View from the Green Room: HIYAAAAAA
Comedian David O'Doherty
Mischievous divil-may-care David O’Doherty announces his arrival with his catchphrase ‘HiYa’ and the audience, like Ninja Turtles, roar ‘HiYa' back. It’s an introduction to Doherty’s chaos theory of comedy where disparate thoughts and musings cross swords across the floor of the people’s theatre.
‘The eyes have it,’ as they say in the Commons. Comedian David O’Doherty’s got those laughing eyes that warm and enthuse. It’s as if he’s speaking directly to you.
Obvious, sometimes, but funny, definitely.
The tall, gangling comic, whose limbs barely fit sits at a tiny Casio keyboard that’s hardly functional and is about as modern as the Applemarket Casio watch. He’s got a noisy and enthusiastic cult following that packs the theatre as he ponders life, love and all the steps in between the raindrops.
Everything about this gangling innocent is low-key. If he was any more laid back, you’d have to peel him off the wallpaper. His tunes on the Casio are weirdly awful but the lyrics really engage as they cascade down streams of seemingly spontaneous consciousness.
He loves the Royal. Its intimacy embraces him and he loves coming back to it. Mind you, he’s had bigger offers – Cappoquin…Dunmore East…Traaaamore. But no…he’s going to stay with the duffers who have paid good money to turn out on a bitterly cold night to see him. And he’s here for the night all on his own.
The present is his enemy. He loves to tease his audience and the future looms large as a threat and a promise. This time next year, ‘I’m gonna be big, maan. Big’. This posh theatre is gonna be jammers and "we’re not gonna tell anybody". "The second half of the gig’s gonna be so awwwesome, you’ll wonder why you bothered with the warm-up."
"Actually, I could have got a warm-up but I’m too feckin’ mean" as he explains just how much he’s getting from the full house at the Royal. "Besides," he ponders, "the feckin’ warm up could be better than me." He categorises the warmer uppers. Like the nervous ones who are really sociopaths who talk too intensely and put their shoes in the washing machine.
"Anywaaaay," says he, as he stretches the vowels, "the first half of any gig is sh***te."
Just a case of getting to know his audience. He trails the stalls for lookalikes and invents younger and older but equally corpulent versions of his chaotic self because he’s clickbaiting us with what's to come in Act 2. Because "Act 2 is gonna be brill".
It’s intruder chaos, really. He’s got a theory about Victoria's Secret in Grafton Street that it’s really a museum to the Irish Famine. "Nothin’ but raaags in there," says he in mock disbelief, "raaags and pieces of lace that wouldn’t cover a body in an Irish winter." And straps that wouldn’t fasten or go anywhere.
He’s going ‘high performance’ now. Like a CEO of a big company because he’s got a cross face that would defy pixilation. He’s set out goals. Like not envying himself anymore. Or objecting to anything that puts him out. Cycle lanes the size of motorways. Any environmental issues really. Snakes and St. Patrick who he’s on first-name terms with as SP. Anonymous posts on social media because Doherty’s got an identity. Mr DodgyBox with memes.
Conor McGregor intrigues him and he imagines him in the Áras. With Presidential duties like opening a knitting school on Inis Meáin or discussing politics with Trump. And hey… McGregor’s just one of us, really. Sensitive, kind, dreamer, philanthropist…one of us, like. Only louder.
And then...just like that…he’s imagining Minister Darragh O’Brien killing a tiger with a ruler. As you do.
His comedy is observational. He’s got a miniscule keyboard that probably cost fourteen pounds ninety-five pence in old money at Argos and the cost of the batteries distresses him. He’s got a Jack Benny connection with meanness. And that’s Doherty, the wonderer who brings comic insight to the ordinary.
You get the feeling that he’s only really alive when he’s onstage as he traipses down the corridors of his own consciousness. And he’s so likeable as he rambles around the stage and engages with the audience. No one gets a put-down. Even late-comers. His childlike smile and startled awareness of all things new in the world brings a feeling of innocence to his humour.
That’s the thing about Doherty. He’s subtle and he’s different.
