Posts Tagged ‘Ormonde Hotel Kings Ballroom’

It’s no secret that I’m a musical comedy fan, so when I heard the Cat Laughs Comedy Festival in Kilkenny was putting on their first gig exclusively dedicated to musical comedy I had to stop on by and check it out! Taking place at midnight in the Ormonde Hotel’s Kings Ballroom, this was the first ‘stand-up’ gig I’d been too where it wasn’t just the comedians on stage who were chairless! Unfortunately this casual pre-nightclub style format wasn’t at all conducive to the gig running smoothly.

The MC for the evening was Fred Cooke. Fred is generally a very entertaining comedian who is no stranger to musical comedy, but he really struggled to connect with the crowd on the night who paid little or no attention to his requests for people to listen to the acts on stage. His attempt at melodica requests, which is a part of Fred’s repertoire I’m actually a big fan of, fell flat on its face because the audience weren’t involved enough with him as an act and Fred seemed to really battle to keep his focus while on stage. It was definitely not the quality of performance you expect from a comedian with as much experience and funny material up his sleeves as Fred has.

The first act on stage was Joe Rooney whose set involved performing some of the best musical impressions I’ve heard! Joe managed to get a decent group of audience members fully enthralled with his impressive guitar playing and there were plenty of laughs to be heard during his time on stage. I particularly enjoyed Joe’s impression of Bono (he has the body language and gestures spot on!) and the section on famous people he’d like to have as fathers had the crowd in stitches.

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