The Cat Laughs Festival formula appears simple - fling a disparate bunch of comics at a clued-in audience - and it's working better than ever, reports Brian Boyd from Kilkenny
Nine years/nine lives of the Murphy's Cat Laughs Festival in Kilkenny and still it manages to surprise and startle, not just in the strength and depth of the programming but in the sheer joie-de-bank-holiday-weekend-vivre it engenders. The acts, parachuted in from the US, Canada, Australia and Britain, link up seamlessly with the local mob, there's no sense of competition, no awards to fuss and fret over - so it's best all round to just kick back and see what happens when you fling a disparate bunch of comics at a clued-in audience.
The "troika"-style billing this year worked a treat: typically, each bill involved an Irish act, a US act and a British act, which offered the chance in the space of one show to sample the various different styles and approaches to stand-up. With a lot of the British acts familiar from TV shows, and a lot of them now so familiar with Kilkenny that they're able to chuck in knowing local references, it was left to the stars 'n' stripes brigade to provide the real surprises. With mixed results.
One of the shows on Friday night neatly encapsulated the whole festival. The bill featured three Perrier Award winners - Tommy Tiernan, Daniel Kitson and Rich Hall - and for any aspirant comics in the audience, it was a masterclass in how to deliver and perform piquant and powerful material. At €20, it was a steal, given that all three performers could (and have) commanded a higher price for a solo show. Not that any of these acts represent the comedy culture of their respective countries - they only represent themselves, and excellently so. You just don't get billing like this at any other comedy festival.
The Barnsley comic and current Perrier holder, Daniel Kitson, lived up to the hype with some delightful shows. While most other comics tend to run with the pack in terms of subject-matter, Kitson is someone who shouts "hold on a minute" as the consensus forms around him. It may seem unlikely that a comic can take his inspiration from Camus's The Outsider, but Kitson works from the margins - "kicking my truth", as he puts it himself - displaying admirable disdain for the majority ethos and taking a few well-aimed swipes at pubbing/clubbing culture and generally annoying all modern-day pharisees.
As predicted, Jimmy Carr stole this year's festival. The brightest British comic hope for a long, long while, Carr has a bumbling, upper-middle-class Hugh Grant-type persona. Dressed in a suit, precise in his use of words and awfully polite and solicitous, you would assume, from first impressions, that he was a slightly hipper than average member of the Countryside Alliance.
So much for preconceptions. In fact, Carr is the most deliciously transgressive comic. Operating from the principle that no subject-matter whatsoever is taboo, he drew gasps of shock from his audiences as he jauntily vaulted over the line marked "out of bounds". Not a single phrase of his routine can be retold here, for obvious reasons, but don't make the mistake of dismissing Carr as a "vulgar" comic - he isn't. It's just that he articulates what others articulate in private, but never in public.
It's the juxtaposition of his persona and his material that shocks the most - every line is delivered in a clipped Home Counties accent that somehow makes what he is talking about all the more shocking. Possibly because of his manner, he gets away with saying things that other more orthodox-looking comics wouldn't dare to. As he said to his audience after a particularly strongly worded routine: "You don't know whether to laugh or to hit me, do you?"
Carr also merchandises his own range of T-shirts bearing slogans. The only one that can be used here is the one that reads "Jesus Loves You - But He's Not In Love With You".
At times during his set he had to remind people that it was "just comedy", as one or two did get a bit upset by the areas he was delving into. But even if you are the type that is offended by strong material, you wouldn't be able to deny the craftsmanship involved in the way Carr structures his one-liners. Reminiscent of an early Woody Allen in the sheer economy and tightness of his lines, there is a rare talent at work here.
Carr raises an interesting question. Given that some people find certain subjects off-limits, even for an outré comic, what happens when the joke is so funny that it overrides your previous belief that no jokes can ever be told about said subject? Do you acknowledge that the joke is brilliantly constructed but still insist it should not be expressed, do you go with him, or do you just hit him? Carr knows that some of his material may be construed by some, but not all, people as "horribly offensive". He is not so much pushing out the boundaries as sailing in uncharted waters. Technically, he's superb - you'll have to make your own mind up about his use of subject-matter.
For his Edinburgh show later this year, Carr is collecting together a number of incidents in his life where he has said "the wrong thing at the wrong time". Most of these incidents have occurred when he has been doing benefit shows for charities (which he does a lot). It would be instructive to tell you what he said to the audience at a Stonewall (gay lobby group) benefit or what he said at a charity gig to raise funds to fight breast cancer (both stories will feature in his new Edinburgh show) because you would either find them hysterically funny or unbelievably crass.
We can't even repeat what he said at a recent gig in London for a charity that raises money to send Irish people in dire financial straits back to Ireland for a holiday. The unexpected twist here is that this quintessential Home Counties English comic is in fact Irish, both his parents are from Limerick and he travels on an Irish passport. It just gets stranger and stranger.
Following Jimmy Carr on the bill on Saturday was Tommy Tiernan, which called for some serious readjustment on the part of the audience. While Carr is linear and structured, Tiernan is like a Jackson Pollock drip painting, splashing new material around just to see what shape it takes when he's finished. Going through a sort of Kid A period, Tiernan, admirably, is reaching and stretching in a powerfully creative manner. It's been said before that there's now a jazz-like aspect to his stand-up, riffing off themes, taking them for a very long walk, sometimes getting lost, sometimes finding himself in a cul-de-sac, but always thrilling you with his sense of discovery.
Most other comics reminiscing about their schooldays would sound twee and contrived, but Tiernan is finding some powerful stuff in his back pages.
His act is a work in progress, more abstract than representational, and once he's knocked it into shape, it could be his best moment yet. He has the potential to become the best-ever comic to come out of Navan.
Because of the positioning of Cat Laughs on the comedy calendar, there are acts who either trot out last year's Edinburgh show or try to break in this year's new show. In the latter camp, there was the Dada-esque ramblings of Noel Fielding. Part of the acclaimed Mighty Boosh duo, Fielding, as a solo performer, lives up to the Boosh's reputation for inspired surrealism.
To be told that all Fielding's set consists of is him talking about woodland creatures would be enough to make most potential audience members run away at a pace, but, unlikely as it seems, Fielding ties everything up in a splendidly inventive way. There is now so much overlapping material at comedy festivals - do we really need to hear another joke about George W. Bush? - that tales from the woodland really pack more of a punch that anyone could reasonably expect. As his name suggests, Fielding is another product of an Irish background.
The exception to the rule that comics should never take their humour from newspaper headlines is Jeremy Hardy. One of the original "alternative" comics, Hardy would have been a major influence on acts such as Mark Thomas. You sort of know what to expect from a Hardy show - but he talks about current affairs with such a degree of knowledge and downright hilarity that you find yourself going to see him twice, just to hear again the lines you missed because you were still busy chortling at the previous line. Hardy thinks it's unfair that Tony Blair has been described as Bush's "poodle"; "he's more his prison bitch".
Elsewhere at a busy and thoroughly enjoyable festival, Bill Bailey was as sublime as ever, Deirdre O'Kane has bounced up on to another level, Dom Irrera should really be the in-house comic at the Bada Bing Club in The Sopranos, and someone got up and sang Blister In The Sun (the classic Violent Femmes track) at the festival club. What more could you want?
