A new theatre company Waterford Ways Productions presented Three Comedy Plays in the Granary as part of the new work strand of the Imagine Festival. New comedy is particularly difficult as it needs the audience feedback to hone its skills and I went on a disorganised opening night.
However, Alan Cliff once again showed his multi-talents as performer, director and writer even if his Google ball – one-woman show – needed an edit of its seventeen minutes. Clare Smith as a pretend physic medium with a Scouse accent in Las Vegas did as well as she could with clouded if not vague material.
Caz Butler Kelly again showed her ear for comic dialogue in Behind Our Four Walls. This was an overlong 20 minutes but the exchanges between Elaine O’Brien and Kate O’Donnell under Lynda Gough’s direction had some of the best laughs of the evening.
Heard some new female gynaecological jokes and a few fresh hints to set the bedroom night with passion and banoffi pie. Animal sex reared its ugly head but the best visual joke was using nappies as a serving bowl for Doritos.
After an interval Dean Sullivan and Brian Coady acted out their co-scripted forty minutes routine in My Brother From Another Mother. Not wishing to take away from the fun but it was a pity that Coady came across as the character he recently portrayed in McDonagh’s The Lonesome West.
Dean Sullivan is a fine actor and an equally exciting stand-up comedian but overall these scripts need editing and pruning, but there is some fine comedy skills in this new company.
