THE LAST time Doug Stanhope played Galway he kept referring to it as “Dublin”. However he overcame this by turning it into an ironic, self-referential joke, that won the audience over.
On that occasion, Stanhope played the Laughter Lounge in the Róisín Dubh, and his stream of consciousness style explored all manner of human behaviour in a no holes barred manner.
Next month he returns to play a ‘Laughter Lounge presents...’ show at The Live Lounge at The Radisson Blu Hotel on Saturday October 3 at 8pm.
When Doug Stanhope first performed stand-up comedy in Las Vegas in 1990, all he was hoping to accomplish was free beer and maybe the attention of girls who would not otherwise talk to him. Regardless of his subsequent successes, his ambitions remain mostly the same.
Stanhope has been described as a free-thinking nihilist, a vulgar miseriblist, a self-indulgent, drunken washout, and a deviant misanthrope. His material ranges from true-life graphic perversion to volatile social criticism.
Along the way he has made many television appearances (from Comedy Central’s Comedy Central Presents to The Jerry Springer Show ), released three DVDs - Word of Mouth, Deadbeat Hero, and Doug Stanhope: No Refunds.
Stanhope has also been compared to three of the greatest comedians who have ever walked the earth - Lenny Bruce, Richard Pryor, and Bill Hicks. Not surprisingly he has also generated a lot of controversy, such as in 2006 at the Kilkenny Comedy Festival where he left Ireland to the tabloid front-page headline ‘Irish women are too ugly to rape! Comic booed after shocking festival jibe’.
Tickets are available from the Róisín Dubh and Zhivago.
