"It Shouldn't Just Be About The Chosen Few"

So, how goes it with comedy in Ireland? At the start of another year, it seems an appropriate time to ask.

During 2004, with the rampant success of Tommy Tiernan and Pat Shortt among others, more people attended comedy gigs than ever before here. More people shelled out money on videos and DVDs of Irish comedy too. But behind those immediately impressive assertions lies a different story, with a small number of comics effectively dominating, while the others can only watch, in some bemusement.
The history of stand-up in Ireland for as long as I have been involved (the last seventeen years – my early gigs interfered with my inter cert results something dreadful!) has been a peculiar tale of perpetual start-up, make do and bravery on a frontier that never quite breaks through into the promised land.
Sometimes it can seem like too many founding fathers and not enough rank and file pilgrims. The natives could be a bit more attentive too. But there may be the germ of something better happening, if it can be cultivated effectively. That is the challenge for 2005.
Let’s be starkly honest here, stand-up is never going to be the central plank of live entertainment anywhere, and Ireland is not where that trend will ever be bucked. Why? To begin with, music is way ahead in the breadth of its appeal, and that’s not going to change. But you can also argue that there’s not enough brilliant comics, not enough clever promoters/venue owners – and, most tellingly, not enough wide-eyed punters who come to see us, convinced that some gobshite with a howling mic is going to be half as funny as Bobby The Head and his fantastic bar badinage - and you don’t have to pay for that now, do you?
Thus, live comedy in Ireland consistently comes home sheepishly at the end of each year with its report card stamped “Could Do Better”. Why?
Let’s start with venues and promoters. It’s a mixed bag. There are a few venue owners with a passion for, or even what you might describe as an unfortunate addiction to, comedy. Then there are a handful of similarly afflicted free agents (typically former Ents officers struggling gamely to keep the fun rolling), who run shows in a diversity of different places.
There are also the occasional one-off festivals: either standalone sponsor-fests, comedy portions within arts festivals and the standout exception to all rules, the Kilkenny Cat Laughs Festival. At the bottom of the pyramid, finally, are small clubs in bars, generally run by the comics themselves in an attempt to get some precious stage-time and their cab fare home.
Looking at that patchwork affair it’s difficult to reasonably assign blame for the current relatively unsatisfactory state of things from a performer’s point of view. It’s all simply too piecemeal. However there is one general observation worth making. There is a huge gap that amounts to a gulf between doing the small bar room stand-up clubs and playing Vicar Street 150 days a year – or whatever the number is – in the manner of Tommy Tiernan.
It seems obvious then that there is a crying need for clubs or promoters to claim that still largely un-mined middle ground – to put in place a comfortable larger-but-still-intimate club venue, seating between two and four hundred, in which those who have not yet gone through the roof in popularity terms, like Tiernan, can operate effectively.
In Cork there used to be City Limits, in Dublin there was The Laughter Lounge (and the fact that this should make a welcome return later this year is encouraging). Despite these exceptions, there remains a gaping infrastructural hole when, as a comic, you want to take yourself out of the 15-20 minute club slot and develop your routine into a full-length show.
In the absence of this middle ground, the concomitant amplification of your profile becomes elusive too: it’s all or nothing – you’re either one of the three or four people occupying the few available slots labelled “Funny Person” in the national psyche or you’re just some chancer in The International Bar or The Ha’penny Inn.
The haphazard nature of the treatment of comedy on Irish television is a factor here – but that’s another story entirely for another day. The point, however, is that the necessary nurturing ground isn’t there on the broadcasting front anymore than it is in the live arena.
This decidedly unbalanced state of affairs skews things badly in a small market. As a result, good comics sometimes over-reach themselves to play Vicar Street when they just don’t have the requisite pulling power, and to half fill which they have to risk shooting their entire load publicity-wise for the year.
In this sense, the success of Vicar Street as a comedy venue is particularly tanatalising for performers who have yet to make the big breakthrough. It’s great that a wider audience comes to these gigs – but due to the gap between this apex and the dingy cellars, few of the people who flock to see Tommy, or Pat Shortt, are likely to gain an ongoing interest in attending grass roots club shows.
And that’s where the real heart of Irish comedy has always been and continues to lie: at the grass roots level of smaller clubs. These are set up and run on the blood of men and women eager to be a part of the ramshackle comedy world – I should know, I have been one of those soldiers.
It’s where the potential is too. If punters going to the big gigs in Vicar Street can be made aware that there is an engine room, where they will likely see the Tiernans, O’Hanlons and Morans of the future being born, and if collectively the comics or promoters running these clubs can get their act together to be more professional in the way they run them, then we might be on the verge of something.
Irish comedy is worthwhile and alive and capable of throwing up diverse and special talents – that much has been proven. It’s lovely to see the ones who have struggled through the murk to gain a national profile now reaping the rewards.
But there are rich rewards to be had too, in terms of excitement and entertainment, in watching them start out, flounder, develop and fly over the course of their early career in a good old dark, steamy bar.
In fact, if you want a really good laugh, there’s no better place for it…b