Jason Byrne at the Civic – Comedian brings side-splitting pain
By Hayden Moore
When a woman’s bottle of Prosecco exploded and spilled everywhere before the show started, and her friend next to her said “sure that’s part of the show”, no one there realised that is was a sign of things to come as Jason Byrne brought members of the Civic Theatre crowd on an hour-and-a-half side-splitting trip through the mind of Jason Byrne.
When Jason spoke with The Echo a couple of weeks ago and he told us that “the great thing about Tallaght is that they pretty much write the show”, he hit the nail on the head as his sold-out show in the Civic Theatre on Friday brought all the hagglers he could have wanted and created a wholly unique experience.
Byrne led a mostly improvised first half of the show as he couldn’t help but dip into the crowd to ask the ‘woman who wasn’t there’ why the seat next to her was empty, and why John White had no leg, before dialling it back after the interval to focus more on the script and poke fun at how bizarre Irish culture is and the insanity of the 1980’s.
The self-titled show proved to be a letter of admiration for his father, as he admitted that his dad is his hero and that he has nothing but admiration for how much his 79-year-old father doesn’t care about anything – before telling the hysterically relatable stories about his father having a stroke and installing a bathroom by himself.
It’s a credit to Jason in terms of how he grips an audience, since they couldn’t contain themselves from the minute he walked on stage as every twitch and flinch of Jason’s sent them flying down a spiral of genuine pain from the cosmic number of laughs.
Jason Byrne is like a magnet on stage that draws the audience in to feeling like they must be part of the show and holds them there creating this electricity in the room, and coupled with his quick wit and razor-sharp responses with the audience, it proved to be that no two Jason Byrne shows will ever be the same.
Jason Byrne will return to the Civic Theatre on February 28 with his new tour ‘You Can Come In But Don’t Start Anything’, with tickets costing €23.
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