CORK comedian Tadhg Hickey’s acclaimed one-man show In One Eye, Out The Other comes to The Everyman for a two-night run, and the McCurtain Villas native says he can’t wait to play to a home crowd.

In One Eye, Out The Other is part theatre, part stand-up comedy show, and is based loosely on Hickey’s experiences with alcoholism, something he went public about while promoting the show.

“I started writing the show when I was still drinking, maybe trying to find the funny side of slowly drinking myself to death,” he told The Echo.

“Sober now years, not in my wildest dreams did I imagine the drunken scribblings would one day make it to an international audiences and possibly help someone else who might be struggling with alcoholism.”

The show tells the story of Feargal, a downtrodden but cheery man who fulfilled, as Mr Hickey puts it, “his lifelong dream of becoming an alcoholic”, leading the audience on a surreal journey which reviews have described variously as hilarious, cathartic and poignant.

“I’ve done sell-out runs in Dublin and Belfast, but I’ve never done a run in Cork before and the show is completely bound up in the fabric of Cork,” he said.

“There are references to Sheila’s Hostel, and the climactic scene is in The Lough Church, and The Lough is a big part of it, so it’s my surreal, drunken love letter to Cork.

“I never did much travelling when I was drinking, because I was a very insular drunk, and Cork was this arena where I developed alcoholism and nearly lost my life to it and hopefully came out the other end of it.”

He said this will probably be the only chance for Cork audiences to see the show, and he hoped for a good turn-out.

“It would be very special to me to have a nice crowd to come and see the show,” he said.

• In One Eye, Out The Other plays The Everyman, Thursday, Friday June 2-3.

Details at everymancork.com.