Dara Ó Briain

Vicar Street, Dublin

Most comedians inhabit some kind of a niche. Dylan Moran, for example, is verbose, slightly deranged and somewhat shambolic; Bill Bailey is fantastical, eloquently nerdy and musically anarchic. What then is Dara Ó Briain, below?

Outside of Ireland, he has made a much bigger mark than most Irish comedians, but this has largely been for his turn behind the desk on Mock the Week; in fact, so prevalent has he become on telly that you could be forgiven for forgetting that he was ever a stand-up comedian.

Stand-up, though, is where he cut his teeth and he has an old hand’s control. Many comedians have a unifying theme for their shows, a subject upon which their spleen is vented. O Briain’s show, though, is an eclectic collection of anecdotes, gags and stories; those expecting caustic current-affairs satire will find little here, apart from a few digs at the blasphemy laws.

Much of it is well-trodden ground (babies, childbirth, having too much stuff) and while some if it feels somewhat familiar, there are genuine bits of gold – in particular, a throwaway joke about baby crocodiles and a routine about computer gaming that is so good it’s amazing someone hasn’t come up with it before. O Briain has no fear of the audience, and likes to stoke up a bit of shouty banter; a pedestrian routine about saving lives is energised by the prologue where he invites people to tell stories about when they’ve saved a life, purely so he can ridicule their seemingly heroic efforts as the minimum efforts they turned out to be. On woman takes this a step further and blithely interrupts a routine so Ó Briain can wish her husband a happy birthday; it threatens to derail the whole sketch, but Ó Briain just manages to rein it in with some suitably angry charm.

This is a solid evening’s entertainment that has a broad appeal (and given that he’s practically taking up residence in Vicar Street this year, this is understandable). The first half is amusing, and O Briain hits his stride in the second, though he relies on the old schtick of swearing too much for comedic effect. The sustained energy he expends in delivering his material at machine-gun speed for two hours is impressive, and the crowd throughly enjoy themselves – and not just because it is someone’s birthday.

Dara O Briain plays Vicar Street on February 4th-7th, 18th, 19th and 21st, and in June, July and September