A Good Room

Meeting at Annesley House pub, Dublin 3

★★★☆☆

Early in A Good Room, a zippy but fraught comedy show, Cian Jordan and his stage partner, Allie O’Rourke, share their journeys into stand-up. Rebuilding their lives, and stuck with bad housemates during a housing crisis, they escaped into clubs and fell in love with performance. “Like any toxic relationship, comedy got us at our most vulnerable,” Jordan jokes.

When it comes to toxicity levels, the comedy industry’s seem alarmingly high, with allegations of abuse against prominent comedians and club promoters made in recent years. Jordan and O’Rourke’s conceit of converting an attractive terrace house in North Strand into their venue is an arch comment: is there nowhere safe and decent to put on a show?

Jordan is a cerebral ironist, O’Rourke a filthy mouth with a heart of gold, but what exactly is their double act? As peers sharing their trauma, encountering comics who like listening to Joe Rogan and making racist jokes, they more often resemble prompters for each other’s stories.

A last-minute frisson pits O’Rourke, wounded by transphobic attacks, against Jordan, who seems an ambiguous ally, soon to forget his friend’s feelings when a better gig comes along.

While watching O’Rourke choose undiluted rage, some may find it appropriate, as if comedy’s conventions aren’t enough. Others might appreciate the ceaseless search for a punchline; when recalling a traumatic encounter with a recklessly unaware, half-naked spectator threatening to traumatise her audience, O’Rourke manages an inspired description of him as a “balls-tripping Winnie-the-Pooh”, transmuting pain into a joke.

Continues, as part of Dublin Theatre Festival, until Sunday, September 22nd