What makes a great entertainment venue? How do you create a space where magic can happen? You could be forgiven for counting amongst the essentials a pair of red velvet curtains, a proscenium arch, and a plush box for visiting royalty. But in truth, there is rarely a need for such opulent decor and furnishings. And in some cases, they may actually hinder the proceedings. The title character in the film Citizen Kane builds a monumental opera house to provide his second wife Susan an outlet for her career as a singer. Unfortunately, whatever tiny amount of talent Susan may have is quickly drowned out by the cacophony of the orchestra and the majesty of her surroundings. Her debut performance is a complete disaster and it hastens the end of Kane’s friendship with theatre critic Jedediah Leland. Worse still, the colossal folly of the venture leads Susan to attempt suicide. Embarrassed and ashamed, she soon calls it quits and abandons the opera show. Kane and Susan soon begin a long downhill descent towards a bitter estrangement. Ultimately, he dies alone, dreaming of better days, while she drowns her sorrows at a nightclub between performances in front of a small crowd of regulars at the bar.
All in all, this is not an ideal outcome. Perhaps Kane and Susan’s lives would not have turned out so tragic in the end if they had simply charged their customers a little less money. After all, the only thing worse than a bad show is a bad show that leaves your wallet feeling light. So maybe it’s not the design of the venue that matters most but rather the price of entry. And for a great example of how cheap and cheerful fun can have a lasting impact on popular culture, look no further than William Shakespeare’s Globe. The original Elizabethan theatre charged just a penny to standing-room audience members – known alternately as groundlings or penny-stinkers, depending on how generous you may feel towards them. These rowdy crowds are reported to have expressed themselves by interrupting performances and pelting the actors onstage with food.
Theatre-goers are less troublesome these days. But interruptions like these have become a staple of live stand-up comedy all around the world. In fact, you could make a decent argument that heckling is as much a defining trait of the medium as jokes, one-liners, and anecdotes. Equally, laughter is the one true test of quality that a comedian can rely on. If you’re performing to silence, you may as well be performing to an empty room. And if that’s the case, then it’s fair to say that a comedy club is only as good as its audience.
Show business is a ruthless enterprise. Just take a look at Irish-American vaudeville impresario John W. Considine – whose shady business practices led to a violent shootout with a corrupt chief of police. It takes a lot of guts to plant your song-and-dance flag in the ground and set up shop in unchartered territory. As such, it’s important to have a template to follow, a blueprint that demonstrates a potential for success.
When Don Ward and Peter Rosengard set up The Comedy Store in London, they modelled their venture on their venue’s namesake in Los Angeles. Likewise, The Comedy Store in Dublin was a conscious imitation of the London club, an attempt to kickstart the alternative comedy scene in Ireland. Located on Harcourt Street, the venue actually predated the Comedy Cellar in the International Bar, the country’s longest-running comedy club. Sadly, the endeavour was short-lived. But it remains a fascinating and important chapter in the history of Irish comedy.
I recently got in touch with Scottish performance-artist Oscar Mclennan to ask him about the key role he played in running the venue and booking the acts…
From Soho to Fitzwilliam Square
“I started my artistic career as lead singer in a well-below-the radar theatrical punk band in London in the late seventies called ZZitZ. I also used to go busking with the guitarist of the band. One day at Speaker’s Corner in Hyde Park, we were approached by comedian Tony Allen. He was getting this touring show together called Alternative Cabaret. And so as Gasmask & Hopkins we became part of the very first Alternative Cabaret show, playing a mixture of folk music and original material. This was my introduction into the then catalytic world of alternative comedy through venues such as The Comedy Store in Soho and Richard Strange’s Cabaret Futura, which combined experimental music, dance, poetry, comedy, and anything else that was out there. These were indeed heady times for the performing arts and the whole momentum seemed to have been provided by punk itself.”
“There were no rules. Anybody could get up and do anything. There were no boundaries. Then gradually, television reared its ugly head and the suits moved in. And that’s pretty much when I moved out and more into the performance art / theatre ballpark where there was more room to breathe creatively. But I get a little bit ahead of myself.”
“It was in 1980 after a bit of an altercation with the notoriously drunken audience at the Comedy Store that I decided to move to Dublin. Keith Allen – arguably the best, most provocative, and truly alternative of all the comedians – told me that a Comedy Store had just been opened in Dublin and that he had performed at the opening night. The original Comedy Store in Dublin was initiated by a character called Peter O’Connor, a writer who had just published his insanely brilliant book, The Happy Elephants. This was published by Steve McDonagh and The Irish Writers Co-op. And I moved into a flat on Fitzwilliam Square which was shared by Steve, Peter, and Neil Jordan, then working on his first film script.”
