Ciarán Dowd

Written by: Si Hawkins
Published: Friday 19th April 2019

Just about the most fun you could have in a sweaty portacabin, Ciarán Dowd's debut solo show Don Rodolfo burst from nowhere to nab the Best Newcomer award at last year's Edinburgh Fringe, with its winning tale of Desperado-like derring-don't.

We shouldn't have been surprised, really. Coming from nowhere is kind of the point of that award, after all, and Dowd has a solid live-comedy background, as one third of the excellent trio BEASTS. So was he aware of how great Don Rodolfo was, beforehand?

"Well that's nice of you to say - no, most of the previews before Edinburgh were problematically quiet," he says, "really terrifyingly apocalyptically quiet. My agent at the time came to one and I asked her after if she liked it and she pretended she hadn't heard the question. But I think I knew I liked it and you hope it'll be some people's cup of tea, but those initial reactions made me think it would be a lot more niche than it ended up being."

Now Rodolfo is back, in the more salubrious setting of the Soho Theatre, for a three-night early-May run. And what then, for the sexy swordsman?

"Rodolfo will be back in Edinburgh this year with a new show, but he's rejecting his old ways and has joined the priesthood - that little Fleabag priest can get fucked, there's a new hot priest coming to steal the heart of the nation."

Pow! As well as previewing that show, Dowd is currently "acting in a few bits, and developing a scripted comedy for the BBC," which is worth keeping an eye on. But for now, let's see what the now much-praised comic recalls of an evocative old stage in East London.

First gig?

I remember it was at Bethnal Green Working Men's Club - and I remember the only audience were the other acts on the bill standing at the back and the MC's girlfriend sitting front and centre. She only laughed at him, the rest of us played to silence.

Favourite show, ever?

The one I always think of is when BEASTS did Bestival a few years back - which I couldn't have been looking forward to less.

I don't like camping or shitting in holes so wasn't happy to be there in the first place. It was the first music festival we'd done and we'd been warned that people will wander in and out and rarely give you their full attention, and our show was on the Sunday morning after everyone had been getting mashed and dancing to dubstep for two solid days so it felt like a write-off.

We decided to just enjoy the weekend, go out with all the other acts and get through the show when we had to - what followed was two of the messiest nights of my life, all before our 12pm Sunday show. I was a state, standing didn't seem like an option let alone performing. The show was in this beautiful open-air amphitheatre but with 10 minutes to go it was still empty and I was still slumped behind it with my head between my legs.

But right before the show it started filling up, and people kept arriving throughout till all the grass banks around the amphitheatre were full and people were climbing and sitting up in trees to see. The sun came out, I pulled myself together, the show went as well as it ever has and at the end we got an instant standing ovation from the biggest audience we'd ever played to.

I started crying. Good tears. Also hungover tears.

Worst gig?

The Buxton Fringe was a weird one, because its main attraction is the opera and a morris dancing jamboree is always held in town that same weekend, so people come for one of those two things. The average age in the town across that weekend is easily 75.

Nobody wants comedy, but they may want to get out of the rain for an hour before their production of The Magic Flute starts or before having an 8 Mile-style Morris Dance Battle in a carpark at midnight. So you get a very small audience of very confused pensioners and people dressed in bells and handkerchiefs and in some cases blackface.

I've had plenty of awful but ultimately forgettable gigs but I'll always remember Buxton feeling like a weird fever dream.

Which one person influenced your comedy life most significantly?

The guys from BEASTS, Owen and James did massively because we got into comedy together, which I'm not sure we would have done without each other. We grew and developed our style of comedy together and I wouldn't be the comedian I am without them.

And Tom Parry is a huge influence, he directed the last three BEASTS shows, directs my Rodolfo shows and we're now writing another project together. He's been the constant in everything good I've done in comedy and is a brilliant comedian in his own right. He's been a great person to have in my corner.

And who's the most disagreeable person you've come across in the business?

Imagine I just said it. Imagine I just said 'yeah, it's this guy, and here's all the reasons he's an absolute prick.' I mean I definitely know who I wanna say, but how are people answering this question?

I'll play it safe and say Daniel Kitson, who I play football with every Tuesday and who has said some really disparaging things about my passing ability.

Is there one routine/gag/sketch you loved, that audiences inexplicably didn't?

BEASTS once wrote an entire opera set at Crufts with us all playing dogs, it took us absolutely ages and I think might have been the closest we've ever gotten to genius. But we only performed it once, to our director Tom, in Owen's living room. He immediately said "Absolutely not" and we never performed it again.

It never saw the light of day, never got to reach a wider audience or receive the acclaim it so richly deserved. It's just been lost to history now. Maybe they would have loved it, maybe Tom was wrong, maybe it would have been the making of us, maybe it's still on James' laptop - I'll have a look.

Adam Riches took fencing lessons for The Lone Dueller - did you do much prep for Don Rodolfo?

He's so Method - he's the Daniel Day-Lewis of our industry, I heard he also spent two years working in an American High School for Coach Coach and a year just living off voiceover money to prepare for the role of Sean Bean. I already knew how to use a sword - just swing it about innit?

The most memorable review, heckle or post-gig reaction?

I find audiences are less inclined to heckle acts that are holding swords. Something for Stewart Lee or Sarah Millican to think about.

How do you feel about where your career is at, right now?

I feel good, I feel excited about it but it also feels like I'm just starting. My time in a sketch group was great but figuring out what I do solo and what kind of career I want is a whole other thing that I'm just at the beginning of. But I think I know where it ends - it ends with Crufts on Broadway.