Marty Gleeson: Dog Ear review – hangdog standup with an unexpected request for Santa

There’s an excellent joke about art school in Marty Gleeson’s show, but even without it, we might guess that the Irish comic comes from an art school background. In Dog Ear, convention is for the birds, with one leftfield idea following the next in a disorienting array. A visit to the future accompanied by fluttering beats on the bodhrán? A standup set performed by one of the thousands of bugs on Gleeson’s body? A funeral for her 187-year-old alter ego, at which she must solemnly shake the hand of every single audience member? Throughout her fringe debut, Gleeson delights in ensuring we’ve never the slightest idea what’s about to happen next.

That makes it an offbeat delight to encounter, and at its best, this Limerick exile’s material is captivatingly unexpected. Even before its droll punchline, her routine about asking Santa, increasingly ardently, for a “big juicy booty” is quite the gambit. Another, extending the closing credits of a news bulletin ad absurdum, is similarly strange – and, like much of her material, tests the limits of how long something uneasy can happen before a punchline arrives to redeem it.