I’ve always wanted to see a show of Dylan Moran, ever since I’ve seen him in Black Books on TV. His form of wit and dark humour fits my own tastes. When I found out that he was performing in Amsterdam, I had to go.
I was able to get some decent seats in the middle and the show was fully sold out.
How can you describe a stand-up show by Dylan Moran? In my honest opinion Teun van der Sluijs summed it up perfectly.
Moran’s live stand-up comedy is unique in that it merges two strands of stand-up that seemed incompatible for a long time: sharp observational humor, and surreal and fantastical language-based absurdity. On the one hand, he has a clear influence from what could be called an American school of stand-up comedy that is heavily observational. On the other hand, Moran’s comedy is characterized by a use of language similar to the stand-up comedy of Eddie Izzard and Ross Noble: surreal associative leaps between on the one side observations and on the other fantasies, verbally painting bizarre and absurd worlds, often through a use of stream-of-consciousness narration. His language is often highly poetic, resembling a James Joyce that has had one too many.
He portrayed the difference in generation where nowadays they call for an Uber while we had to ask someone else’s older brother or sister for a ride. Our dating methods were different, we didn’t have the social media around to select our prospective partners. You’d only hope there was a decent fella in the pub/school or at work.
The way he described his youth and his antics in life had me bursting out in tears laughing. Ireland in the seventies was like Chernobyl with clergy or the haunted screams of a fellow flatmate that she was the only clean thing in the house.
The best expression I’ve learned from my time in Ireland is the one I often us to this day. Just to try and cope with the bizarre and unreal world we live in, after you’ve woken up finding out once again this is a dream. ‘Oh, for fucks sake’.
I had a terrific evening, even running in to my friend Anneke, and giving my boyfriend a view inside my head. Because if I’d ever drink coffee, it would be as dark as my soul.
