Elsewhere on the fringe, twentysomething tyros will hurl their “hellzapoppin” comedy in your face, says Dylan Moran. But not here: “This is drive-time, people!” It’s not the first time the Irishman has played premature senescence for comic effect, but now there’s a new development. He’s stopped drinking, he tells us: “That’s why this show is a bit wonky.” Well, if this is wonky, I’d marvel to see Moran on point. Because Dr Cosmos – in its hour-long version before touring in expanded form - is top-drawer standup from this past master of the art form.
There’s no theme, save Moran’s bold promise to offer “all the answers” to the problem of life. With a crib sheet for assistance (he says teetotalism has affected his memory), he ranges across politics, religion, dinner parties and – he’s not always au courant – Findus crispy pancakes. It’s “not even jazz”, he says of the show’s modus operandi. “Jazz is too organised. It’s just -zz.” Certainly, the show derives some of its charge from its free-form nature. The impression, rightly or wrongly, is of a man plucking jokes and extemporised riffs from a head teeming with comedy. Few fringe shows come as well stuffed with sparkling material, or suggest that the act could probably keep operating at a high, if scattershot, level for hours.
In content terms, there’s nothing novel about it. He tries and fails to resist talking about Trump. There’s a routine about cats’ personalities and another about that hoariest of middle-aged standup subjects, communicating in the pre-mobile phone era. The presiding personality – shambling midlife loser charting life’s desolation and his own dwindling significance – is well worn. But Moran stands or falls not by what he discusses, but how. Time and again, he fashions an arresting word-picture or lyrical turn of phrase that pierces to the heart of this apercu or that existential commonplace.
So the sweet sound of his wife sleeping is like “two bees agreeing in the distance” or shampoo in TV ads is like “sexual caramel”. The best phrasemaking is often his bleakest, as when millennials returning to live at home find themselves “masturbating with the corpse of [their] old dreams”. But unflinching though Moran is in the face of the human tragicomedy, this is anything but a bleak show. Against futility, laughter is our best defence – and Moran arms us with plenty of it. If drivetime was always this fun, you’d never want to get home.
- At the Stand Comedy Club, Edinburgh, on 19 August; Assembly Hall, 23-25 August; Gilded Balloon Rose theatre, 22-26 August.
- Read all our Edinburgh festival reviews.
