Our preview of highlights from the 2013 Dublin Fringe Festival continues with Don’t Swim With Killer Whales by James Walmsley.
The guitar-wielding comedian from Dead Cat Bounce brings his solo show to the Fringe after a few months in Australia spent re-adjusting and avoiding possum poo.
So what is the show about?
I did toy with the idea of making it about something, everyone does at some point. But I think with comedy shows, and this is comedy with songs, and particularly when people do hour-long shows, people get obsessed with it having to be about something. Des Bishop did that a few years ago with that show about his dad, it was one of the best hour’s worth of comedy I’ve ever seen. But really at the end of the day it’s just got to be funny for an hour.
You used to perform with Aisling Bea, right?
Yeah Aisling and I used to perform together, us and all the Dead Cat Bounce guys used to be part of a comedy group called HBan in Trinity. Last time Aisling and I performed together was at Mo Mowlam’s memorial in 2005 at Drury Lane and it went really badly. We decided to do this sketch we had about Nazis and the theatre we were doing it in was doing *The Producers*, so we had all these Nazi banners and stuff, intercut with pictures of Mo. It was a bit weird. Mo would’ve appreciated it.
Has it been hard going into a career on your own?
The first few times you do anything you’re going to feel like ‘shit will this work.’ But after the first few times it’s nice. You can take responsibility and you can take risks, you can improvise and do things on the fly. And I think the show that I’ve written is… good. I’m proud of it and I think I’ll probably tour it next year.
Don’t Swim With Killer Whales runs from September 7th to 10th (€16/€14 conc.) as a double bill with Aisling Bea’s C’est La Bea in Smock Alley Theatre
