David O’Doherty plumbed the depths of human experience at the Enmore Theatre with his latest show Hopefully. The show’s title comes from his feeling of hopefulness that things (read as: everything terrible that is currently happening in the world) can only get better.
The Irishman delighted his audience with anecdotes of shit jobs he had before becoming a “famous” comedian, before moving onto an investigation of his own fame – which involves being told by a man in Nottingham that he is “vaguely familiar”, and walking into the wrong hotel room to find a naked man lying prostrate on a bed watching him performing on TV.
Let’s put his vague familiarity aside for one moment: O’Doherty is a great stand-up. His Sydney fans were laughing with their entire bodies and the audience attentively followed his set as it twisted and turned from one topic to another. It was a thoroughly enjoyable performance.
An unimpressed kid once asked O’Doherty mid-performance at one of his children’s shows, “Does this get good soon?” It’s a question which O’Doherty believes could be the motto of our time, and which is mirrored in one of his better-known songs, ‘Life’, which he performed at the end of his set.
If there are more people in the world like O’Doherty then, yeah, maybe this life will get good soon.
David O’Doherty was reviewed at the Enmore Theatre on Saturday April 29 as part of Sydney Comedy Festival 2017.
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