They say that comedy is all about the delivery and no-one proves this more than Neil Hickey, whose show is a prime example of one that could be perfectly competent, but which is reduced to an hour of awkward giggles and looking at the time all too often.
Many comedians ridicule their own profession and the stereotypes it has. While most comedians’ claims to be resolving childhood issues with their comedy may well be true, we can normally laugh at their deliverance of this line, and believe it to be a ruse or simply a throw-away line. With Hickey, however, this appears, in a beating-you-over-the-head-with-the-fact way that really doesn’t offer an alternative, to be the solemn truth.
While Hickey claims to only mention the issues concerning his family in passing, in reality these ‘short’ moments drag on for minutes, interrupt what little flow there is in the show, and almost come out like an apology, as though Hickey himself feels that the show is poor and feels the need to explain to the audience why he wrote it in the first place.
Hickey reveals these issues about halfway through the show, and it is then that the various elements of the show come into focus. From his rambling, aimless introduction about how this is his first Fringe and how his previews got booed and heckled (a great way to build up his audience’s confidence), to his rigidly scripted and line-by-line routine, I felt throughout that, while the jokes themselves were actually quite good and quite clever, any humour the routine contained was massively hindered by Hickey’s overly-rehearsed, rote-learned delivery, as well as his limited volume settings. He talks either in a quiet monotone, or incredibly loudly. All comedians have a script, or at least notes, but there is a world of difference between learning a script line by line and rehearsing and learning your material to the point where you can deliver it in a natural way.
Hickey’s show, therefore, really does seem like a man attempting to come to terms with family issues and tragedy through comedy, and while it is of course ok to both claim this and to actually do it, the show should not simply be a reflection of that. Unfortunately, Hickey’s over-reliance on a word-by-word performance style, as well as a lack of charisma in his stage persona, hamstrung any chances of success this show had. Rare moments of Hickey’s actual personality and raw comedic talent shine through, but they are not enough to save him. While performing the show may well help him personally, watching him simply recite jokes does not make for an interesting or particularly amusing hour.
