It's Daniel Connell’s first ever time in Edinburgh – but he’s been recommended to me by every Australian comic I know. Finally I got to see him myself – and I love him too.
Connell, who’s softly spoken, slightly scruffy and enormously relaxed on stage, is so instantly likeable that the second row of his audience at the Gilded Balloon is convinced they know him and keep joining in.
He takes it in his stride, telling them gently but firmly – "talk to me later… please… not now.”
Connell doesn’t have a particularly well-structured hour – which is the convention for Edinburgh. But he has a heap of tried and tested stories, full of guaranteed laughs. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he’s picking different stories from his repertoire, rather than sticking to a script. He certainly pitches it exactly right for the audience he has.
I loved his tales of suburban Australia – spiders, snakes, surfing, teenage joy riders and family life. He has a way of taking the ordinary and making it magical, mixing a little bit of enchantment with every tale he tells.
These are tales of a far away country – but they become clear to us in the telling – and they make us laugh. He has celtic ancestors and there’s a lyricism in the way he tells stories, which is somehow very familiar.
Connell constantly checks his references to make sure the Scottish audience is following the plot. Do we know what Christmas lunch is? Yes of course we do. How about a Hoon? Well no, but he explains it to us.
He cares about his audience, he’s bought a fan to keep us cool, putting it on different settings when his stories ramp up a gear. He gets a glass of water for a woman who has a coughing fit. (OK it was me).
Connor the sound and light man at the back becomes part of the show and cracks up laughing all the way through – even though he must have seen the show a dozen times - which is always an excellent sign.
A recurring theme of the hour – which Connell wraps up surprisingly neatly at the end, is how we can prove that we are not all living in a computer simulation. Apparently Elon Musk believes it and he is a very clever man.
He disproves the theory using evidence drawn from his dad, from joyriders, and from nature documentaries. But there can be no doubt that Daniel Connell and the audience are in a room together. He is absolutely, one hundred per cent fully present. He hasn’t lost us for a moment, we are happy, relaxed and we have shared a lot of laughs.
Connell is one of those guys who make comedy look easy. He’s also, definitely, one of the good guys. Go and see him if you can.
Until August 26. Tickets here.
Read more Edinburgh Fringe reviews here.
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