Here is a perfectly nice show by a perfectly nice young man who has some adventures and is generous with himself in sharing them. Dubus is the sort of boy you could take home to your mum but he’s had his mildly wild moments, hitch-hiking, taking road trips, drugs and going to Burning Man. Going by the title you’d imagine Cars and Girls to be a blokey, limited kind of show but Dubus is a gentle and romantic soul, not a posturer at all, and he tells some compelling stories. This gives his monologue an easy rhythm, despite some clunky stretches when it comes to rhyme patterns. No matter, he’s a natural raconteur and, despite the fact that this show is all in rhyme, it’s entirely lacking in pretention.
Dubus shares moments of his young life, travel stories and love stories – the former work better as you don’t get much of a sense of the respective girlfriends as individuals. Thankfully, Dubus avoids bleating about having to grow up (a tiresomely recurring theme in stand-up, especially from the boys); he’s a nice English lad from the village and what he does is document some of his adventures in poetry, with sufficient self-awareness and attention to detail so that you happily go along with him. He’s not hysterically funny but he doesn’t need to be, he is a fireside storyteller of the old-fashioned variety, telling some very modern tales.
He creates effective visuals of characters and places, animating his autobiographical narrative with quips and observations in simple unpretentious English. Someone needs to let him know that ‘layby’ translates to ‘service road’ in Australian English; audiences will quickly work out what he means but it distracts for a millisecond. There’s a romantic twist at the end which he expresses in an honestly heartfelt way and you’re happy for him. Cars and Girls is honest and good.
BY LIZA DEZFOULI