The Irish Writers Co-op was founded in 1975 during a meeting in Captain Americas restaurant on Grafton Street. With support from the Arts Council, this group set out to champion up-and-coming Irish authors through independent publishing. Given that The Comedy Store in London was born of the partnership between an insurance salesman and the owner of a strip-club, it’s ironic that its Dublin counterpart should emerge from a more high-brow tradition. Ironic, but also strangely appropriate, as Ireland’s literary heritage has certainly played a big influence on modern Irish comedy. Writers like Jonathan Swift and Flann O’Brien have been just as important to the evolution of our collective sense of humour as any contemporary performer on stage or screen.
A New and Experimental Venue
Ever since he first stepped foot on these shores, Oscar Mclennan has considered Ireland his adopted homeland. He first visited the country while serving as a member of a musical trio called The Troubadours as they accompanied the late Anna Manahan on a tour of her one-woman show.
Manahan is best remembered today for her Tony-nominated roles in Brian Friel’s Lovers and Martin McDonagh’s The Beauty Queen of Leenane. Notably, she also starred in Leave It to Mrs O’Brien, an RTÉ sitcom about a housekeeper living in a parochial house with two priests. Of course, this premise invites obvious comparison with Father Ted. But while the latter series has become a much-celebrated phenomenon, its predecessor was lambasted by critics upon its initial airing and has since faded into obscurity.
The broad old-fashioned humour of programmes like Mrs O’Brien was to alternative comedy what acts like Engelbert Humperdinck were to punk-rock. Which makes our little club on Harcourt Street something akin to The Roxy, a vibrant hotspot of creativity, condemned forever to be ahead of its time.
“It was kind of natural that I took over the running of the Comedy Store in Dublin, as I had more experience, plus the contacts to bring people over from London. That’s not to say that I was any good at it. Being organised has never been my forte! The early days were a mixture of the brilliant, the mediocre, and the downright bloody awful – I think I can safely cast some of my more avant garde efforts in this category. But you should expect nothing less from a new and experimental venue.”
The most prominent performer to emerge from The Comedy Store in Dublin was Kevin McAleer. His appearances on RTÉ’s Nighthawks later in the decade helped launch his career to the next level and he soon began touring full-length solo shows in theatres across Ireland. The Tyrone comic has been cited as an important influence by performers like David O’Doherty and Stewart Lee.
McAleer’s surreal and deadpan humour has touched on subjects as diverse as lifestyle gurus, meringues, and the TV detective show Kojak. His work is so unique that at times it veers into abstract territory, words and phrases rendered hilariously meaningless by his mundane delivery and unpredictable shifts in subject matter. His droll manner has recently been introduced to a whole new generation thanks to his role as Uncle Colm in the hit series Derry Girls. The comedian is due to retire from stand-up this month after more than forty years on the stage, playing his final shows in Dublin and Belfast.
“Kevin McAleer was an early participant. I still remember the first night he got up, which was the first night he had ever gotten up anywhere. A little worse for wear, he indulged in this long disjointed monologue. It was obvious there was something there and I told him so. It is a running joke between us that I discovered him. But that was the start of a friendship and a creative partnership that continues until this day.”
The Comedy Store in Dublin attracted all sorts of artists looking to express themselves. And Mclennan was only too happy to give them their brief moment in the spotlight.
“The space we used at the Harcourt Hotel was a very small and intimate one. You could maybe fit in fifty at a squeeze. It was open to anyone to try out anything. My interest has always been to break down the boundaries between the various artforms. And always seeking originality, we were looking for people who defied definition and were looking to break through those boundaries. So we had regular performers such as The Diceman, myself, Kevin, and Charlie O’Neil. Plus, a total mix of writers, poets, comedians, would-be actors, and wayward inspired drunks who felt they had something worthwhile to impart to the audience. I also brought over the show Alternative Cabaret to Ireland – with Alexi Sayle, Pauline Melville, Tony Allen, Combo Passe, and Gasmask & Hopkins – for a couple of nights at The Project Arts Centre and a few college dates.”
When the gigs at the Project Arts Centre were over, Alexei Sayle left Alternative Cabaret. He parted ways with the team to focus on his efforts with another troupe, The Comic Strip. In his second book of memoirs, Thatcher Stole My Trousers, Sayle recalled the “scandalised delight” in the reactions of Irish audiences to the shows arranged by Mclennan. To a country under the thumb of Charlie Haughey and the Catholic Church, this revolutionary style of humour was like a bolt out of the blue.
Break a Leg
One of the great things about performing stand-up comedy is that if you want to try out something new, you can do so right there on the spot. There’s no strict budget to adhere to and there’s no team of executives to please. All you have to do is get up and speak. Oscar Mclennan remembers his time onstage on Harcourt Street as a key part of his own creative development.
