Day-to-day deep dive _{by Madelaine Empson}

Wellington: it’s finally time to take a good, hard look at Chris Parker! After performing his new show across Australia, the stage and screen comedy star will kick off the New Zealand leg of the tour at St James Theatre on Friday the 4^th of September.

Parker explains that Take A Good Hard Look At Me is set over one day: the 10^th of February 2026. An insignificant day – the most boring he could find – for a significant reason.

“Can I make what is truly mundane, what is almost nothing, something?”

That’s the real craft of a comedian, he notes of this deep dive into his daily life.

“Comedians are always trying to be as personal as possible, and this is the most personal that I could be: show people what I get up to in a day”, Parker says, adding Take A Good Hard Look At Me taps into the fact that “everything feels so big and global tensions are so high… and yet we often live such a boring day-to-day life. I love that contrast. That’s what the show is about: the big and the mundane at the same time.”

Take A Good Hard Look At Me is one of the funniest hours the Fred Award-winning comedian and self-proclaimed people’s princess of Aotearoa has ever written. That’s saying something for a person whose 2025 tour Stop Being So Dramatic played to sold-out audiences throughout Australia, New Zealand, London, and Edinburgh! At the same time, Parker knows that right now, the world is a deeply unfunny place.

“But I’m also trying to find the relief, the joy, the catharsis through it”, he says, hoping the audience will experience a sense of unity in knowing we’re all in this together.