Review: Liam Farrelly: Flipbook
A stand-up mixing touching family tales with rougher humour
Liam Farrelly | Photo by Gillian Docherty
The Very Best of the Edinburgh Festivals 2024
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Published 02 Aug 2024
A stand-up of some promise, Liam Farrelly has nevertheless undersold himself with his tonally and conceptually uncertain latest show. Since emerging as a comic, one of the things that has set the Glaswegian apart is that he's a young and not altogether on-top-of-things father, playfully mocking the significant disruption to his life. However, although he largely skirts the acrimony for this comedy show, he's now sharing more about how he and his daughter's mother are no longer together, his temporary estrangement from his offspring and the pain it caused him.
Naturally, there are sentimental aspects and, touchingly, a happy ending. But these jar somewhat with the rougher and readier tales of him hanging out with his wingnut mate Sharky and the violence Farrelly casually, if fictitiously, threatens upon his daughter's patronising ballet teacher. Moreover, the animated flipbook theme he employs as framing is given too much prominence, again with a clash of tones, as it both sweetly depicts him with his child and serves up his friend's juvenile scribbles of male genitalia, the better to illustrate the laddish background he's come from. His material doesn't come close to stretching to an hour. And it's a shame, because with his anecdotes about his guinea pigs' mental health and the fallout of obscene graffiti daubed on his house, he's far more competent at finding the balance of rascally wit and skilled observation.