Review: Dan Tiernan: Stomp

For all its furious fireworks, this is a pretty straightforward stand-up show. Sure, Tiernan treats us to a showstopper of a magic trick by way of a finale, but it’s not like it marks the culmination of a dramatic arc. We don’t learn anything new. No one is redeemed. No moral is dragged blinking into the light. No dads are dead. Why, then, is this such a memorably good hour of comedy?

There’s a clue, amongst many others, in the magical closer, which only works because, based on the lashings of self-abuse Tiernan has doled out, there’s no reason to think he can pull it off. But that’s a restatement rather than a reversal of all that’s gone before. Consistently throughout this hour, Tiernan holds complete opposites in truth and tension. He’s gay and yet capable of the most toxic of masculinity. He’s prone to moments of intense, violent fury, while being clearly a total sweetie. He’s both dyspraxic and eminently physically adept. There’s a line about his disability which I won’t spoil, but which is at once wholly ableist, judgemental, disrespectful and self-affirming. He is entirely at ease holding and kneading a pair of contradictions until the release (that’s laughter) comes. And it comes hard.

That tension extends to quite an uncomfortable style of performance. The line between genius and insanity is, in the classical case, thin, and Tiernan’s jerky, bouncing stance and the casual way he talks about his cocaine excesses and drug induced psychosis aren’t always an easy watch. If nothing else, rare clam notes (a dull observation on the difference between irony and coincidence, for instance) show that he’s a flawed human grappling with the nuts and bolts of performance rather than a fully-formed prophet of comedy. At least, not yet.