Review: RAY O’LEARY: YOUR LAUGHTER IS JUST MAKING ME STRONGER, Soho Theatre

“I’m staging a fake mental breakdown and you’re walking out?”

Ray O’Leary: Your Laughter Is Just Making Me Stronger certainly wins for one of the more interesting show descriptions for a stand-up show, telling readers how the New Zealand comedian gets stronger each time people laugh and claiming that, by the end of the show, “he’ll be able to lift a car above his head.” It’s time to see just how strong O’Leary will be after this gig at Soho Theatre.

The show opens with a few minutes by Becky Umbers, a comedian who identifies herself on social media as “the one with the squeaky voice.” Indeed, Umbers has quite an unusual voice, but she uses this to her advantage, making it one of the main bits in her show with comments like “Yes, this is my real voice” and an acceptance of how audiences react to hearing her voice for the first. It’s a solid opening set, especially when Umbers gets into her experiences as a teacher. 

After the opening from Umbers, we are introduced to the comedian of the hour, O’Leary himself. He begins by telling us about how he went to university for philosophy, a fact that makes his parents wish they hadn’t told him to stay away from stand-up comedy in the first place. There are some solid philosophy-themed jokes, including being a “bad boy” like Socrates and a new take on Descartes - “I’m thinking, therefore I am’ing.” But, after a few jokes about ethics and abortion, we move on from the topic of philosophy. No one topic ever stays on O’Leary’s mind for too long based on how he jumps around throughout the hour. 

O’Leary is from New Zealand, but not many of his jokes focus on that, except for one where he discusses a flight he took from Auckland to Wellington, a statement that, for some strange reason, received some of the biggest laughs of the night, which O’Leary reacts to with surprise. So surprised that he has to restart the joke several times before sadly admitting that the punchline will never live up to the laughter from the audience at the fact that he took a flight. 

A highlight of O’Leary’s performance is how he is able to take what seems like any story and turn it into a punchline. Some of the topics touch upon during the show include mattress protectors, the “free hit” symbol, levels of imagination, Thorpe Park and his economic interest in not losing weight. But, even with this range of topics, O’Leary tends to get quite repetitive, often filling his sentences with the phrase “you know” as a filler of sorts. But he’s also not afraid of silent moments, at times simply waiting for jokes to sink in and for the audience to react. 

In one of the more bizarre moments of the show, O’Leary starts by telling the audience, “Not many people liked me.” This statement in itself isn’t bizarre, but when he doesn’t get the response of sympathy that he was looking for, O’Learly stops the show, expressing his disappointment to the audience and requesting that they try again. This goes on for quite a long time, with O’Leary commenting on how pathetic it is, while still continuing to attempt to elicit the desire audience response. 

Ray O’Leary: Your Laughter Is Just Making Me Stronger is a classic kind of stand-up show with no real theme throughout, with several sections outstaying their welcome. Whether that’s a true struggle or if it's O’Leary simply putting on a show is for the audience to guess. 

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