John Moloney in Butterflies With Stretchmarks
Live Review

Dressed in a black suit and black tie, John Moloney looks more like a somber undertaker than a comic. Indeed as he notes with a wry, ironic look, he got into to stand-up precisely because it meant he didn’t have to wear a shirt and tie.

Nevertheless the appearance does compliment Moloney’s style - dryly deadpan, slow, deliberate and astark contrast to the chaos and cacophony of the Fringe.

It’s a strangely relaxing hour of stand up, even if two people in this audience didn’t find it so, claiming Moloney was ‘boring’ when they finally got up to leave – apparently finding it less rude to sit and mutter through half an hour of Moloney’s show rather than pushing past a packed roomful of people to get out. But when their talking became loud enough to reach the rest of the room Moloney dealt with it with aplomb, not breaking out of his laidback demeanour for a moment.

It was a great display of his experience as a stand-up. He has been on the circuit for 20 years and once appeared in a three-way show with the late, great Malcolm Hardee and a drag act. That’s two decades of honed gags from which to pluck the material for this show.

Many of the topics are familiar ones, material about dogs and his cat, about relationships – in particular his own marriage – and even plenty of gags about the Germans. But they’re all carefully crafted, meticulously delivered and ultimately get a laugh even in the packed-out sauna that this room turns into with a full house.

A masterclass in laid-back humour from a seasoned pro.