Marty Gleeson: Dog Ear comedy review – A bonkers debut
The Irish comic illustrates her talent for tiny details and a comedy perspective that’s always askew
Marty Gleeson takes to the stage in baggy clothes, designed, apparently, to conceal the juiciest booty in Limerick. Her eyes sparkle mischievously as she addresses the crowd, who are snuggled up to each other in a cave-like bunker. She speaks in a deep, deadpan Irish lilt. Then she picks up a bodhrán and launches into a song about the death of David Attenborough. It’s an appropriately bonkers introduction to Dog Ear, her Fringe debut, a show where no detail is too small to investigate and nothing is allowed to remain normal. There’s a Peter Pan quality to Gleeson’s comedy, a refusal to grow up and stop attaching childlike, elaborate theories to the ordinary world. The jokes are as nostalgic as a crisp sandwich and the details are as bonkers as a man-sized magpie.
A throwaway line resurfaces minutes later in a completely different form while a story takes a tiny wrong turn and she happily follows it down a windy little path until we’ve arrived somewhere absurd; such as at the funeral of her chess-playing old-man alter ego. The attention to detail is a trick Gleeson learned at art school where she seems to have spent her twenties making oil paintings of deformed horses. It’s captivating watching all these strange little pieces click into place as the callbacks stack up, each one adding another layer to this peculiar universe.
Marty Gleeson: Dog Ear, Pleasance Courtyard, until 30 August, 7.15pm; picture: Amy Hecht.