Few advances in Irish comedy have been held up by a protracted fight between the Garda Siochana and the Natural History Museum over custody of a young boy. For that reason alone, it is likely that the Laughter Lounge on Eden Quay, Dublin will always justifiably be able to claim uniqueness.
Laughter Lounge owner Peter O’Mahony speaks with palpable glee about the priceless gift of media exposure bequeathed to him and his comedy club by a hapless Viking urchin.
“When we were digging the foundations we found a body. It turned out to be a Viking boy from 800 AD and there was a fight over the remains between the Gardai and The Natural History Museum”.
If nothing else, this is heartening news for anyone who lives in hope of having an old unsolved murder case reopened by the Gardai who, it seems, were anxious to date the remains despite the chances of finding the boy’s 1226-year-old Ma being slim.
Opening a comedy club in an old cinema in the heart of Dublin probably seemed like an interesting enough idea on its own when Peter O’Mahony created the first Laughter Lounge in 1997.
But when he began redeveloping the site in 2002, he can scarcely have anticipated being unlucky enough to have a site that was so interesting on his hands.
The Viking youth’s body was odd enough (although, weirdly, it was inadvertently hinted at by a piece of gallows humour in the décor of the first Laughter Lounge – a body’s outline drawn on the stage in the manner of a homicide crime scene), However, there was an even older obstruction lurking beneath the former cinema’s foundations.
“The Viking body stopped work for eight weeks, but that wasn’t the end of it,” recalled O’Mahony. “We effectively dug down three basements deep into the foundations and found granite there.”
Since most of the city centre floats on a swamp, this was unusual. So when Paddy Courtney takes the stage on February 9th to compere the first ever gig at the all new Laughter Lounge, he will be stuck even more than is usual in stand up between a rock and a hard place.
Archaeological oddities aside, the return of the Laughter Lounge is the overdue filling of a gaping hole in the Irish live comedy scene. This hole was effectively left when the Lounge, in its original incarnation, was closed so that the replacement could be built.
Apart from a temporary attempt to stop the gap by moving proceedings from the Eden Quay venue to the Spirit nightclub (where it ran until 2003), there was nothing to bridge the huge gulf between small clubs in a pub room and big headline act gigs in the likes of Vicar Street and The Olympia.
It was the lack of such a venue or venues which prompted O’Mahony to set up shop in Dublin in '97. Prior to that he had a successful printing business in London and was a regular punter at the likes of The Comedy Store, Jongleurs and Up The Creek.
Indeed, an early partner in the venue was the late Malcolm Hardee, eccentric host at Up The Creek in Greenwich, and a larger than life figure in London comedy folklore.
It seems it was a hard business head though, rather than a jolly comedy-loving heart, which largely informed Peter O’Mahony’s decision to snap up the old cinema site and turn it into a comedy club.
“In 1997 Dylan [Moran] had just won the Perrier and Irish stand ups were regarded as the best on the circuit, but there was no big club in Dublin. There was a gap in the market.”
Marketing is key to the success of the original Lounge. O’Mahony identified the untapped potential of the corporate comedy market in Ireland.
Rather than appealing directly to the fickle whim of individual punters, O’Mahony was targeting the more reliable desire of their employers to hang on to money otherwise destined to bloat the state’s tax haul.
“There’s a tax break for companies in Ireland whereby they can put money into their company’s social fund rather than paying tax on it. So companies will pay for their staff to go to live comedy at the Laughter Lounge.” Marketing directly to the people in control of those social funds, the Laughter Lounge established a successful formula for filling a good portion of the hall with corporate block bookings.
As with all aspects of the venue, it seems this approach will be enhanced by its shiny new incarnation. Hidden from view at street level beneath a giant bar on the first floor, offices and, on top, penthouse apartments, the new subterranean venue boasts two bars of its own and full kitchen facilities – the latter essential to line those corporate tummies early on, before filling them with booze and belly laughs during the show.
The room is 8000 sq. ft and boasts perfect sight lines from all points. A monstrous 12 foot thick beam supports the building above, negating the need for any bothersome pillars that would spoil the view of proceedings onstage.
As you would expect with the Laughter Lounge being involved from the earliest stage of planning, there’s a state-of the-art technical set up as well.
“The whole venue is wired for High Definition TV,” says O’Mahony proudly. This is so bleeding edge I can’t even think of a practical application off hand. I don’t doubt that O’Mahony will find one if he doesn’t have one already in mind. He’s not without innovative capabilities, as evidenced by his text-message based Improv format developed in the original lounge with The Dublin Comedy Improv.
Although it’s taken a long time coming it sounds like the 350-seater purpose built club, the only item of its class in the island, will emphasise the force that Peter O’Mahony is and plans to become in live comedy in Ireland.
Even though there has been no Lounge in Dublin for a long time, he has been running regular gigs in Galway at The Roisin Dubh and elsewhere.
These have kept the brand visible and the same time been used as proving grounds for the young up-and-coming comedy talent that will supplement the bill of comedy fare along with imports from UK and elsewhere in the future.
They also hint at plans for more Laughter Lunge clubs outside the capital in the not-too-distant future. “We’re looking for properties in Cork and Limerick and we are quite far along the road with a club in Belfast. We should have other Laughter Lounges running in about a year.”
In the shorter term, once the Laughter Lounge in Dublin has opened there will be expansion from the regular Thursday to Saturday shows with a more cabaret-style including a big music component, perhaps hosted by the likes of The Camembert Quartet, being mooted for late night on Saturdays “Ultimately we’ll be running seven nights a week with shows more geared to tourists earlier in the week”.
Shivering Shamrocks, Batman! Now not even Jury’s is safe from the corporate aggression of the Laughter Lounge – although Peter is quick to play down the notion of too green a tinge to these proposed tourist temptations.
That’s not all from this comedy entrepreneur.
Soon you can buy cheap tickets in advance from the website (www.laughterlounge.com) in the manner of a budget airline.
The Ryanair analogy slips out of Peter O’Mahony’s mouth and he retracts it too late to stop the image of hundreds of cheap deal comedy punters being dropped outside a smaller comedy club in Galway and lining up for the bus.
Landing right in the heart of Dublin for the re-launch Laughter Lounge show on February 7th are the winner of the Lounge’s own on-line poll of favourite acts, Tom Rhodes and '70s Blackspolitation character comedy from Valentine Fly Guy. Even if someone dies that night on stage, they can be comforted by the fact that they aren’t the first to do so. That honour went to a Viking boy 1,200 years ago.