Profile Pat Shortt Could a saxophone player and comedian mentored by Jon Kenny become a solo star on stage, TV and the big screen? That's riiiight, writes Brian Boyd
Next week sees the annual meeting of the international comic sodality at the Smithwick's Cat Laughs Festival in Kilkenny. Over the years, the festival has hosted some marquee name acts such as Eddie Izzard, Paul Merton and Rory Bremner, but only one comic has ever managed to sell out all his shows at the festival in advance. That's riiiight (as his catchphrase goes), it's Pat Shortt.
It was a tense and nervous Shortt who arrived at the Cat Laughs in 2002. He had just ventured out on his own after 10 years working in tandem with his mentor, Jon Kenny, in D'Unbelievables. The very shy performer - who, when he first started performing with Kenny in the early 1990s, used to play his saxophone from behind the curtain due to stage fright - remembers being terrified at the prospect of going on without the usual safety net that was his considerably more experienced comedy partner.
Shortt stormed Cat Laughs like no other comic had done before. Revelling in his freedom, he seemed to find another gear as he turned in some scintillating performances. The reviews were of the "comic genius" variety.
He was quickly booked for a nationwide tour and RTÉ was suddenly keen to bring his stage characters into a television show (which would later become the very popular Killinaskully).
Success, though, threw up an intensely personal dilemma for Shortt. The only reason he had gone to Cat Laughs with a solo show in the first place was that D'Unbelievables were on a hiatus following the news that Jon Kenny had been diagnosed with cancer. (Kenny is now thankfully clear of the disease.) Shortt's solo career was always meant to be a stop-gap measure while Kenny was undergoing treatment.
D'Unbelievables never re-formed, and Shortt is now bigger than the duo ever were. There was fevered talk at the time of "splits", "arguments" and "bitterness", and one day Shortt received a phone call from a journalist asking him to comment on the "fact" that the duo were suing each other.
It's no secret that Shortt began his career as a sidekick to Jon Kenny. From Thurles, Co Tipperary, the now 41-year-old Shortt was an art college graduate whose only ambition was to be a full-time musician. He's a very accomplished saxophone player and has toured around the world as the one-man brass section for The Saw Doctors. At a stretch you could argue that The Saw Doctors broke up D'Unbelievables.
When Kenny was undergoing treatment for cancer, Shortt soon realised there were only so many times he could ring him up and ask "how are you?".
With his new free time, he took out his saxophone again and went to the US to tour with The Saw Doctors. He quickly got the "performing buzz" back again and, when he returned to Ireland and still had a number of months to wait for Kenny to get better, he decided to take some of the characters he used to do in D'Unbelievables, flesh them out a bit and bring them to the Cat Laughs Festival.
HIS RELATIONSHIP WITH Kenny had changed everything. When Shortt first met the Limerick comedian, he confessed to being "in awe of him". He once told this reporter: "When we first met, Jon had had a hit single (a reggae version of Spancil Hill), was a regular on RTÉ television and had a lot of theatre experience. I was only 17 and he was like a big brother to me, instructing me along the way, telling me why something worked or didn't, always encouraging me and pushing me forward."
When D'Unbelievables first started, in the early 1990s, Shortt was the sax player. Then, under Kenny's tutelage, he began appearing in sketches and soon became a full-blown member and an equal writing partner.
When his close friend was diagnosed with cancer, Shortt said he was "shocked and devastated". "The fear was terrible but all we talk about is whether we can still be funny in the next D'Unbelievables show."
That next show never happened and, given Shortt's career trajectory since, is not likely to do so in the immediate future. Speaking about Shortt's solo success and the end of D'Unbelievables, Kenny told this reporter "I feel fine about it. In a way it was a relief in that I knew he wasn't dependent on me. So that made me think that, if I didn't want to go back [ to D'Unbelievables] after my illness I didn't have to. We don't see one another much, he's always working. The best of luck to him. We had 12 good years together. I don't feel let down by his solo career."
