The Summer I Did the Leaving

A boy from a backward Irish village hits the road, and has all kinds of crazy drug experiences along the way – the basic plot of Aindrias De Staic’s monologue presents a minefield of opportunities for hackneyed, derivative humour. Judging by this tedious performance, he’s simply not gifted enough a comic to dodge his own trap.

De Staic wastes no time getting down to cliché, as his schoolboy alter ego discovers a great-grandfather’s dusty violin, and proceeds to bash out a purposely dreadful rendition of Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star. The aspiring fiddler goes on to play events ranging from Glastonbury to a Jewish wedding, during a chaotic trip around Britain – a plot supposedly enlivened by the fact that his 17-year-old self can only play well when on drugs.

Drug anecdotes are often amusing only to their narrator, and that’s embarrassingly true here – there’s nothing intrinsically hilarious about a kid feeling a bit weird after his first taste of pot, and everyone knows that ketamine is really a horse tranquilliser. Equally, most people will be familiar with the stereotypes that De Staic wheels out about devious Jewish pawnbrokers and gypsies who smell like horse shit – lazy humour, however ironically delivered.

Admittedly, De Staic looks pleasingly ridiculous in a bra and blonde pigtails – but if that’s the best he has to offer, there are stag nights with comparable comic pedigree. This audience is sternly disappointed, leaving a desperate De Staic blaming everything from a bout of diarrhoea to the fact that it’s a Monday. He’d do better to upbraid himself for an ill-conceived, rambling hour of nonsense.