AS Kilkenny cackled onwards we had reason to pause for a veritable master class in the art of stand up by the gender defying shape (and indeed style) of Eddie Izzard. There is little point in heaping superlatives on Mr Izzard: he's head, shoulders and plunging neckline over the opposition. While it may seem that all he does is "talk bollocks", he imbues that "bollocks" with devastatingly funny streams of comic consciousness. He lifted us higher with some beautifully bizarre monologues on the nature of fashion, supermarket queues and aviation. The funniest man in the world? Most probably.
Quite a comedown, then, to have to sit through Bill Murray's show. Murray was joined on stage by members of the Chicago Second City Comedy troupe and for an outrageously priced £20 ticket all they offered up was mildly amusing fluff. There was no stand up, precious little improv, just a series of sketches that veered perilously close to the jaded and unimaginative end of the comic spectrum. While the performers were all very capable and professional, the material they were dealing with was somewhat dated.
Across the road, John Shuttleworth was working wonders on his tacky Casio organ as the self styled retired guard from Sheffield letting us in on his showbiz secrets. Shuttleworth is a delightful comic creation - he's a sad little man who thinks that his spectacularly bad songs are just what the world has been waiting for. Summoning up all the pathos we normally reserve for pathetic trainspotting individuals, he won us over with the sheer desperation of his endeavours.
Out of 50 performers at the festival only three were female, and in a display of sisterly solidarity they proceeded to wipe the floor with their male colleagues. Diane Ford, from the US, is a sharp, quickwitted, no bullshit comic who hammered away to hilarious effect at gender politics. Taking a few common or garden topics (e.g., clothes, food) she displays the differing ways the sexes treat them and in the process she left the male psyche battered and bruised. Disappointing to hear her do so much material on menstruation - which is somewhat of a cliched topic for a commedienne - but all in all she packed a powerfully funny punch.
Another US commedienne, Kathleen Madigan, put in one of the best performances of the festival with a stunning hour of stand up that more or less completely avoided gender based issues. Taking the dysfunctional US family unit as her starting point, she was pulling top class gags out of the air. A beautiful routine about how a single person in their 30s lets their standards drop when looking for a partner (sadly none of it is printable) was one of the best 15 minutes of comedy I've heard all year. The general consensus was that Madigan stole the show and here's one performer who needs to be bullied into doing a full Irish tour. A class act.
Donna McPhail, from Britain, kept the momentum going with heaps upon heaps of (strangely enough) anti British material. McPhail took a very sharp carving knife to the idea of British culture and proceeded to fillet it. Some beautiful stuff on her definition of postfeminism, "It's when you get a man to open the door for you and then you slam it in his face," rounded off yet another classy performance.
The Irish comics are storming the show and away from headline acts like Ardal O'Hanlon and Sean Hughes, there is more new young talent - than you can shake a stick at. Dubliner Ed Byrne is very much an indie comic and his frothy and fast paced material runs all around the place, hitting targets at will. His routine on fake orgasms (again unprintable) was a particular stand out and he's the sort of performer for whom the words "rising" and "star" are appropriate. Kevin Hayes from Waterford is obviously influenced by one of the all time Irish greats, Ian McPherson, and his dry, smooth wit is wondrous. He informed us that he was just back from Paris where a pint of Guinness cost £6, whereas in Kilkenny it only cost him £1.90. "I know where I'd rather be," he said, ". . . in Paris."
Patrick McDonnell from Louth comes across as the bastard love child of Kevin McAleer and Ardal O'Hanlon at first glance, but he's a one off original who injects most every sentence with healthy doses of surrealism. Very much in the Phil Kay, Reeves and Mortimer mode, he's an absolute delight and he has enough raw ability to go all the way. The future of Irish comedy is in very safe hands.
