Death of a Comedian (Soho Theatre, London)

The death of Arthur Miller‘s salesman was a pretty big deal, but the sell-out and spiritual demise of Owen McCafferty’s unfunny Irish comedian – in a joint production at Soho with the Lyric in Belfast and the Abbey in Dublin – is fairly small beer.

McCafferty writes beautifully modulated, very long speeches for Brian Doherty’s floundering stand-up, Steve Johnston, who’s flirting with showbiz in a flurry of angst and self-doubt, attended by his critical girlfriend (Katie McGuinness) and his newly acquired shark of an agent (Shaun Dingwall).

But I’m afraid that Ken Dodd spoke truer than he meant when he said that an alternative comedian is one who isn’t funny – and he said that before the advent of Michael McIntyre, for heaven’s sake. Doherty’s Steve is the kind of observational, socially conscious comic who becomes prey to the modern media machine represented by agents such as Phil McIntyre and the late Addison Cresswell, elements of both surfacing in Dingwall’s precise, uncompromising Damian Lewis-lookalike portrayal.

But this comedian’s not even half-way funny (which may be McCafferty’s subtle point?); hell, he’s not even remotely sympathetic in that cosy, annoying Dara Ó Briain manner. No hint, either, of the full-on blast of Trevor Griffiths’ classic Comedians, which dealt more graphically with the issue of what constitutes proper material for comedy, and also the comedian’s relationship with his audience. Doherty’s Johnston, progressing from the back room in a pub to the tawdry, specious glamour of Live at the Apollo, is an evenly enunciated bore.

What could have been an explosive exposé of the very phenomenon – ranging from the mediocre to the fashionable to the sometimes quite good – the Soho Theatre promotes in comedy, ends up being a tame confessional history refracted through the continuously adjusted detail in the comic’s signature story of the horse who bashed his head against an oak tree, while sadly evoking the shadowy example of Brian Friel’s brilliant triptych, Faith Healer.

McCafferty can write all right – I loved both his kaleidoscopic Scenes from the Big Picture and his recent Edinburgh Festival fringe hit, the pub political stand-off Quietly – and Doherty pulls off a great feat of memory and a sort of skilled insinuation with the audience.

But Steve Marmion’s production provides a disappointingly staid and inconclusive 85 minutes, and one that pulls its punches on the state of the game in stand-up comedy, hardly surprising, perhaps, as the Soho is dealing the cards. Actors don’t "die" on stage, comics do. So at least Steve Johnston is maintaining one noble tradition.

Death of a Comedian runs at the Soho Theatre until 17 May.