World-weary, witty - and wonderfully funny
(Filed: 21/05/2004)

Dominic Cavendish reviews Dylan Moran at The Palace Theatre, SW1

The only fault to be found with Dylan Moran's new stand-up show, Monster II, is that, content-wise, it bears a remarkable similarity to his last one - Monster. Those who caught the boyish, tousle-haired Irishman on tour last year will recognise not just recurrent themes but the outright recycling of gags.

Not that it matters one jot when the material is so brilliantly funny or the delivery as morning fresh as Moran manages to make it here. You'd swear that, just as his dishevelled look suggests someone who has rolled out of bed and on to the stage after a heavy night, so the thoughts that tumble forth appear to have dawned on him that very moment.

Best known as the curmudgeonly bookseller Bernard Black in the delightful Channel 4 sitcom Black Books, Moran, dressed in his customary black suit and shirt, comes across as more jauntily charismatic than his small-screen alter ego but equally prone to place a love of language above affection for people.

As likely, one suspects, to reach for a copy of Waiting for Godot as flick on daytime TV, this poetically minded comedian can transform the most commonplace subject-matter - ageing, kids, cookery programmes - into a lyrical, aphoristic form of surreal humour.

We don't just sag as we grow older, "we subside into a duvet of tits". Teenagers are, to the wary eyes of this prematurely world-weary 32-year-old, "slumped S-shapes in their hoods". Why do we coo over toddlers, Moran, himself a dad, demands, when what they really are is "midget drunks"?

Moran's writerly way of speaking might make him sound like the height of pretention, but what's striking is his total disdain for pretence. This former Perrier winner can't be bothered with energy-sapping lies and the demands of fashion, making him both a typical lazybones male and a rogue, romantic element in a world of yes-men. Adopting a tone of sozzled-sounding exasperation, fag continually in one hand, his act feels rooted in sober good sense.

One moment he's applying a philosophical eye to the most mundane detail ("Forty five per cent of being alive is doing things like this," he moans as he folds up his jacket), the next, he's cheeking religion ("What is it," he demands, "but people talking to you at length about their imaginary friend?").

You leave wishing there were more comics like him - intelligent, perceptive, subtle - while recognising that he's one of a kind.

·  Until Sun (tickets: 020 7494 5555), then Dublin and Hay-on-Wye