Review: David O’Doherty Has Checked Everything
David O’Doherty is an impossibly fun comedian to see live, as well as a wonderfully low-key and modest performer.
No introduction, no walk-on music – rather the opposite: the music simply stopped for O’Doherty to make a retiring entrance at The Dancehouse in Manchester.
His tour show, David O’Doherty Has Checked Everything, focuses on our gradually worsening ability to be alive without also being wired into everything else that’s going on, and O’Doherty’s desperate quest for what it is that will actually bring him complete happiness.
Sadly not a pizza wheel – a ‘fat sword’ or ‘infinity knife’ – it turns out.
Not all that often is David O’Doherty noted for how well he can write a straight joke with a punchline (a punchline very much in O’Doherty’s matter-of-factly surreal style: i.e. ‘meat Vienetta’). These jokes are really brilliant nuggets in the show.
They frequently come in the form of his penchant for simply morphing two words into one, often using his own name (something I have always found perhaps disproportionately funny).
Nothing about O’Doherty’s comedy needs punctuating by these jokes; there’s never a moment in which things feel as though they’re dragging – with a seemingly spontaneous play-by-play of how things are running: story, joke, song, joke, story etc. But it’s not rapid fire either.
O’Doherty is neither rusher nor dragger. The pacing of the show is haphazard, but completely right for what – and who – it is. The show is full to spilling with fantastically funny stories, one-liners, musings etc., and it’s delivered with O’Doherty’s wonderful alternating calmness and frustration.
O’Doherty’s musical comedy is always a massive treat. His songs are so cleverly written, and so set-apart from other musical comedy acts. The tiny keyboard resting on stage beforehand feels like finding out before the competition that you’ve already won.
His songs are unexpectedly poignant, and hugely funny with it; again, not only are they brilliantly surreal, the intelligence of O’Doherty’s writing shines right out into the audience (in particular with a love song about history’s genius, with Einstein’s rejection of Marie Curie and her sister coming in the form of ‘E with never equal MC2’.
David O’Doherty Has Checked Everything will not outwardly give you the answer to happiness. However, if you’re looking to find the secret to the ‘greatest possible joke for the under 8s’ (and subsequently perhaps the best possible call-back thereof): see this show.
See David O’Doherty in whatever form you can. It will always be more than worth it.
Date of live review: Saturday 14 February 2015 @ The Dancehouse, Manchester
