Review: David O’Doherty: Ready, Steady, David O’Doherty, Fringe 2024

Pleasingly, David O’Doherty is back in Edinburgh for the Fringe Festival. The show is “David O’Doherty: Ready, Steady, David O’Doherty” and it starts as it usually does with high chances of making friends in a queue outside the Gordon Aikman Theatre.

“Ready, Steady, David O’Doherty” was the very first ticket I bought this year. Why? I’m a fan.

As a fan, I come with high expectations, and I’ve taken them to the very first show. The first show is a preview show and, as David joked, the worst one of the Fringe. So, let’s find out if my heights of the show reached my high expectations.

The tone

David O’Doherty is a musical and comedy talent with both those skill sets on display in this Ed Fringe show. The catch? The music is unusual, little ditties played out on a little keyboard, and the comedy is perceptive and sometimes deadpan.

I think the tone of “Ready, Steady, David O’Doherty” is familiar but there are more changes from the 2023 show than there were between 2023 and 2022. I’m not saying you’ll hear the same jokes, but the themes are the same: life as a comedian, his parents, society’s cruel foibles and sombre reflection. There’s even a COVID joke, and it’s clear to me just how significantly the era of bio-horror hit this (I suspect) sensitive soul.

There’s no audience participation but don’t try to sneak in late. While there’s no audience participation we, the audience, are involved. I felt involved despite being in the large theatre and David often motions to people in the crowd or seems to be speaking to them.

There’s swearing and the suggested age range of 14+ feels right to me. You can bring your parents, you could bring work colleagues and boss, and although I’m rubbish at this sort of thing I suspect you could bring a date. I know I’d think more highly of someone who laughed at the jokes and then left the theatre musing over the seeds of insightful wisdom planned by this articulate poet.

What to expect

The hour-long show is straightforward in that David will walk out, sit in a little chair, put a little keyboard on his lap, and stay there for the majority of the show.

Often, he highlights his conversational observations with background music, and, to spoil us, there’s the occasional outbreak of song. Songs about annoying things in 2024, songs about losing your car keys, songs about this and that, but never the stereotypical chart-topping cliches.

Sometimes, he won’t be in the little chair with the little keyboard on his lap. Sometimes, David will spring to his feet, kick the microphone stand over, and storm over to the other side of the stage. He did it more than once, and each time, I was caught out and surprised. Had he done that in earlier shows? I’m not entirely sure, but that alone suggests to me it wasn’t such a surprise as it was.

Assembly’s Gordon Aikman Theatre is pretty good, despite being the butt of some jokes although perhaps a bit clinical for a David O’Doherty gig. I’d love to be in a wee pub venue.

Overall

My high expectations were met. I laughed out loud several times. I was made to think. I was made to reflect and appreciate on life.

I’ll finish with an observation of my own because as I left the theatre after the gig, I could hear the conversation of a group of four behind me. I think the adult daughter’s boyfriend had suggested Ready, Steady, David O’Doherty, and her parents had come along. If I were the boyfriend, I’d feel some pressure to have picked a good gig! Job done! The father said something like, “I had never heard of him before… but he was wonderful!”

Well done, David, that’s the dad impressed, and you’ve been rated as wonderful. And that was the preview show.