View from the Green Room: We’re all flyin’ high with Jason
Jason Byrne's Head in the Clouds tour.
Jumpin’ Jason just explodes across the stage to a huge welcome from a packed house. "What the phock," roars Jason. "Yezz are all phockin’ maaaad," screams the eyes-on-stalks man in black and the house is buzzin’. Head in the clouds??? He was as high as a Mary Poppins' kite.
It’s easy to warm to the Dubin comic. He’s got a smile as broad as the Suir and eyes that dazzle in the lights. And he includes everybody from the moment he enters. Smiling up to the packed Gods, he repeats the WTF mantra over and over as if he just can’t believe his popularity. But he’s got a big following here in the Déise and he’s not going to disappoint his Friday night audience.
He works his audience well. When he finds victims that live "out the Dunmore Road", he’s wondering how posh people are who live along the road… "do you’se have eagles on the gate piers?...trampolines in the front garden?"
Kevin is back again… in the front row…a Protestant…the only one in the house. And…according to the Bible according to Jason… "he’s got a woofer’s accent". A lad a few rows back is forced into admitting he’s a CEO…for fockin’ bathrooms. Jason is immediately on his case when he finds out that he doesn’t measure up for the fittings and he’s imagining ill-fitting sinks that take up all the bathroom space.
Jason’s giggin’ all over Britain now and he’s expanding on the cultural difference between audiences. Polite applause and well-done-you plaudits dominate across the water, whereas in Ireland it’s game on for diggin’ the dirt on the neighbours.
When he imagines Prince Andrew in the clink, he’s in heaven. President Connolly was in town today and he’s imagining her as the tick-tock, keepy-uppy Rose of Tralee winner who won the presidency. Poor old Daithí Ó Sé is "made of black pudding, mulch and the weather".
When he moves on to posh Ardkeen Stores on the posh Dunmore Road, the house is in stitches. "They mist-spray the furniture there, you know," whispers Jason in confidential mode.
"The pensioner customers can hardly move with the weight of gold bling they’re carrying," he adds, and "the checkout is manned by an out-to-grass bank manager who can do a mortgage with you while you pay for your mist-sprayed veggies," he nods in all sincerity. Like.
The second half is pure Jason. And he gives it his all. It’s a high-octane eyes-on-stalks performance that pounds along in a reflexive, innovative, spontaneous and improvised monologue of subversive mayhem. Nothing sacred here. Except cows that Jason uses bazookas to shoot down.
I love it when Jason gets on to his parents. His laconic stuck-in-a-time-warp Da liked to watch tv in his drawers. A mad and vengeful Ma threw eggcups at him and threatened his little five-year-old self that she would give him away to "the maaaaaaaaan". Bus journeys are peppered with threats of Jason’s disposal to the maaaaaaaaaan who only sits two rows in front of him. "No wonder I’m still traumatised," says he. And don’t get him started on therapy for kids like the little chap who now identifies himself as a cat. The da would have had the perfect therapy for that – put him out in the garden for the night, force him to come in through the cat-flap and feed him milk in a bowl for breakfast, dinner and tea. That’d put a hould to his meow whisht. "Ah yes…therapy my anus," declares Da.
Another good night on the Mall from Jason.
