Just the Tonic Nucleus
Aug 16-25
17:50
At least two dozen times throughout this hour of ‘are they aren’t they apocryphal’ shaggy dog stories, Ronnie Neville enthusiastically proclaims to the crowd just how much he ‘loves the crack’, or is that ‘craic’? It’s genuinely hard to tell, given his gurning, flailing performance, endlessly chatty and enthusiastical crowd-bantering with a collection of tales which progressively become more and more of the kind you might expect someone who’d been awake and freebasing for 48hrs to tell you, or indeed have experienced.
This is not to criticise the show at all, in fact, as I’m writing this I’m still not sure if I watched a very talented character actor, or someone who was genuinely discovered in a pub and told to ‘just get up there and tell them funny stories in the funny Irish way you do, like when you’re in the pub’. I really hope he doesn’t tell these stories quite like this in the pub though, as it would be a certified health and safety nightmare.
From life-threatening snowboarding foul-ups in Denver, to ‘Carry on Cropping’ style hedge-trimming, throughout the entire performance Ronnie is miming away to every physically amusing part of each of the stories he tells. Think Billy Connolly performing his famous ‘Lions & Wildebeests’ sketch, his physicality is captivating. As for the most part is his delivery, and both of these aspects, as well as the almost overwhelming sense of bon homie bouncing off him, are what really elevates this show.
I’ll be honest, I’m not the biggest fan of ‘storytelling comedy’, that didn’t prevent myself, and the entire audience being visibly rapt throughout. Every story’s punchline received belly-laughs from the crowd, and we were all so transfixed that no one, not even Ronnie himself, had noticed that he’d run over his hour timeslot by more than five minutes. He has ‘over 50 stories prepared’, with a different set being showcased each night, I’m presuming depending on what he feels like telling at the time.
He does just seem to be enjoying himself engaging folk, doing disturbingly convincing impressions of three different generations of his family, a drunk and horny septuagenarian, a confused lifeguard who delivers a four-year call-back, & ‘snorkelling fails. Oh, and marsupial testes. These he impersonates at least twice.
All of the material is unique, even if not necessarily all of the jokes in the tales are particularly original, that’s kind of the point though. As the audience leaves, the famous humorous Irish song ‘Orange & the Green’ is playing, and it feels particularly apposite. Neville’s set is precisely like sitting back in the pub with one of your particularly uplifting Irish friends while he tells tall tales which, though the endings may be familiar, and possibly even predictable at times, it’s the way that he tells them, wringing the whimsically absurd humour out of every picaresque scenario. This show is a genuine
crowd pleaser, a genuine joy, and if Ronnie Neville ever walks into any pub I’m in I’ll be buying another pint, kicking back, and keeping my drinks out of the way of those gesticulating arms and the punters knee slapping laughter.
Ewan Law
themumble.uk 