Claudia O'Doherty: After the Laughter

She's had a good run: two successful Fringes, a clutch of awards and respect from peers and punters alike. But as it turns out, Claudia O'Doherty has hated every moment of it, and this year she's throwing in the towel. She's almost out of contract with the ruthless commercial comedy agency that's held her hostage for three years, and now the time is ripe for change. Welcome to her audacious first step into what she portentously terms "Difficult Theatre."

Its name is The Telescope. It is black and white and red. It is serious. There is blood. "No more jokes," goes the tagline. So why does everyone keep laughing? 

Well, last night, The Telescope went calamitously, risibly wrong. A technical meltdown saw this most ambitious of productions reduced to snatches of pre-recorded dialogue and malfunctioning props as the artist was eaten alive by her own creation. O'Doherty flapped and winced, the audience cackled back.

The thing is, precisely this sort of disaster has struck the show with alarming regularity. Every night, in fact – it's almost as if it were deliberate…

Today O'Doherty has come to the Traverse, Edinburgh's home of challenging new drama, to talk about dipping her toe into these unknown waters.

"I think I'm still getting across the spirit of the work," she insists. "The integrity of the work stays intact." But, she concedes: "There's been a lot technical blunders – every single night."

The Telescope tells a story of suicide and secrets, of murder and monks, a cursed spyglass and star-crossed soulmates doomed to live centuries apart. At least, it might do – if only O'Doherty could stop it falling to pieces. Just how did an entertainer come up with such a grand, nightmarish vision?

"Well… I had to register a title," she says. "I felt like The Telescope could come across as a serious theatre show title. And then I had to think of the show. 

"I was like: 'Well, I know there's going to be a telescope in it. And I think I'd like to be a New York City cop for a bit and I'd like to do karate kicks. But I'd also like to be a convict washerwoman, so how can I do that?' Well, if this telescope can communicate through time, all that stuff is achievable!"

Word has got out about the spectacle of half-baked incompetence; among those queuing stood examples of the world O'Doherty claims to be sidestepping, and that which she aspires to conquer.

First was Mock the Week host Dara Ó Briain, an upper-echelon standup whose star status found him trying to keep a low profile under a black baseball cap. No such luck. A few feet behind him, barely noticed, was a fellow comic and friend of O'Doherty's, the venerable Daniel Kitson. He's one of that rare breed who has made the leap from standup to sincere drama and come out smelling of roses, now reigning in the venue where his friend sits today.

Faced with a choice between Ó Briain's over-exposure and Kitson's indie acclaim, it would be easy to see why O'Doherty might try for a slice of the Difficult Theatre action.

That is, of course, if she had any real intention of doing so. For it's no secret that The Telescope is not a sincere venture into dramatic territory, but O'Doherty's latest attempt yet at what she calls "high-concept stupidity." Like her previous adventures, Monster of the Deep 3D and What is Soil Erosion?, the idea is to begin with an outlandish or obscure premise, then veer sharply off course. 

At its heart is her inability to keep a straight face in the presence of earnest performance. It is inspired partly by friends in the Difficult Theatre business, partly by the acting classes she suffered as a teenager. 

"I had to do a monologue from Sweet Bird of Youth," she recalls, "and I'm not saying Tennessee Williams is bad at all—he's very good—but I was 14 and I had to do a monologue about getting an abortion. I could not have been more ill-equipped to do something like that.

"I got quite a talking to from my teacher. He was like: 'You have to do it. You have to do it properly.'"

Now free of adolescent self-consciousness, she's still not able to take these things seriously. Not that she's out to attack anyone – she respects both the serious drama she bungles and the mainstream comedy of her show's "standup factory" backstory. As ever, the only butt of the joke is her. 

Incredibly, the set-up for The Telescope is based very much on a real-life Fringe nightmare. Last year's What is Soil Erosion? hinged precariously on some 85 technical cues, and so when a stand-in tech turned up to cover for the usual guy, the gremlins readied to pounce.

"During the finale the tech just stopped the video," she says. "It was the sound and the vision for the entire finale and so everybody thought it was a joke. And he just turned the lights on and was like: 'I can't get it going again'. 

"It was incredibly awkward because I just had to say that that was the end of the show. And people still thought: 'Oh, we get it. This is just a really intense joke.' And I was like: 'Nope. Not a joke… OK, so… that's it. You have to go now… sorry.'"

And so here she is, having taken that horror and made it her own. She derives great comedy from bad theatre. She trips up like a consummate pro.