“I’m going to reveal to you all the darkest joke I ever told,” said Ed Byrne as he began the introduction to his show, Tragedy Plus Time, ensuring to entice the audience to return to their seats after the interval to hear it. Byrne explained that he named the show after Mark Twain’s statement that “comedy equals tragedy plus time”.
Once Byrne had performed his warm-up, he introduced Amy Matthews, the show’s support act. She received loud laughs from the crowd as she picked on audience members to ask them who they’d come to the show with and what they did for a living. Through these interactions, Matthews comedically despaired at people’s “boring” sounding jobs, asking them if they’d attended to make use of their “disposable income”, drawing loud laughs of agreement from the crowd.
Matthews’ set quickly drifted into tired tropes surrounding generational trauma and parenting styles. She drew comparison to how these parenting styles consequently resulted in each generation’s approach to mental health and how having anxiety was “boring”, she self-deprecatingly said. She failed to break new ground on the topic, instead with her jokes echoing those heard before in post-2018 comedy. Perhaps the crowd may have responded better at a Matthews headline set, but to an older audience, her age-related jibes were responded to with little more than a light chuckle.
Ed Byrne took to the stage to begin his set. He opened with some lighter anecdotes about his relationship with his younger brother, Paul, (who the show is about), recalling a time when he’d left Byrne in a pub without telling him was leaving. The audience laughed in recognition of how sometimes challenging sibling relationships can be.
Byrne never failed to connect with the audience when intertwining jokes with the tragic story of his brother’s illness. When less people laughed at a specific joke he’d say, “well, this next one you’ll understand”. He kept the audience engaged when speaking about the argument he had with his brother, which led them to a year without contact, and how he realised he was very lucky to have restored that relationship in time to have four months with his brother before he died.
A couple of the funniest moments of the show were when Byrne incorporated music into his anecdotes. He managed to turn one of the bleakest things someone can witness (watching someone die in hospital) into a moment where people were roaring with laughter as he played aloud the album his brother loved, as he had done when he was sat next to him as he died, which happened to be a heavy metal band. Moreover, the audience howled as Byrne played the chorus of ‘Disco Inferno’ by The Trammps after saying that was the song played in the crematorium as the coffin was committed.
No one but Ed Byrne could so candidly turn something so dark into something so light and funny. Yet, also made it so thoughtful, as he stressed to the departing audience the importance of thinking twice before giving anyone an ‘Irish goodbye’.
Rating: ★★★★★
Ed Byrne ~ Tragedy Plus Time played at the Leadmill on September 29th & is touring the U.K. until April 4th 2025
