Review: Ed Byrne at the Festival Drayton Centre
Having kids was a big step for Irish stand-up Ed Byrne.
"When my boys were small, I thought comedy would lose its importance in my life," he said towards the start of his act at the Festival Drayton Centre. "But I depended on it more than ever - at last someone listened to me!"
Family life provided much of the raw material for Ed’s show. He was quick on his feet in every sense and the flow of stories and accompanying gags was sharp – far from the bleary-eyed, sidelined dad he’d portrayed himself as at first. Ranging as he did over the last 15 years or so, his prompts didn’t always feel very fresh but they were entertaining and there was much laughing out loud.
A case in point was when he proposed to his fiancée as he slid a ring across the table between them and she initially said ‘no’ before moments later adding ‘just kidding’. Ed ran through the train of thoughts which filled those few moments, rushing from mild surprise to a growing awareness of all the opportunities opening up before him, with a motor-mouth facility that was breathtaking.
He covered the financial disaster that was the wedding planner. He milked the experience of first hearing his own words repeated inappropriately in the mouth of his four-year-old. He explained to his astonished 13-year-old why he turned down an invitation to do Strictly ("a man’s got to know his limitations") adding a seriously adult punchline for the audience he hadn’t shared with his son.
An extended riff on contraception, culminating in a very funny exchange with a female GP responding to his request for a vasectomy, was among both the most recent of his family-inspired stories and the funniest.
With the exception of Ed’s musings on the ever-expanding definition of ‘woke’ there was not a hint of politics in his set. Nor was there any of the poignancy of his Tragedy plus Time tour.
Towards the end, Ed said "sometimes I don’t know where I fit in the world" but it led only to jokes about rich people who had such big houses they put furniture in the corridors.
Ed was ably supported by two equally funny friends – Canadian Michelle Shaughnessy ("you can be feminist and still ask your date to pick up the bill") and Welsh Leroy Brito ("15 years straight winning the school sports day father’s race").
