Ardal O’Hanlon

Throughout this evening of Irish humour an apparently complacent crowd was teased, harried and tickled into laughter by two canny experts. They probed the same topics (people, religion, guilt, sex, guilt again, politics, the Irish) but in very contrasting ways.

Aisling Bea (pronounced Ashlin’ B), started with a rush, spouting torrents of ‘Irish’ observation, self-deprecating and sharp, but most of all rapid. Some of her delivery, deliberately too fast to catch, was repeated at ‘tractor’ speed, just slow enough to hear. With no props other than the microphone, her body and an obliging front-row ‘victim’, she force-fed us the confusion and misunderstandings of a bright young Irish girl recently arrived, wide-eyed and unrestrained, her mouth ahead of her mind. I really needed my interval drink.

Then Ardal O’Hanlon shuffled on to the stage, covering much the same ground but as the middle-aged Irish observer, picking at our guilt-free, ‘modern’ lives. His delivery lurched haltingly, he warned us there could be gaps. Deceptively careless in his rants and ramblings, he lobbed explosive gags like squibs into the mix. The audience rarely laughed as one, but isolated guffaws, my own included, frequently broke through the bemused chuckling that was the general response.

Theatre Royal, 15 September 2013

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