BOUNDING on stage like a labrador on speed wearing ‘bouncy yoke moon boots’, Jason Byrne is a wrecking ball that, perhaps his sold out audience, wasn’t ready for!
[star rating =5/5]
He compares himself to an out of control racehorse who has lost its jockey when he begins to talk about the breakdown of his 20 year marriage. In true idiotic clowning about, Byrne goes from his jockey-less racehorse impression to a dog dragging its arse along the ground, simply because nobody has control of him anymore.
But anyone who has seen Byrne in previous shows might be left pondering if this comic genius has ever been under control. I’m not convinced he has even been broken-in, never mind reigned in!
As a master of audience mockery and mayhem, he preys on a vulnerable husband and wife, only to be corrected that they are in fact father and daughter. This fuels his spontaneity as he improvises his nervous breakdown, (off which he’s clearly thriving) and is quick to blame the lack of said jockey for his mistake.
Byrne has crafted audience engagement like a fine art, and somehow manages to unite us all into asking ‘Off?’ when another one of his victims says he is a Technical Director.
Responding to our participation and jesting, he claims it’s hard to make people laugh when they are already funny. His hysterical audience however would suggest otherwise.
His humour rolls with the times of modern Ireland and then back to a black and white era when his parents grew up; setting the scene for introducing his gay niece to his insular elderly Irish father. This is somehow and seamlessly followed by a side splitting rendition of Micheal Jackson’s “You’ve been hit by” with the words substituted to ‘You’ve been touched by…fiddly diddly priests’.
Constantly firing on all cylinders, maybe being wrecked does suit Jason Byrne, it’s hard to know. But he remains an extremely witty and entertaining comic sure to leave you in a jocular mood.
