Dara Ó Briain: There's such a special energy in the Marquee 

DARA Ó Briain, famous throughout Ireland and the UK as a brilliant comedian — selling out hundreds of venues for many years — but also as a television host with shows such as Mock The Week, Blockbusters, Robot Wars and Stargazing Live, has started touring a new show, which is titled Re:Creation.

Following on from his lauded So... Where Were We?, which he performed at Live At The Marquee in 2022, he returned to Cork last week, when he performed several sold-out nights in Cork Opera House at the very start of a touring schedule that already is planned well into 2026.

Despite it being early days for the show, Dara already knows it works as a piece.

“This my third weekend of the tour and I know the show clicks. A night in the Opera House is always a good test, because if you just do nights in Vicar Street, there’s people with pints in front of them, they’re kind of raucous and upbeat, you have to be ready for theatres and people sitting back — more so in the UK than in Ireland — but those midweek nights are as a good a test as the weekends.”

For a consummate comedy performer like Ó Briain, just because the show is touring doesn’t mean he isn’t afraid to tweak it.

“The show has already had a good run out, but having said that I’ll still come back to the hotel room and start rewriting bits of it. The set piece routines stay in the show, but it evolves and it settles into what the show is, you kind of park any big kind of additions and it’s working, then what happens is a new part emerges — and you can’t predict which bit will expand — but like a cuckoo in the nest it pushes other stuff out, just from the audience reaction to it. For instance, in the last show there was a joke that was in the first 165 performances but got cut out for the last 10!’

Interestingly, Dara doesn’t think the differences between the cities he performs in impact his shows as much as when he is performing there.

“I’ve never found any of that Cork versus Dublin, or Ireland versus Scotland versus England thing to be that important; I find that, weirdly, the day of the week is a significantly bigger factor than any of that. Wednesdays are just people thinking ‘I’ve been at work’; on a Friday, they’ve been at work and then maybe gone for pints before the show, but then Saturday is an audience in peak energy. So all the stuff that we kind of talk about and analyze, does not apply at all.

“Also, really the shape of the room is another big one as well. There are some where people have to sit forward and others in which people sit back, and that is a far greater factor than this kind of inter-county or international stuff. I can’t be going ‘oh my God, I’m so incredibly unique.’ The atmosphere in The Marquee is a big tent with 4000 people. Stick a crowd into a tent on a summer’s evening that’s always going to be energetic and always going to have a buzz to it, there’s such a special energy.”

Indeed, Dara continues his modest assessment of why he is such a popular performer, crediting his ease in such huge venues to consistently working… and taking some cues from Bono,

“I think it’s a practice thing, you just get used to, it is always the case even at a small level. We play a lot of different types of rooms when you’re starting off. I remember once playing in a room above a tennis club, and another time I was in the back room of a pizza restaurant.

“It’s one of these reasons that you see comedians do lots of other kinds of gigs like TV work, podcasts, radio shows and acting because we’re just used to it being really varied.

“One thing, for instance, is when I’m in the Hammersmith Apollo in London (where BBC’s Live At The Apollo stand-up comedy show is recorded, and has a SMALLER capacity than Live At The Marquee) you realise you have to stand slightly differently. You have to open your arms a little bit more. You have to bend back just a little bit more.”

That eureka moment came to him at someone else’s gig. “I remember watching U2 at Wembley, and how many big arena gigs had they done at this stage? I noticed the way they stood, the angle at which they stood was open, open to a big room.

“No stage school taught them that, you learn that by doing it. You know that just this works better if I’m just inclined slightly back and up and my arms are out of whatever I’m just, I’m embracing you all in this stuff. So you just have different technical techniques in different rooms. It’s fun when you’re starting new material stuff in small clubs, holding onto the microphone like a New York comedian in a TV show, but then the minute you get into the theatres, you have to stick on the head mic, take the second arm out and expand it all out.”

As successful as Dara is with his multiple sell-out shows, he had a recent experience to remind himself of his level of fame.

“Two weeks ago, I did a cameo appearance in Inside Number Nine’s new live show Stage/Fright, they have this West End show and they have a different guest every night. So I did the cameo slot, and at the end of the evening, I said goodbye to everyone and when I walked out, there was a massive crowd at the stage door waiting… and it was all for Paul Mescel who was in the theatre across the way doing A Streetcar Named Desire, like all of the young people racing around, decided to try to catch Paul at the stage door, and nobody waiting to see me!”

Dara O’Briain returns to Cork’s Live At The Marquee with his Re:Creation tour on Sunday, June 29 . Tickets available via  www.aikenpromotions.com