikur Dagsson around Europe, someone who saw me perform at KEX hostel came up to me after the show and said: “I was wondering where you had been, I thought you went back to Australia.” So I thought I better do a show to let people know I’m still here – and I’m not dead.”
“I have a whole section on the things I noticed about each of the countries, like what it was like to check in to a hotel in Serbia that looked like the shining … or coming to the realization that I’m really not an Icelandophile.”
Have you been working on it for long? “No, not at all. It’s all very fresh so it’s exciting and terrifying cause a lot of it has been written in the last couple of weeks.”
Talking about your tour with Hugleikur, how did that go?
“It’s been insane. We’ve been in a new country almost every day. I have gotten to the point where I have no idea where I am many times. It’s also been exciting and interesting to perform as a gay man in countries where being gay isn’t necessarily accepted. Places like Serbia, Croatia the Czech Republic and others. It’s also been a great chance to see if my jokes work with other cultures, which so far has gone very well,” he says and admits that in all honesty, he never thought his jokes would go down very well in Serbia, but the audience actually loved them.
“Another thing that surprised me is that I thought I would have loads of ‘down time’ because of the travel. But it never happens, you basically just wake up, go to an airport, arrive somewhere else, perform and then go to sleep and do it all over again. It’s insane but also something most comedians dream about doing so you really can’t complain about it.”
Asked how the audience was, compared to the ones in Iceland, Jonathan says that in the east audiences were actually quite similar to Iceland. “They’re dark and sarcastic and love you to go as far as you can with a joke. I also noticed they loved being made fun of a lot, like Icelanders.”
Will you be bringing something from that experience to your new show here in Iceland?
“Lots of it. I have a whole section on the things I noticed about each of the countries, like what it was like to check in to a hotel in Serbia that looked like the shining, with more cigarette smoke, or coming to the realization that I’m really not an Icelandophile,” he says and adds that he doesn’t want to go into more details; if people want to know more, then they just how to come to his show, which premiers at Tjarnarbíó tonight.
