We say we want men to talk about their mental health, Dan Tiernan has noticed. Is this what we had in mind? The joke is on the queasy atmosphere the Mancunian establishes at his shows, barking in the audience’s faces, behaving unstably and – this time around – loudly bellowing “I tried to suck off my dad”, over and over again. Is there a therapist in the house? Well, there doesn’t need to be, because Tiernan has devised “the System”, a three-point plan to heal himself after a drug-induced psychotic episode between Glastonbury 2024 and last year’s Edinburgh fringe show.
We are three new shows into the 29-year-old’s fringe career now, and All In again finds him addressing his dyspraxia, his drug use and his failure to fit in. I hanker for the show that directs his considerable comic talents elsewhere, but in the meantime, this is his strongest offering so far, the self- and audience-abusing comedy now underpinned by structure and tending towards a big payoff. It begins with an inventory of the drugs Tiernan used to take, then splices in stories from his beloved Glastonbury festival, including a keeper about smuggling his gear in a jar of Nutella.
The freshest material addresses his internalised homophobia, as we journey from his teenage years, furtively fantasising over Justin Bieber, to (not very) grownup life lived in fear of gay sex – scarier than the hetero alternative, he argues, in characteristically lurid terms. His problems now laid out, Tiernan moves on to elucidate “the System” itself, neatly flipping the script and making way for a rousing, Glasto-alike finale.
By then, Tiernan is stripped to the waist and performing with even wilder commitment than across the 50 minutes prior. You might wince now and then at the crudeness, occasionally superfluous, of his material: we don’t need the act-out after the elliptical gag about his mum, his backside and poppers. But more often than not Tiernan nails it here, with a surreptitiously tender tale of a manchild adrift just about visible behind all the stark gags about his very dysfunctional lifestyle.
• At Monkey Barrel, Edinburgh, until 24 August
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