Now that the dust has settled on the Cat Laughs Comedy Festival in Kilkenny, the hilarity can be recollected in tranquillity. Although perhaps not quite as strong a line-up as in previous years, there were still more than enough top quality acts on the bill to make choosing which gigs to see a bit of a dilemma always a good thing.
Yet there have been rumblings in some quarters that the festival, now half a decade old, is on the wane; and that stand-up comedy in general has lost its vitality, sucked dry by the overweening influence of the goggle box. But if it s true that many comics nowadays see the holy grail as having their own sitcom on Channel 4, there s no reason why stand-ups shouldn t aspire to harnessing their comedic talent to as many different animals as they see fit: act!, write novels!, draft screenplays! just make it funny.
As for the complaint that the Kilkenny line-up hasn t changed much, the general feeling over the course of the weekend seemed to be one of familiarity breeding contentment rather than contempt.
The festival has grown with the performers, says founder and director, Richard Cook, and so there s a cumulative effect whereby with each year, the rapport between the comedians and the audience gets stronger. If you look at someone like Rich Hall, he was playing to 40 people when he first came to Kilkenny. He wasn t known over here at all now he s a stalwart of the festival, and stuffing venues like the Village Inn. He s now at the stage where he knows the town and its people and so he can tailor his material accordingly.
Indeed, the rubber-faced Montana comic is a particular favourite of this observer. Whether in character as Otis Lee Crenshaw (his light-hearted, satirical swipe-cum-homage to country music) or as a straight stand-up (he was the only comedian to discuss the war in Kososvo and, unlike so many of his colleagues, there was a real bite, a real anger evident) or doing improv (his bus tour of the city), Hall s goofy but guttural comedy is a treat.
And I could have done with more, please; it struck me that while I enjoyed practically every act I saw with the exception of Scott Capurro, whose idea of comedy is to pick on the guy in the front row, pretend he s gay and make jokes about ejaculating on his back there was too much that seemed frothy and ephemeral.
Richard Cook is unconvinced by this analysis. If you look at Lewis Black or Mitch Hedburg the two finds of the festival for me this year they re both doing stuff that in its own way is quite challenging and has an edge to it. Lewis Black said some very interesting and thought-provoking things about America and so did Mitch Hedburg, it s just that he does it in a much more elliptical way.
What little I saw of Hedburg s surreal, idiosyncratic one-liners was very impressive and it was just a shame that much of the humour got lost amidst a baying, drunken crowd that was the G Nite Cats midnight finale. And at the same show, Black by name, clothing and comedy type also looked capable of packing a punch given a full set, while Rene Hicks, the solitary black comedian, did a gloriously un-PC routine which revolved around knowing references to the s word (as in slavery). In fairness, closer to home, Owen O Neill s material on the North was both spicy and spiky. O Neill is an equal opportunities satirist: he spares neither side.
Yet these are the exceptions. Maybe it s unfair and unreasonable to expect the next Bill Hicks at every turn. Maybe the spontaneously combustible, throwaway humour of, say, Jason Byrne is just as valid, in that in its unbridled anarchy suggests ways of thinking about the world that one suspects no bureaucrat in Brussels could ever imagine or countenance. Maybe such childlike silliness is just as essential as the realpolitik truth-sayers. One thing is undeniable, at his best as he was in the Village Inn Byrne is fun.
My highlights? Sean Cullen s impressions his Van Morrison impersonation was pure genius; Rich Hall yelling obscenities at an old man cycling a bike down the street; Hall, Dom Irrera and Owen O Neill discussing the infamous Wedding From Hell via clippings from the Kilkenny People pure Border Fascist heaven; the presence of Ralph Steadman; and the feeling I got from my fifth shot of absinthe on the Sunday night.
Lowlights? The feeling I had the next morning; the jerk in the front row who ruined Milton Jones show in the Cat Laughs tent with his pathetic, inane heckles; and that s about it, really.
Whichever way you look at it, the Cat Laughs has grown from a fledgling operation to one of the highlights of the Irish arts calendar in a few short years. Next year, Cook plans on expanding the cartoon exhibitions but otherwise he seems to have a policy of not fixing something that ain t broken. And broken it soytenly ain t. n