Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Some people are just larger than life, some even make life large by pointing out the very small details, the details that are so acutely insane that they deserve to be picked out, shaken and handed to the audience as if they were small chewable nuggets of how to get through a crazy but memorable life.
Back in Liverpool for the first time since 2013, Dara O’ Briain came on stage at the Empire Theatre to the applause befitting one of the country’s best loved comedians and over the course of the next couple of hours, those nuggets of information became the type of anecdotes that you could take to work or down the pub with you and have people marvel at your new found wit, until they catch the same insights repeated on Dave over the next couple of years.
The Empire Theatre stage is not one that an audience member is used to seeing with minimalist expression, the only prop a table with a solitary glass of water upon it, hardly the stuff that would make a producer of a West End drool with exuberance but perfect for explaining The Gay Line for straight men dancing, the ridiculousness of the Post-Victorian hangover that is the Elbows on the Table Rule, how Humanity cannot only bring about the extinction of the Dodo but that we’ve punched a hole into the Periodic Table as well, how anybody can make a 21st Century must see television drama, even if the murder weapon is a naked lady holding a lamp and most of all there is really a place near Burnley, where the lesser spotted Dara O’ Briain Unicorn can be seen conveying Lady Rebecca to inspect her Poly Tunnels.
It is Mr. O’ Briain’s magnetism and crowd interaction that sets him apart from many comics and arguably one of the top five comedians to ply their trade up and down the country in the last decade. It is the setting of the scene, the build up with bringing the audience into the secret plot, the employment of memory and holding firm to being able to impart knowledge but with the twist of the funny bone that makes it worth heeding.
Dara O’ Briain stands tall, his observations hitting home with the accuracy a staple gun at a crime scene, the precision of sound of the Lurpack Man and with the wit of someone at the very top of their game, A true professional, a joy to behold.
Ian D. Hall