Review: Tommy Tiernan works the Marquee crowd

Tommy Tiernan, one of the most familiar faces to appear at Live at the Marquee over the years — including the very first edition in 2005 — took to the stage again at the weekend. For both shows on Friday and Saturday, the opening act was Cork’s Kyla Cobbler, one of the fastest-growing names in Irish comedy, but there was no doubt about who the main attraction was when Tiernan took to the stage.

On the Friday night, Tommy was immediately working the crowd into waves of laughter, sensing the exuberance of the crowd on an ‘end of the working week’ buzz he leaned into, having the audience singing along to some classic songs from the terraces at sports games, while at the same time having a cheeky go at rugby fans and players, with the chorus of Zombie by The Cranberries.

Tommy has always been a comedian who plays with conventions, so if just one section of a longer riff is printed or shown out of context, the point of his comedy can get easily lost. With that in mind, all the audiences’ phones were placed in pouches which were only unlocked as we left the Marquee.

While its main function is to prevent misrepresenting a comedian, it also added a more communal atmosphere to the show, instead of phone screens catching the corner of each other’s eyes or photos being taken and blocking the view of people behind the photographer, 4,000 people got to sit and listen to Tommy Tiernan hold court. Taking in everything from what bad news could be told using the softness of the Donegal accent as a cushion, to the efforts he went not to stand out dropping one of his teenage daughters to the Latitude Festival in Dublin.

In many ways, he is the epitome of telling a ‘shaggy dog’ tale, which is essentially telling a mild anecdote with loads of tangents, for instance he would throw in a seemingly off the cuff comment about Bob Dylan while telling a story about being legally threatened for making up a name for a character who died in a sketch on his TV show... which happened to be the real name of a person who died the week it was broadcast. Throughout the show, his stories and comments all fed into a central theme of ‘Ireland’s not perfect, but it’s brilliant’.

As ever, he is a comedian who finds plenty of material in the moment, and he found plenty of laughs in the (at that time) upcoming Cork v Dublin hurling All-Ireland semi-final; the reaction to Bob Vylan and Kneecap’s Glastonbury experiences; and the location of the Marquee in Cork.

When the show finished, most of the audience would happily have stayed off their phones for another hour of Tommy Tiernan’s comedy prowess. As we were all leaving, the background music being played was Bob Dylan, a sign that perhaps Tommy’s deviations have a bit more thought behind them than it seems.