Making Space for Comedy at the 2024 Dublin Fringe Festival

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Normally I try to go to as many Dublin Fringe Festival comedy shows as possible, but my immune system had other plans this year. I only ended up going to about half of the performances I’d marked on my calendar, but luckily for me, those five productions provided more than enough food for thought.

In case you’re unfamiliar with the Dublin Fringe, the festival takes place in September, the month after its more famous Scottish sibling. The Dublin Fringe tends to draw more local acts than the Edinburgh one, with a few exceptions—for example, London-based performance artist and comedian Krishna Istha (Gender Agenda) brought their show First Trimester to Ireland for this year’s festival. For the most part, though, attendees get to enjoy comedy conceived of through a uniquely Irish lens.

Dublin’s urban area is nearly three times the size of Edinburgh’s, so naturally the Irish capital isn’t completely transformed by the Fringe. Instead, there are little hives of activity around the city: Smock Alley Theatre, originally built in 1662; the unassuming venue upstairs in the International Bar; the intimate Bewleys Cafe Theatre above the historic coffee shop; the National Theatre itself; and even a cramped living room in an old Victorian house.

The comedy I managed to catch at the Fringe (before a cold caught me) was just as varied as the spaces they inhabited.

A Good Room

Fringe shows are known for being interactive and challenging audience’s expectations—a mission A Good Room, fresh off its Edinburgh Fringe run, more than accomplished. Over a dozen people and I gathered outside a local pub for the show, and we were ferried from the sidewalk to a charming old Victorian house by Nan (Emily Bradley, the MVP of the 2024 Fringe—more on that later), Cian Jordan’s purported grandmother, resplendent in all of their tea-brewing, overly hospitable charm. We were squeezed into an upstairs room covered in knick knacks—the tireless work of production designer Saoirse O’Shea, who transformed the space from Jordan’s bedroom into a traditional “good room.”

Who Robbed Annie Queeries?

I did not expect it, considering just how larger-than-life Who Robbed Annie Queeries? was, but the play was based on real events. Drag queen Annie Queeries—who only appeared in the show in the occasional pre-recorded video—was the victim of a horrible crime at Electric Picnic, one of Ireland’s largest music festivals: her makeup bag was stolen. For those of you not in the know, makeup is expensive—we’re talking about at least hundreds of euros worth of products here, if not more.

But if you don’t laugh, you’ll cry, so Constance Henry (drag name Sasha Shame) and Niall Keane (aka GoblinsGoblinsGoblins) whipped up a snappy script filled to the brim with queer quips and pop culture references. Staged in Smock Alley, Who Robbed Annie Queeries focused on five queens who may have been the bag burglar: the space cadet Lanzarote (Emma Finegan), beauty queen Sapphire Stone (Final Girl), druggie Amanda Doin-Lynes (Luke Duffy, aka Joanne Joanne), mother herself Mrs. Brown Thomas (Kevin Johnston), and the emo Stabatha Mountjoy (Rachel Thornton). And our MVP Emily Bradley returned as a whole host of side characters, but most importantly as Dragatha Christie and Hercule Poirot You-Betta-Dont. Bradley is a comedic chameleon, inhabiting a different, fully believable character in an instant with a subtle change in posture. Ostensibly a mystery, Who Robbed Annie Queeries was more concerned with laughs than anything else, serving up some of the best one liners I had the pleasure of hearing this Fringe (my top may be Lanzarote worrying that she stole the bag because she was “activated by ‘Padam Padam’ like a sleeper agent”). The guilty queen (no spoilers!) being burnt at the stake to Katy Perry’s “Firework” was a fittingly goofy, deranged note to end on.

Secret Secrets Shh!

The cloakroom is one of those great equalizers, with chic Chanel jackets hung up next to ratty windbreakers. So many people filter in and out of this liminal space, spending just enough time there to fish out their coat ticket and maybe tip the attendant if they’re feeling generous. But what about the personal left there to mind all the outerwear? What must they see, how must they feel? Comedian Síomha McQuinn tackled all this and more with her delightfully silly one-woman show Secret Secrets Shh!

McQuinn starred as a hopelessly romantic (and slightly unhinged) cloakroom attendant who is waiting for the perfect man to return to his jacket, which he left with her after one serendipitous night together. In fact, she’s so devoted to finding him that she stays in this dead end job, listening to a random couple having sex and withstanding the insults of chewing gum convention attendees. McQuinn’s winsome delivery kept us rooting for the attendant, despite her breaking a man’s nose, kidnapping a woman, and generally spiraling out of control. Her performance was accentuated by excellent lighting and sound design (the latter by Michael Brady) that transformed the intimate Bewleys Cafe Theatre into probably the most exciting hotel cloakroom of all time.

Black Enough For That

Comedian Neil Green’s show got off to a late start, but the seasoned stand-up didn’t let that shake him. In fact, it seems like little would; Green is a natural on stage, the type of effortless storyteller born to be behind the mic. Tucked above the International Bar in the heart of Dublin, the South African comic walked us through his life, from the early 1990s when he was one of the first Black kids to integrate a white school—though back then he was considered “coloured,” a separate designation used in South Africa for mixed race people (and still colloquially recognized, as a few South Africans in the audience confirmed)—to 2020, when he and his family moved to Ireland.

The hour was woven with hard-hitting truths about racism, as well as loads of laughs gleaned from Green’s life. He expounded on the dangers of watching movies while high, good-naturedly picked on audience members, and shared anecdotes about his very different, very funny daughters. Some of the best moments arose from his comparisons between Ireland and South Africa, including how his new home cares too much about crime. Shrugging yet sharp, Green’s rich set and easy rapport with the audience made for a hilarious hour.

Trouble Denim

Comedian Shane Daniel Byrne returned to the Fringe following his uproarious 2023 show But He’s Gay, which had explored his coming out journey and ended with an urgent message stop rising homophobia and transphobia in its tracks. For his second hour, Byrne opted for a much different tack, unpacking the process behind his sophomore effort and delving into the past year in his characteristically conversational manner. He consciously pushed against the trend of being vulnerable in one’s comedy, focusing on making the audience laugh—and he sure did, even during a Saturday matinee.

Byrne’s set lit up “the bowels of the National Theatre”—or, as it’s more commonly known, The Peacock. He burst onto the stage in a bedazzled cowboy hat and the titular double denim (sorry, trouble denim) before taking a quick geographic poll of the audience. Once it was established that most of us were Irish (or like me, have lived there long enough to know the references), Byrne dove into his criticism of hack Irish comics going for cheap, sycophantic laughs of recognition, instead talking about the nation’s inferiority complex and the unseriousness Ireland embraced after being freed from the yoke of the Catholic Church. His self-deprecating asides and hilarious turns of phrase were a definite highlight of the hour (“Be still my beating dick”). While he doesn’t consider himself much of a joke writer, Byrne is just one of those innately funny people who was always meant to be on stage.

Clare Martin is a cemetery enthusiast and Paste’s assistant comedy editor. Go harass her on Twitter @theclaremartin.