It's hard to believe that Dylan Moran is only now on the cusp of middle-age. His misanthropic character always made him seem world-weary for a young man.
His passionate but impotent feeling of victimhood, the ease with which he could see through the fa?ade of social mores and the fact that even in his twenties he showed physical signs of alcohol in a way that most of us don't have to worry about till our mid-thirties. Was he really the youngest winner of the Perrier award?
Tonight he brings his ?Yeah Yeah? tour to the Salford Lowry. After five meandering minutes he suddenly hits his stride and maintains the pace for most of the show. He offered new insights on old, if timeless, topics.
At one point he goes off on a rant about Michael McIntyre. He complains about how much money McIntyre makes from his touring, although Moran is hardly playing toilet venues himself. The two comedians have a few things in common. Both are thirty-something men who spend a great deal of their acts talking about everyday family life. They both share the same outlook that men are inept creatures and are quite happy to illustrate this theory by pointing out their own ridiculousness in their roles as fathers.
Moran, however, is looking at the big picture. He can jump from talking about the minutiae of dinner party etiquette to the big themes of religion and national identity in a completely naturalistic way. Or more often in a ridiculous way that seems entirely incongruous until a few minutes later when the connection is revealed.
He's not content to just make the observation of how things are. He wants to know why they are. Life to him is just an absurd series of conventions. Conventions that he doesn't agree with, but yet conforms to like the rest of us. His meandering absurdisms hide greater truths and it's difficult to keep up sometimes.
He?ll make a statement seemingly because of the rhythm of the words but, like poetry, there's rhythm and there's also great truths. He makes it sound like he's stumbling blindly from subject to subject but this has all been thought about for long periods of time.
Our immediate thought upon leaving was to watch the whole show again straight away and take more of it in, but I guess we’ll have to wait for the DVD.
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Erm says
Lots of long, intelligent sounding words but none tell the reader what the fundamental point of comedy is, namely was it funny? Perhaps this is an example of a glowing review that puts the reader off seeing the performance as the reviewer makes this sound more like a bleak, art house monologue piece than what it is, stand up comedy.
Si Sharp says
Ha. A fair point well made. Yes it was incredibly funny. To break it down:
Belly laughs – 13
Guffaws- 21
Chuckles- 60
Giggles- 3
Wry Smiles- 43
Pseudo-intellectual chinstroking whilst thinking I can’t wait to write this up as a way of making myself seem terribly clever- 3
It’s funny. Go see.