John Ryan is not your normal comedian. He’s smart enough not to breeze into the Edinburgh Fringe wiv ‘is cockney accent, full of ‘geeza’s and ‘kna wha ah mean’s, and take the piss outta the Jocks. He doesn’t take the stage at 3am to try and placate drunken yobs baying for blood, nor does he fob off his audience with a set routine of predictable satire, knob jokes and aging punch lines.
Instead he’s taking over the bottom floor of the Tron, itself an abnormal but very engaging festival venue, at a sensible time of day to showcase a style that’s rapidly becoming rare in the PR-heavy, corporately sponsored world of British comedy.
Ryan seems to be carefully carving his own path up the otherwise well worn comedy mountain; it’s fast paced, fresh and comfortable. He takes the role of comedy storyteller and weaves his magic along a winding trail of anecdotes, observations and personal experience. Whilst this approach has already been taken by the likes of Connolly and Izzard, Ryan is definitely making his own way and manages to deliver his own brand across many cultural boundaries.
The result of Ryan’s first solo stand up run at the Fringe is an instant classic. Triggered by a ‘five year old bitch’ at his son’s school play, this breakneck journey through normality and it’s resulting perceptions charts a delightfully light-hearted account of Ryan’s life to date, that delves deeply into his Anglo-Irish upbringing and his odd predilection of writing letters to celebrities to see if they think he is normal.
This combination of a flexible set-piece approach combined with tremendous ad-libbing and devastating one-liners is certainly not normal these days and is all the better for it. Ryan will undoubtedly be future Perrier nominee, but he won’t win - he’s not normal enough by far.
4/5
Simon Ferguson
