We Are All in the Gutter, But Some of Us Are Looking at David O’Doherty Review | Tiger Dublin Fringe

Whatever trials come his way, the inspiringly shaggy comedian retains his defiant mood

We Are All in the Gutter, But Some of Us Are Looking at David O'Doherty    
Project Arts Centre    
****

Stuck for a few agonising, tweet-filled minutes trapped in a corridor before the show, the trials of David O'Doherty seem set to continue. Thank goodness. The inspiringly shaggy comedian is in a defiant mood these days, with big career plans that he looks forward to imploding, while lashing out with frequent medium-low kicks at the tribulations a man in his late thirties can experience: a love for the Tour de France and Steffi Graf that may never be requited, or a missed opportunity to ever say, "You should have killed me when you had the chance!"

Such are the appropriate ambitions instilled by a 1980s suburban Irish upbringing, which still define O'Doherty's hilarious act. He will play the cynic, for instance, without ever putting away childish things: his now-temperamental 1986 Casio keyboard, routines built around a detective agency he once ran out of the family shed, or Beckettian adventures with obscure Star Wars figures.
In a near-jokeless song, You Have to Laugh, he scans the adult world with more alarm, and it makes his warm and deceptively rambling comedy seem neither sweet nor sour, but a much-needed release: "What is laughter," he sings, "if not happy screaming?"
Until Sat