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In Irish playwright Owen McCafferty’s new piece, rookie comedian Steve Johnston makes a deal with the devil. This fallen angel is no cloven-hoofed beast, though: he’s a personable chap in a sharp suit who says he’s the key to Johnston’s fame and fortune.
It’s a juicy premise: can the edgy – if unsuccessful – Steve maintain what it is that makes his comedy his, while also gaining wider recognition. But though focussing on the state of today’s comedy world is pretty topical, ‘Death of a Comedian’ never fully realises its potential.
Steve is playing in small grubby venues, entertaining the late-night crowd and being driven from place to place by his loyal girlfriend who is happy to help as long as Johnston is doing it for the ‘right reasons’.
To begin with, Steve’s set is a mish-mash of politicised angry rants and ridiculous, sweary jokes about horses. But then a big-shot agent arrives on the scene and tells him he can make Steve’s career a hell of a lot better if he makes some tweaks to his performance. To the anger of his girlfriend, Steve’s set undergoes a slow transformation. The angry politics are toned down, lazy gender stereotypes are added in (‘Women – what’s this no-logic business?’) and his kooky jokes are dropped completely.
Steve sells out, basically. In order to get success he becomes a bland, big-arena draw. The piece is structured around four main stand-up sets – all performed with energy and spark by Brian Doherty – where, next to each other, we can see how his work changes, subtly twisted by his puppetmaster agent. With each new performance, Steve has compromised a bit more.
Steve Marmion’s production handles the climax very well: in a burst of glitzy lights and TV smiles, Johnston is suddenly a smiling, awful, cardboard cut-out funnyman.
But where the piece should be an unnerving, intense build, a slow destruction of one man’s integrity, it just isn’t. There’s a good cast here, especially Shaun Dingwall’s slimy agent, and Doherty’s turn is convincing, but the four set pieces are overwritten. They feel heavy and repetitive and the tension rapidly flitters away like the laughter Steve craves so much.