Orange marchers and Clinton are fair game for comedian's wit

It was wild and wet in Galway, not the most hospitable weather for a wild weekend comedy festival, or any festival, come to that.

But while one stout company-sponsored event took place in the southern capital, the Murphy's Ungagged Comedy Festival went west for the first time over the weekend, with bigger acts like Patrick Kielty, Owen O'Neill, Ennio Marchetto, Rob Newman in theatres and large venues, and a number of mixed bills on a pub circuit.

The Galway mini-festival is the latest in a new departure for Murphys, which already sponsors the Cat Laughs Comedy Festival in Kilkenny. Since this year's Cat Laughs over the June bank holiday, they have hosted laugh-fests in Kinsale, Cork and Galway this weekend, and plan another for Dublin on November 11th-15th.

The weather, and perhaps a lack of local knowledge about the acts in pub venues throughout the city, made for some low attendances on Friday night especially, with at least one pub gig cancelled. Other shows, however, were packed, with both people and atmosphere.

The least familiar acts included Englishman Rob Newman (formerly teamed with David Baddiel, but an absent face from performance for a while) at the Cuba club last night, and Venetian Ennio Marchetto (Saturday, Black Box), an unusual choice for a comedy festival dominated by stand-up.

His paper costumes, creating characters from Elvis to the Supremes to Queen Elizabeth, set to a musical soundtrack, are more whimsical and gently humorous than directly funny, but he appealed to a large cross-section.

Tickets were reputed to be running out the door for Marchetto and Patrick Kielty, the Co Down comedian and TV presenter who was at the Town Hall on Saturday and last night. Kielty's career moves between stand-up and mainstream TV, and those who came to see him on the back of his TV persona may have got a surprise with some of the material.

The mid-20s comedian has long had a reputation for fearless attacks on all sides of the political divide in the North, and the show (which he performed for three nights in Belfast's Waterfront a few weeks ago) covers politics in parts. They may be talking about building a peace in the North, he said, but they should remember that the last thing to be built in Belfast went down with Leonardo di Caprio on board and Kate Winslet hanging on.

There was also harder-hitting stuff about Orange marchers, and Martin McGuinness liaising with the IRA, and sex - including Bill Clinton stuff (groan) and football (David Beckham) and lots of toilet humour, from the dirty protest in Long Kesh to the problems of relieving himself in primitive toilets in Sudan. In short, certainly a far cry from material or language he'd get away with on TV. But it was mostly delivered in a Mr Showbiz manner.

This was a professional, balanced presentation, with Kielty bouncing about energetically on stage and working the audience.

The gem on Saturday night was the serendipity that resulted in Nigel sitting in the front row. It transpired that Nigel was a Protestant from Portadown, which acted as a perfect foil for Kielty's political stuff. Nigel, good sport, went up on stage for the end of the show, put on wellies, cap and dirty mac, and accompanied Kielty in a daft song and dance about the Orange marches. As Kielty commented when he first found Nigel: "The comedy gods are smiling on Paddy tonight". Delicious.

On Friday Owen O'Neill performed Off My Face, his moving and blackly funny one-man show, a theatre piece rather than stand-up, at the Town Hall. The theatre was far from full, perhaps because he was in Galway a few weeks ago, doing stand-up at the Sunday night comedy club in the GPO, and because some of the leaflets didn't make it clear that what was on offer was a different kettle of dark laughs altogether.

It was certainly no fault of the show itself, a bleak and truthful account of O'Neill's struggle with alcohol, as experienced through his sessions with an American shrink who continually urges him to be "fearlessly honest". O'Neill spins him a tale, but shares the truth with the audience, a youth of alcohol excess and hilarious episodes involving dead sheep, burgling clothes shops and stern schoolmasters.

Entertaining and thought-provoking, it steps creatively between humour and pathos. He first performed the show a couple of years ago, it has since won the LWT Comedy Writing Award and next month he is taking it to Los Angeles.

Galway has a well-developed audience for comedy, fostered by Gerry Mallon's Sunday-night club at GPO, and audiences over the weekend seemed to be mostly locals and students, with a healthy sprinkling of overseas visitors.

There is a tendency, with the recent burgeoning of festivals, towards the same faces circulating and being juggled about in different combinations. Not so long ago there weren't enough opportunities for exposure for Irish comedians, whereas today the scene could do with an influx of new blood, and for some of the more established comedians, new material.

In the pub venues around town the Stage Door and Roisin Dubh seemed most lively. Dara O'Briain (of RTE's Don't Feed The Gondolas) was quick on his feet in handling the audience wittily and had some very good material; Barry Glendenning's act included a well-timed sexual fantasy routine and a pretty direct response to a repetitive heckler - he threw a glass of water over him; Jason Byrne offered a burst of his inventive, audience-involving madness and there were good performances from others, including Barry Murphy, Eddie Bannon, Deirdre O'Kane, Mark Doherty and Patrick McDonnell.