Páraic Breathnach on a roll in latest role as comedian

Páraic Breathnach’s latest show, Straight Outta Connemara, is billed as stand-up, but really it’s more storytelling. Not that it suffers for belonging to that genre.

The former Macnas director, Killinaskully star, Galway Arts Centre Manager, is a man of many parts and a born storyteller Having lived a life less ordinary, he has no shortage of stories to tell. Many of these are hilarious, albeit with a black twist and several are told against himself.

Strolling onto the stage of the Róisín Dubh in dark suit and a jaunty hat, he begins by informing the audience ‘tré Gaeilge’ that there are three rules in his show. These require the audience to be miserable and include the promise of terrible vengeance if anybody heckles him,

They don’t! But given that much of what he has to relate is told against himself, there’s very little need. He begins with his life in Carna, including his first encounter with an ice-cream cone and a botched romantic escapade, thanks to a glut of Taytos.

Those who lived in Galway in the 1980s will remember the days when a hearse was his vehicle of choice. Driving it brought him no shortage of attention, including from the Gardaí, and he also got a gig or two as an undertaker – by default. There's lots of humour as he recalls these days, but underlying the laughs, there are serious insights, especially about old-fashioned Irish Catholicism and authority.

Páraic’s relationship with his father certainly seems to have been one where authoritarianism reigned and there are acerbic observations on how the younger Breathnach never quite measured up to his father’s exacting standards.

These failures involve postcards and cocaine – and they are true and blackly funny.

Páraic moves between English and Irish as he recounts events from his action-packed life, never compromising on his pronounced Connemara blas – it’s part of the performance and he translates as he goes, so nobody is left out.

If you were to meet Páraic on the street or in the pub, entertainment is guaranteed, because he’s a great storyteller with a knife-sharp tongue. But it’s easy tell a story in a pub – it’s a different thing to make the transition to a stage. And he has. This is a show with great potential from a relative ‘newbie’ on the scene.

Some streamlining is required though.

While Páraic has lived these stories, he needs to refine the way he tells them in order to maximise the fluidity of the performance. As it is, Straight Outta Connemara is highly entertaining and insightful. With a bit of refinement, it could blow people away.