An Irishman's Diary

ARE AUDIENCES in this country a soft touch for overseas performers? I don’t just mean the ticket premium, which suggests we’re subject to a tax for being Irish, and pay it willingly. But money aside, are we also too generous with our affections, whether performers deserve them or not?

The question nagged me again at a gig in Dublin’s Vicar Street the other night, by English comedian Simon Amstell. Amstell is a likeable man and a funny TV performer, with a nice line in ego-deflating wit, especially at the expense of celebrity guests. And like many’s the visitor to Ireland before him, he claims to love performing here.

“Irish audiences really get what I’m on about,” he said recently. “I suppose it’s because you have more of a storytelling background than the English do.” This must also be why, again like many touring acts before him, he chose Dublin as the venue for a live DVD, to be recorded during last weekend’s shows, the first of which I attended.

And it’s not that it was terrible – it wasn’t. But it was only all right. It seemed to me that the laughter lost its spontaneity about half an hour in, and thereafter grew progressively forced. By the end, I thought, the audience was working nearly as hard as the comedian.

I don’t know if any encores were planned (they’re rarely spontaneous these days). Either way, the light engineer allowed only one brief curtain call, to dutiful applause, before exercising his divine powers to bring up the lights and declare the evening over. There were no dissenters.

It pains me to write this. Like most Irish people, I hate criticising performers, even those who work part-time in restaurants, to whom I frequently lie when they ask me if everything is OK. I know you’re just the same, reader. It’s probably our storytelling background.

Also, we both have a natural sympathy for stand-up comedians, no doubt misplaced. It’s an article of faith that theirs is the hardest job in show-business; although one would like to think that those with the nerve to do it are suitably equipped with thick skin and unshakeable self-esteem. Amstell’s act suggests otherwise, in fact, painting him as vulnerable and neurotic. Indeed, in that same interview, he joked about how audiences often want to hug him afterwards.

So even now, I’m tempted to misspell his name in case he Googles himself and reads this. But damn it, audiences have feelings too, even Irish audiences. And there were moments in Friday’s show when I thought we were being taken for granted, if not for a ride.

For example, although the recording was no secret, many people only heard about it in an announcement beforehand, when it was suggested it would be a good idea if we didn’t move around unnecessarily. Fair enough. But to this end it would also have been a good idea if the venue had not already served us large amounts of beer.

When the first person headed for the toilet, about 10 minutes in, the comedian affected outrage. Fair enough again. Making isolated audience members the butt of humour can be highly entertaining (so long as it’s not you). Unfortunately the joke was only slightly funny to begin with, and as a steady trickle of urinators followed, it wore rather thin.

When Amstell pleaded finally that if the DVD failed, he was “going back to Romford” (scene of his grim early years), we half believed him. And it’s one thing to invite sympathy from the audience. But if you involve us too much in your problems, you can hardly expect us to laugh as well.

Then there was the slightly odd contractual relationship that existed between audience and performer. To wit: when Amstell was put off his stroke by an occasional distraction, he would implicate us in the recording conspiracy by repeating the segment for the benefit of the DVD viewers.

We could have lived with that too. Even though it’s a bit of a no-no in our storytelling tradition, we understand such technical requirements. But ideally the producers might have paid us to be there as extras and then we could have guffawed even at the repeats. Plus, we would have taken our professional responsibilities seriously and not drunk beer beforehand.

Instead, we’d been charged for our tickets in the usual manner and thus felt free to behave as we wished, within the normal constraints of politeness. Which are fairly severe here.

I don’t know how much of the muted laughter was our typically polite response to uninspired material and how much was because people badly needed to go to the toilet, so that laughing any more vigorously would have hurt, but it was probably a bit of both.

Muting applause is as far as audience criticism generally goes in Ireland. Yes, there was that little unpleasantness at Cat Stevens last year, which became a news story, thereby proving the point. This is not like certain Mediterranean countries where opera audiences can critique a tenor’s performance with responses ranging from cat-calling to homicide.

Here, we express displeasure by not applauding quite as warmly as we would when enjoying ourselves (the “grand, thanks” response). So I suppose the fact that Friday night’s audience did not demand an encore was damning enough. Yet even at that, incredibly, some people did mount a half-hearted standing ovation.

Not singling out any sex in particular, most of these seemed to be from a gender known for its ability to fake orgasms. And it can’t have been a sexual-attraction thing, because as the act made very clear, their affections would have been wasted.

So, to be charitable about it, it must have been the performer’s vulnerability that got to them. Maybe they just wanted to give him a hug.

fmcnally@irishtimes.com