First, the idea for his performance piece When is a Duck not a Duck came to him during an overnight bus journey from London to Dublin. And he was then able to try it out in the Comedy Store the very next night. He later toured this show extensively throughout the UK and USA. The text was also published in Passages, a regular quarterly of New Irish Writing.
Naturally, the potent combination of the need to fill time and the compulsion to entertain an audience can lead to some high-flying improvisations. One spontaneous performance at the club on Harcourt Street later became the inspiration for a one-man show devised by Mclennan more than thirty years later.
“I remember one sketch with myself and Kevin McAleer that led to the beginning of my last major performance show, Kiss of the Chicken King. This was an hour-long multimedia monologue jointly commissioned by the Project Arts Centre and the Adelaide Theatre Festival in 2014. It featured music jointly composed and performed with Martin Tourish and video backdrops created in collaboration with Kevin. There was also a video intervention with Olwyn Fouerre.”
Mclennan also wrote a novel based on this project, published by Liverwire Publications Dublin. Additionally, he produced an album of original songs which can be found here on Youtube with accompanying visuals by Kevin McAleer.
The Death of Alternative Comedy
The emergence of alternative comedy in Britain coincided with the rise of Margaret Thatcher and her neoliberal policies. And in a bitter twist, it was her government’s legal battles with the IRA political prisoners in the notorious H-Blocks prison complex which brought an end to the club on Harcourt Street in 1981.
“Dublin nightlife was greatly affected by the upheaval of the Hunger Strikes. And we were no exception – with audience numbers dwindling to the committed few. I seem to remember we took the last show out onto the street at Stephen’s Green, as virtually no-one had shown up. I also seem to remember it went very well! I returned to London shortly after. And although the baton was picked up by Billy McGrath and others, the direction that alternative comedy was heading in was very much a mass media one, which I had no interest in.”
What had begun in damp basements and dingy strip-clubs was now a mainstream phenomenon.
On television, stand-up comedy became a product to be bought and sold via programmes like Saturday Live, hosted by writer-performer Ben Elton. In 1990 Sean Hughes became the first stand-up comic to win the prized Perrier Award at the Edinburgh Fringe with his own unique brand of confessional humour. Just three years later, Rob Newman and David Baddiel filled the Wembley Arena to capacity with their double act. Columnist Janet Street Porter dubbed comedy the new rock ‘n’ roll while large agencies like Avalon and Off the Kerb sprung up to capitalise on all the latest trends.
Sadly, the punk spirit of the original alternative comedy movement was dead. Or was it?
The Show Must Go On
Oscar Mclennan has continued to develop as a unique artist since The Comedy Store in Dublin shut its doors for good. Whatsmore, he has continued to champion the work of other independent spirits.
“After I returned to London I found myself drifting more into the world of performance art and experimental theatre. Although the audience numbers could be tiny, there was more creative room to breathe. By the time I returned to live in Dublin, I had pretty much established a pattern of writing a novel, then turning it into a multimedia monologue / theatre performance. Myself and my ex-partner Anne Seagrave were also instrumental in producing many Live Art shows.”
For his next project, Mclennan has gone back to his musical roots with a deeply personal album of original material.
“I have returned to music, once again working with Martin Tourish. The music was born out of the death of Ian, the two year old child of myself and my wife – and features all the love and loss that his short presence on this earth brought into our lives. I am also working with Kevin McAleer on the visual elements of this project.”
Oscar Mclennan’s latest release from his work-in-progress album Il Palloncino Giallo can be found here. And you can find the rest of his work on his website here.
A Nation of Comedians
When the Vikings arrived in Ireland to pillage and plunder, they established camps all along the country’s rivers. In time, these settlements grew into many of our largest towns and villages. Travelling today up the Boyne, the Barrow, the Liffey, and the Shannon, you can still trace the warpaths of the Norse warriors from Dublin to Waterford.
Likewise, there are now so many comedy clubs and open-mic nights all across the country that you could quite easily draw a detailed map charting the touring activities of every comedian working in Ireland right now. There is now a real circuit, something that must once have seemed inconceivable to someone like the late Dermot Morgan, who had no choice but to perform in all manner of strange venues early in his career. Though it seems preposterously tiny when compared to its cousins in Britain and America, our comedy scene is thriving. As is often the case, we punch far above our weight in terms of culture and art.
The internet has also provided a new space for Irish comics to perform. And a whole host of alternative performers have emerged over the last two decades to shake things up once again, from Blindboy Boatclub, to Chris Tordoff, to Peter McGann.
Where will the next great sensation come from? Nobody knows. But it’s up to all of us to support the arts and create spaces where performers can risk failure. Because let’s face it, if there’s one thing we’ve learned from the story of Ireland’s first comedy club, it’s that failure sometimes leads to brilliance…
