Edinburgh Fringe comedy review

Dan Tiernan blasted his way to Fringe success last year with a wild show revealing the bleaker areas of his life as a dyspraxic, odd-looking outsider, educated at a school for children with special needs now living in near-squalor.

Was there a risk he bled the misery well dry with that supercharged debut? What else could there be?

Well, he’s got gout - so there’s that, adding the catalogue of woes, many self-inflicted, from a man who portrays himself as grubby and self-destructive. 

We hear how he first found acceptance among his peers for being willing to smash himself on the forehead with a beer can time and time again  – which is pretty much as perfect an analogy for comedians doing the Edinburgh Fringe as you could find.  Later in life, we hear of him snorting industrial quantities of coke at Glastonbury, which is not the ideal drug when you’re already as hyper-intense as Tiernan is.

As is his trademark, he tears through his show with the unpredictable ferocity of a hurricane, with manic bursts of coruscating energy, some of which momentarily terrify or creep out the audience. Like a roller-coaster, the thrill is experiencing the danger, but in a safe way. His frank description of psychotic episodes he’s suffered further builds up the jeopardy.

Tiernan’s got jokes as punchy as his personality too, lest you think this is just a troubling man ranting, and it will come as no surprise that many of them have a very dark edge. Others are smarter than you might expect, playing into the idiot savant archetype.

He also has other strings to his bow – which might be useful as he’s been forced to clean up his lifestyle because of the gout, possibly stemming from a rich source of future material. And Stomp has an impressive and unexpected finale that demonstrates how Tiernan’s showmanship has come on since those beer can days.

Review date: 6 Aug 2024
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Monkey Barrel Comedy Club