Gary Delaney
was smart, aloof and laid-back. His set was a barrage of disconnected
one-liners.
That’s it really. The jokes were
very funny and, at times, very clever which required rapt attention, time within
each delivery to think about the joke and then a deliberate pause in which to
‘get’ it.
Unfortunately it seemed that
tonight’s audience were slightly more with it than Delaney was used to so the
requisite pause between each line lost some of the momentum giving the
impression that he was struggling to remember the next joke. His constant use of
homophones (as my English teacher friend told me – ‘two words with the same
sound but different meaning’) made many of the punchlines predictable before
their delivery. Also, the superiority was a bit grating; he seemed to consider
his jokes to be more clever than they were, or perhaps more clever than he
thought his audience were.
Don’t get me wrong, I laughed a
lot, and after Delaney carefully gauged the sensibilities of the audience with a
few risqué test gags he was able to pick up speed and continue the rest of his
set at an accelerated rate that kept a constant stream of laughter and stopped
me trying to pick holes in every flaw I could find.
Place on Bill:
2nd Act
Venue:
Barnstromers – Capitol, Horsham
Date of show:
21st November
2004
