Interview: Dylan Moran
Interview: Dylan Moran
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Friday, 27, Nov 2009 04:35
By Lewis Bazley.
He might be regularly compared to Oscar Wilde and Samuel Beckett but an interview with Dylan Moran turns out to feel eerily similar to an encounter with his misanthropic Black Books character. Moran's new DVD What It Is confirms that the Irish comic is as seemingly as amenable to the passage of time as the red wine he sips on stage but this most poetic and bittersweet of stand-ups clearly isn't the most forthcoming of interviewees, as the umpteen sighs and pauses throughout testified. Then again, from a comic of such lucid indignation, would we want it any other way?
As he nears end of the end of a six-week run in the West End, Lewis Bazley talks to the former Perrier winner and Wildean stand-up about 'honest' comedy, permanent middle age and London audiences' desire for a nice sit-down.
When you're in the middle of a long run at a theatre, like the six-week stint you're doing at the Apollo at the moment, how much does your material change from night to night?
Well, it depends. I went on last night and did something I'd written that day, that had only just occurred to me and talked for, ten, 15 minutes from nothing really. It's always different, really, you do say the same words, but you try and mix it up.
In a long run, how much of your performance is about match fitness? Do you get better through the run?
Yeah, you do. It's funny, because I was on the road for a long time here with this tour, and a long time in Oz so that's interesting because your day is taken up with getting on and off flights, and your head really doesn't have any space for anything except the show. Whereas when you're static, in the same theatre night after night, you've got to stay awake because it really feels like you've just said everything five minutes ago. You haven't, of course, but it's a comic's nightmare to say the same joke twice.
Can you tell during a show, even if the audience can't, when you're maybe below par during a show?
There's a very definite theme to your questioning line at the moment! (laughs) Yes, I can - why, were you in last night?
I wasn't, I'm seeing the show next week.
Oh, well next week is always fantastic!
The reason I ask is that I spoke to Michael McIntyre recently who said that when he knows he's doing badly, he can still do an impression of himself doing well, so that the crowd don't know.
Ah, see, I would never do that. People can end up doing impersonations of themselves - it's not fair to say I've never done, I probably have, but they're always s**t shows, as far as I'm concerned. The ones where you pretend to be yourself are guaranteed crap. I haven't seen Michael McIntyre's stuff, I understand that he's hugely popular but. the thing is. that's interesting, actually, I think there are two different ways to [do a show], and there are plenty of people who [pretend] but that essentially means that what you're watching then is never anything other than light entertainment. You know, Brucie, Tarby, all that sort of stuff. Whereas if you're watching somebody who's more. honest is the word, I suppose, it doesn't do that thing of plastering on a showbiz smile. People like Simon Munnery, Stewart Lee, Johnny Vegas, they're performers I'd rather watch, because you're getting them.
Because they're not conceding to the audience at all?
It's about balance - I want to see a professional show, I just don't want to see. lies. I want to see a performer who's been stretched by trying to do something interesting and I want to be in there with an audience who like having to use their brain and see something new happening. You want it to be real and only happening there at that moment, rather than taking up some very tired technique and just using that because you know it works.
Well, in the same sense, a lot of your comedy seems as if it's off the cuff, or stream-of-consciousness, but because of your use of language, I've always wondered how much of it is deliberately crafted?
That's like asking a conjurer 'where's the rabbit and where's the stick?'. Like I say, it does vary. I know a few words, and I have written some of them down...
Ross Noble could have a entire show based on the way the audience interacts with him that night - could that happen in your stand-up?
No, I don't stretch to the stuff like that but. everybody's different, you know? Eddie Izzard's different, Ross is different. Eddie's a fantastic improviser as well but could I do it? I don't know, I haven't. everybody does it their own way, you know?
How much of your comedy is going to be informed by your age from now on? It's a theme of the new show.
Well, people have told me I've always talked about that.
Some reviews have said you've been "permanently middle-aged".
Maybe I'll die and be reincarnated, and in the next act I'll come on in a blonde wig and I'll go figure skating as a girl and talk about the joys of being 19 again - I'm looking forward to it.
The DVD was filmed at the Sydney State Theatre - are Australian crowds a different kind of audience?
(long intake of breath). No. Not really. Well, they're Australian, of course it's different but Australian comedy's a bit different. They're very receptive - sometimes with London crowds you feel like you want to give them a little bit of antifreeze, you know. But it's understandable, it's murder in this city just getting across town to see something and there's 595 shows on every four minutes so you understand. When people arrive on a Monday or Tuesday night, it's like they've come through a warzone.
Are London audiences more cynical, than say a Manchester crowd, because in the capital they can see stand-up any time they like?
Well, in London you can do anything you want any night of the week. I used to think it was cynical, that kind of 'Oh yeah, we've seen it before. ' attitude, but now I think it's that everybody's so pummelled by the city that they just want a chance to sit down! (laughs) And that's far more evident at the start of the week, people do pick up.
I'm coming to the Thursday show.
Ah, Thursday's rockabilly night! We do rockabilly tunes at the beginning and then there's French onion soup in the second half.
And do you still agree with your quote that you'd done one interview and all the rest were repeats?
You get the odd one that's wildly different but. it's fair enough, I'm hawking a thing here, you're supposed to get me to talk about it, and that's ok.
Dylan Moran's new DVD What It Is is out now.