The Ungagged Comedy Festival, which was holding forth in venues all over Dublin last weekend, was the sixth comedy festival held in the country this year. All very good in one sense, but the problem of overload does come into play, and your critical facilities can be dimmed by over-exposure. There's also the situation of the same acts being permuted, and with Irish comics (with a few exceptions) not really excelling in turning over their material, this can be a bit tiresome.
What a relief then to come across a genuine, grade-A comic talent for the first time (in a live setting) in the shape of the arrantly deadpan U.S. gangster Steven Wright. Long a cult hero, his reputation has spread in this country thanks to the bootleg distribution of so many of his U.S. television specials - and I noted one Irish comic in the audience who was recording his whole set on a small Mini Disc player - that's flattery.
Wright is, indisputably one of the top 10 stand-ups in the world. Coming across like a mix of Holden Caulfield and Woody Allen, he kept a capacity crowd at the Music Centre riveted with his incredibly rich narratives which were all shot through with startlingly original humour. Like the very best comics, Wright succeeds in inviting us in to share his world. Contrary to his "walking punchline machine" image, he instead wrapped his material around a succession of interlinked stories, and in between he riffed away like a demented jazz musician.
A story about the Vienna Boys Choir being stuck on a bus and in danger of being hit by a train was a particular highlight, but it's a tribute to the man's ability that he didn't flag once in a very strong one-and-a-half-hour set. Ardal O'Hanlon took to the stage of The Olympia on Sunday, wearing an odd-looking purple assemble (I never knew he was colour blind), and he got straight into producing wave after wave of resonant comic material. Just when you think the going is getting a bit whimsical (and it does sometimes) he manages to pull it all back from the brink by undercutting his material with a real sense of bite.
Playing now for an audience who are probably more at home with likes of Niall Tobin (and no harm there), he still manages to push it out while still retaining the down-home charm that got him here in the first place. Good fun, but Steven Wright stole the weekend.
