Dara Ó Briain: Re: Creation
Review of the comic's tale of tracking down his biological father
Mock The Week might be back this weekend, but Dara Ó Briain’s stand-up show has nothing to do with jibes about Donald Trump or Nigel Farage.
Instead, Re: Creation is a companion piece to his last tour, So… Where Were We?, which traced his search for his birth mother who gave him up for adoption when he was a baby in 1970s Ireland. He calls that show his Philomena, though it wasn’t nearly as tragic as Steve Coogan’s drama.
Now the comic seeks to complete his genealogical jigsaw by tracking down his biological father. While this task seems to be achieved remarkably easily, Ó Briain still builds up an emotional head as he builds up the courage to contact him, while contemplating how the newfound family will react to discovering a previously unknown relative.
Throughout the yarn, he shows a lot of empathy and self-awareness, which makes it easy to invest in the feelings that surround his quest and his insertion into his new family, right up to its surprising climax. This is a brilliant rug-pull punchline provided by fate that has deeper, and funnier, consequences the more it sinks in – a fact Ó Briain expertly exploits by letting it hang for a moment.
He knows how to build a yarn, and the fact we already know him from a long TV career in which he projects a natural, ’what you see is what you get’ persona only adds to the audience buying in to his tale.
Before we get to this point, there's a first half of crowd work, with a couple of dead ends (some of which are caused by the garrulous comic talking so fast his interlocutors cannot keep up) before hitting a nicely absurd streak trivialising the work of an undersea oil engineer.
This sits along conventional observational stand-up about topics such as the changing fashions in pubic hair and the travails of being the father of teenage children who inexpertly snaffle his vodka.
While this sets up a couple of callbacks for later, part one can’t help but feel like something of a placeholder until Ó Briain gets to the guts of his astounding main story. However, the affable Irishman writes the everyman experience with witty and astute self-effacement, and always performs with vigour that keeps the show effortlessly entertaining.
But it’s that bombshell revelation that will really stick with you.
Review date: 30 Jan 2026
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at:
Rose Theatre
