Upstairs at Kitty O’Shea’s is a great room for comedy: intimate, a bar and away from the usual bar noises most performers have to combat. Its central location makes it the perfect place to pop into and be entertained. Ben Caldwell has organized a season of stand up, improv and spoken word where “you’ll never see the same thing twice!”.

On opening there’s a small but vocal crowd. Joel, tonight’s MC, introduces himself as the main act and then brings on the first act, Jaundice Capone. I’m not quite sure of the name as Joel kinda swings through it. One of the usual roles of any stand up MC is to warm the crowd up so we’re ready, especially with a newbie who may or may not be able to do it themselves, and especially with a small crowd. It’s easy to laugh in numbers, but we tend to titter to ourselves if we feel exposed. So Jaundice gets a one line intro and we are ready if not prepped.

Jaundice has a hard time of it. His material, which seems left field, includes masturbation and big dick as punchlines that aren’t landed well. We aren’t ready for this kind of sardonic school boy flow and while we’re happy to give him a shot, his performance shrivels like balls in the Antarctic. “You don’t need to be intimidated because I’m weird,” he says. It’s not that, I’ve seen weird many times but his style of anti-humour may not have been the best choice to open. 

Our second comic, Dan Shanton, fares better. He has an easy style and is great at getting the audience to visualise the jokes and stories he tells. However he not helped either by our energy. We see the punchlines with him so when he holds for a laugh that’s not quite there, the ball gets dropped and he feels it keenly. Both of these guys need to keep their material at pace to keep the room’s energy up, even if it means ploughing through their material. Such a small group ain’t going to belly laugh till they are cajoled into it. Once that ball drops it’s hard to get it back in the air.

Then Joel comes on as headliner. He’s more practiced and has an easier time, though he still can tell we are only just with him. He sits somewhere between the deadpan of Jack Black (though he lacks enough deadpan to make it a trope) and the depreciating one liners of Jimmy Carr. He leads us through his lovelorn life and his strongest material is around his ex-girlfriend (if she exists). 

All in all, it’s an OK night. No one is going to pretend it went off. And the room will be open to new crowds and new performers each Friday and Saturday night (9pm).

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