We Are All in the Gutter, But Some of Us Are Looking at David O'Doherty
Project Arts Centre
****
Stuck for a few agonising, tweet-filled minutes trapped in a corridor before the show, the trials of David O'Doherty seem set to continue. Thank goodness. The inspiringly shaggy comedian is in a defiant mood these days, with big career plans that he looks forward to imploding, while lashing out with frequent medium-low kicks at the tribulations a man in his late thirties can experience: a love for the Tour de France and Steffi Graf that may never be requited, or a missed opportunity to ever say, "You should have killed me when you had the chance!"
Such are the appropriate ambitions instilled by a 1980s suburban Irish upbringing, which still define O'Doherty's hilarious act. He will play the cynic, for instance, without ever putting away childish things: his now-temperamental 1986 Casio keyboard, routines built around a detective agency he once ran out of the family shed, or Beckettian adventures with obscure Star Wars figures.
In a near-jokeless song, You Have to Laugh, he scans the adult world with more alarm, and it makes his warm and deceptively rambling comedy seem neither sweet nor sour, but a much-needed release: "What is laughter," he sings, "if not happy screaming?"
Until Sat
