The Cat Laughs 2012 - Day 1 Review

Written by: Jay Richardson
Published: Friday 1st June 2012

Thursday 31st May, Langton's Set Theatre, Kilkenny.

Adam Hills, Karl Spain, Josh Widdicombe, David O'Doherty.

Times are economically tough in Ireland but it's worth keeping perspective suggests David O'Doherty, maintaining "I've lived through several recessi and this is the best!"

Another year without a corporate sponsor, fewer international acts and tickets not fully sold out, compere Adam Hills (pictured) acknowledges the significant number of empty seats at The Cat Laughs Festival's opening gig, then smoothly moves on. Despite the cutbacks, there's still an impressive line-up of Irish and UK acts appearing, with a smattering of familiar old stagers like Hills, Dom Irrera and Mike Wilmot swelling the global contingent. Simon Amstell and Jack Dee have solo shows too.

Hills is charm personified, taking trivial and incomprehensible replies from Tesco employees and Norwegian Sven in the crowd and making them seem like a valued part of the night's entertainment, cheekily probing one couple's relationship but always inclusive and never cruel. There's a sense that the Australian is going through the motions a bit, having hosted at the festival so often. But it takes appreciable skill and confidence for a foreigner to trot out his favourite Irishisms for the locals and not wear out his welcome.

For Karl Spain, empty seats are a metaphor for the country's emigration, a typically droll remark from the likeable, self-deprecating Limerick man. Notwithstanding his easy, matey delivery, the chubby gym evader is not so much the funniest guy in the pub as the pub's favourite punchline, confessing the unfortunate nicknames he's recently acquired.

Fond of a prank, he relates a few that backfired on his acquaintances before recalling his own beauty, leaving his friend holding a (fictional) baby and sluttish reputation as he mischievously fled the London Underground. He finishes with a tried and tested anecdote about the most traumatic incident of his childhood, his three-year-old vulnerability at the hands of his sister's friends dispelled when blurted across a pub without context. Waggish, assured storytelling from start to finish.

Making his festival debut, Josh Widdicombe's favourite response to the world's stupidity and banality, an impassioned shake of the head and vigorous "no!", took time to engage the crowd. But once they tuned in to his brand of sarcastic pedantry, he made this performance look deceptively easy.

Unresponsive smart phones and cashpoints are trivial irritations, phenomenon everyone can relate to. But his picky logic and aptitude for melodrama inflates them into full-blown crises. Likewise, the crappy trappings of Laser Quest or the rules of board games like Cluedo and Monopoly, none of these stand up to his searing scrutiny. Never so curmudgeonly thankfully he can't break off to banter with the audience, there's little demanding or surprising in his set but it is consistently enjoyable, facilitated by the Stand Up For The Week star's expertly timed weary, withering dismissals.

Finally O'Doherty, whose lo-fi musical musings seem increasingly defined by an impotent, aggressive edge. Forgiving Sven for the raping and pillaging of his ancestors, he takes other nations to task for their caricature of a boozily decadent Ireland pre-credit crunch. Launching into the song 'Life' on his tiny keyboard, an ambitiously panoramic wind through the ups and downs of this mortal coil, featuring imaginative digressions on the existential angst of Roger Federer and being the frustrated boyfriend of Amelie from the film Amelie, it's a typically winning ditty from the Dubliner, packed with fine lines tossed off as casual asides.

A story about buying shorts in Australia, reflecting antipodeans' relative carefree affluence is nothing special, immediately forgotten as he recalls the stomach infection that prompted bathroom scenes so grim, groans of disgust precede the hearty bellylaughs. There's an intriguing insight into the hoops he had to jump through securing a US visa as an "alien of extraordinary abilities", dusting off his three bona fide jokes for the authorities, plus a musician's take on the essential difference between Catholicism and Protestantism, essentially just tempo.

The show finished with his 'My Way', the updated howl of frustration that is My Beefs: 2012, featuring The Voice, Jury's Inn hotel bibles and friends who upbraid him for not being into cool television shows like The Wire or Breaking Bad, with each feeling the full force of his flouncing, minor-chord hammering fury.