Edinburgh Fringe comedy review

 Aspiring to be a storytelling comedian in the relaxed style of Dave Allen, Northern Irish comic John Meagher has some uniquely fascinating anecdotes to share. But when his subject matter is more everyday, without the benefit of a distinctive angle to keep audiences rapt, his attempts to elevate the significance of the material tend to feel longwinded and sluggish.

His most potent content comes up top, when he speaks vividly of having his bucolic idyll on the West Coast of Ireland to Newry – a Northern Irish border city at the height of the Troubles.

A childhood in which being given interrogation training is considered normal is definitely warped, and this is compelling stuff, even if a crucial element of the story necessarily unresolved. And there are rarely-heard perspectives on topics such as how different histories taught either side of the Irish Sea.

The second part of the hour revolves around the ‘big year’ of the title – a turning point in his relationship with his much hotter, younger partner from a far more well-to-do Middle Eastern family, all ramping up the imposter syndrome.

Brevity is not his watchword as he offers up quite a lot of biographical information and scene-setting details, but they are regularly only tangentially pertinent the narrative. So while he’s eloquent – and with a driving rhythm to his delivery – he’s also garrulous.

Fringe hours should stretch the comedian, not their material, and often the verbosity too often feels like padding, not really serving the scene-setting and certainly slowing the jokes. At times – most crucially at the conclusion of the hour – it gives you plenty of opportunity to get to the punchline in your head first, while he’s still meandering towards it. 

Similarly, there’s little distinction between using recurring motifs to reinforce the monologue’s substance, and superficial repetition to just give the impression of the same.

The most relevant of this is how his unexpressive father has led to a lifetime of repressed emotions. He’s not the first man from these islands to reflect on that, but it’s a defining characteristic. 

There’s a simmering sense that sometimes the suppression explodes into anger, but he’s getting therapy – alien as that concept is – and it’s channelled here into an emphatic delivery.

That, the nub of the stories that stay with you and the lyricism of his best writing, mark him out as a comic to watch… especially if he can rein in some of the more self-indulgent elements of the writing.

Review date: 1 Aug 2024
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Gilded Balloon Patter House