As it transpired, the solicitors were called in to wind down D'Unbelievables. There was a business and a studio in both their names that had to be divided up. There was no animosity, though - after meeting the solicitors, Shortt and Kenny went for a drink together.
Beyond the sensationalist coverage of the end of their working relationship, however, lies the simple truth that after coming through a very debilitating illness, Jon Kenny's priorities had obviously changed and the prospect of travelling around Ireland in a van working seven nights a week with D'Unbelievables was quickly beginning to lose its appeal. "I could never go back to that" says Kenny. "It's too exhausting. Pat is 10 years younger than I am and we were just going in different directions. He seems to be still working the long hours and I don't envy him that. I'm happy to take a step back."
But Kenny is still there with Shortt every night as he performs solo. He's there in what he taught Shortt about the Italian tradition of commedia dell'arte, which has a strong emphasis on harlequinade, mime and pantomime. It's there in Shortt's Maurice Hickey rural politician character in his Xit Poll programme, and it's there in all the work he does on Killinaskully.
Where Shortt excels is in his near forensic dissection of Irish rural life - the internecine inter-provincial rivalries, the pathetic one-upmanship and the prevailing sense of cute hoordom. While some may find the content of his sketches a bit too vernacular, there is no doubt that he has truly world-class performance skills. More than anything, Shortt is a classic vaudeville performer who uses rural Ireland the same way Billy Connolly uses Glasgow and Woody Allen uses New York.
Another valuable lesson Shortt learnt from his time as one of D'Unbelievables is that there was a third way to approach comedy that wasn't restricted by either the strictures of "alternative" or mainstream comedy. When D'Unbelievables first started they couldn't be neatly slotted in alongside the Comedy Cellar acts (Barry Murphy, Ardal O'Hanlon etc) and they certainly did not belong on the rubber chicken "Comedy Cabaret" circuit.
THEY CHANGED IRISH comedy by introducing it to the techniques of commedia dell'arte. They constructed their own theatre/comedy space and, instead of going on the attack on "the scheming little feckers", they took a more nuanced and resonant approach that was more like a cartoon directed by a film noir specialist. The truth is that they were The League Of Gentlemen before the English trio were even invented.
Their success has been staggering - it's a little-known fact, but D'Unbelievables videos and DVDs outsell those of Father Ted by a ratio of three to one in Ireland.
Though Shortt has never admitted it, it must have been galling for him and Kenny to see the acclaim heaped on The League Of Gentlemen and how the trio were able to move from parochial sketch comedy to the wider canvas of theatre and film work. It's something he was always keenly aware of (even the most successful of Irish comics soon hit a professional ceiling) and he has snapped up any theatre or film parts that have been dangled in front of him.
HE HAS PREVIOUSLY appeared in the Druid Theatre Company production of Martin McDonagh's Tarantino-style The Lonesome West and his film roles have included Angela Mooney Dies Again (in which he appeared alongside Mia Farrow), This Is My Father (with Brendan Gleeson and Stephen Rea) and The Closer It Gets (with Niamh Cusack)
This week, the sax player from Thurles finds himself a hot property at the Cannes Film Festival. Director Lenny Abrahamson, in the follow-up to his magnificent film Adam And Paul, cast Shortt in the lead role in his new film Garage, which tells the story of hapless mid-western Irish caretaker Josie (Shortt), and his troubled search for love.
The film was selected for the prestigious Directors' Fortnight - a massive shop window which should see Garage getting some big international distribution deals. The artistic director of the Directors' Fortnight, Olivier Pere, said of Shortt: "His amazing performance in Garage means Pat Shortt will be the great discovery of the international audience at the Fortnight this year."
Well done Cannes, but you're only catching up on what we've known here for years.
The Shortt File
Who is he? Pat Shortt - saxophonist, comedian, actor.
What's he's been up to?Making a big splash at D'Cannes Film Festival.
Good thing to say:"Pat, I believe you're the new Robin Williams."
Bad thing to say:"I preferred you in The Saw Doctors."
Least appealing characteristic:Dressing up as a bad trannie for television advertisements.
Most appealing characteristic:As Irish comedians go, he's a decent skin.