Pleasance One was full for David O’Doherty, very full, and a glance at the Fringe booking site tells me that the next couple of days are all sold out. There’s no doubt that David O’Doherty is now very popular. How strange it is to hear the Irish comedian reminisce over early hecklers and a time when his Fringe performances were pretty much empty.
In David O’Doherty Will Try to Fix Everything we look back at events of the past and hear how we can put them right. This experience is uniquely O’Doherty in style. Sometimes the comedy is accompanied by music from a little lap keyboard. At other times, O’Doherty paces the stage for the delivery – I saw him kick the wall at one point.
This is what I’d expect from the show. I bought my ticket to listen to the music and to enjoy the impassioned delivery. This, I suspect, is the difference between empty venue O’Doherty and sold-out venue O’Doherty. He’s earned attention and fans the hard way. We now know what to expect from the comedian so when he dramatically flops to the stage floor as part of some funny melancholy it’s hilarious rather than alarming. He’s always been funny. Now he’s just able to connect to the right type of audience.
That said; it would be entirely wrong of me to suggest that David O’Doherty is any way predictable. Even as a fan I sat through David O’Doherty Will Try to Fix Everything and thought to myself – I wasn’t expecting that!
I enjoyed the show because of the funny, quick fire jokes. I enjoyed the show because of the quirky little tunes and silly song.
I remember the show because of the points raised by O’Doherty and which linger on in the mind. His observations on celebrity culture, for example, feel spot on.