View from the Green Room: A gig for the ages
Al Porter took his show to Theatre Royal.
Porter doesn’t so much enter the stage as explode across the acting space. He’s so glad to be back at what he does best – making people laugh – that his energy is super-charged. This turbo-charged gig kicks off at 8.55pm and never stops for a single second until Porter exhausts himself and his audience with comic genius in probably the finest stand-up I’ve ever witnessed at 10.35pm.
He’s been in the wilderness years since 2017 and is working his way back with "performances in sh*te venues". But he’s got material now that would fill an encyclopaedia of one-liners. And, of course, belly-laughs just keep coming. Friends find him working Thursday night at the Poitín Still and ask him for a table for five. Hotels ask him to tone down the volume because he’ll wake the Ukrainians.
Audiences love him because he’s always edgy. When he says he’s read Leo’s book, the audience go "wo ho".
"I’m constantly confused with Simon Harris," he says, and does a motor-mouth recital, before moving on to Tommy Tiernan’s newly minted West of Ireland guru accent that philosophises all as he meditates at the foot of the McGillicuddy Reeks.
"Tommy’s got pouches now, you know, so that he can’t be filmed, and it’s great value at a tenner a pouch included in the €35 ticket." (Tommy, incidentally, doesn’t seem to want any newspaper reviews either!) Al’s irreverence worries him.
"Can you be cancelled twice?" he laughs as he keeps moving from one sacred cow to the next.
Nothing is taboo here and the one-liners come like bullets from an AK 47. And that’s his skill. Porter, like all true comics, is a born storyteller. However, by the time he hits his tag-line, he’s got his audience reeling with half-a-dozen one-liners. He’s on to his aunt, who performs a Christmas song every year at Midnight Mass…they had to put it back to 9pm because the real midnight masses were rockin’.
Then it’s auntie – on the altar – doing her version of Boney M’s ‘Hark the Herald’ complete with a Caribbean accent and protesting against racism because ‘Ah was a doctor in ma own countreeeee I’ll have you know, maaan’.
He moves on to the hangdog oh-so-conflicted Gen Z who can only find succour in joyless misery. I suspect he’s taking aim at some of his detractors whose cancel culture is so ingrained that they’re incapable of seeing satire or, indeed, truth in the ridiculous. When he compares the joyless ones to the guards from Squid Game, the theatre cracks up…"why can’t they just learn to live and let live?" But…you can feel the sense of hurt behind the words.
He gave away all his garish bright blue and pink suits during Covid. Alas…they’ve come back to haunt him. He helps out at the Christmas dinners and there’s a chap in one of his suits. "Who’s yer man in the blue suit" he asks an octogenarian in search of company on Christmas Day. "Ah him…don’t mind him son…he’s going around tellin’ everyone, boy, he’s Al Cooper!" He’s got a German nephew and the six-year-old has him sorted when he comes to see his Christmas Panto. "Sah," says he "youf bin doin’ zis show vor six veeks und you don’t know who’s bihind youf yit? Himmel!" He’s got the Burke enigma sorted also – just stop filming him and he’ll go away.
Al gets so side-tracked, he has to ask the audience what he’s talking about. And they scream it back. He teases the Gods by telling him they’re not up there when he can’t hear them. And he’s very observant of human nature. Porter outlines all the versions of camp; soulful and sensuous, witty and wicked, speedy and spluttering. And imitates them all. Porter nails his send-ups…Mischievous and whispering Tommy Tiernan, rapid-fire Simon Harris and his deeply confused father who never realised what he has foisted on Tallaght.
Al Porter works hard and is a brilliant performer. He loves performing and would stand in a fridge light for 10 minutes. He bowls over his audience like a steamroller and his one-liners…"he swipes far-right"…has his audience on their toes for fear they will miss one. He not only invents characters; he brings them to life and gives them a quirky anecdotal existence.
Tonight’s breathless gig is a gig for the ages.
