Ray O'Leary - Laughter? I Hardly Know Her

Ray O’Leary recently pulled a man from a wrecked car and, as the man lay dying, he used his last ounce of strength to ask Ray to tell his children he loved them. Who could resist finding out what happened next? Except, of course, none of that actually happened. Sneaky Ray garnered a decent-sized audience with this scurrilous misrepresentation, not content to seduce us with the equally opaque show title Laughter? I Hardly Know Her. He did genuinely appear in the New Zealand version of Taskmaster — I've checked — but it was the ill-fitting two-piece suit that drew me in.

"Something a charity shop manager might wear," he said, which I think is both unfair to charity shop managers and yet impishly evocative.

Before Ray took to the stage, fellow Kiwi Eli Matthewson performed a brief warm-up set, largely revolving around his sexuality and domestic arrangements. We got to glimpse at the underbelly of gay cruises, his workouts with a personal trainer, glucose-free baking, and his viewing strategies at Melbourne Art Gallery. The humour in an extended routine where his partner mistook a stranger for him had me scratching my head - I was thinking, “Why is that funny? I do that all the time”. For the most part, though, his routine was harmless, if inconsequential.

"I’m not sure why Ray bothered with a warm up." I said in the interval.

"He probably wanted to give his pal the exposure," my friend replied. "Don't be mean."

Suitably chastised, we settled down to what I hoped would be something more interesting - perhaps even challenging.

Ray O'Leary, is fair to say, has a distinctive way about him. Wild, curly hair. Beer belly out and proud. A face only a mother could love. And that suit. Initial impressions can be deceptive, but as soon as he opened his mouth, those impression were confirmed. This is not, I hasten to add, me being mean again. O’Leary know exactly what he’s doing and he does it very well. When he started speaking it was to reveal the deadest of deadpan delivery, bringing to mind the likes of Jack Dee or Stewart Lee. The thing that distinguished Ray from Dee and Lee, however, is - and how does one say this politely - he seems a bit odd.

How much of that is schtick is hard to say. Unlike openly autistic comics such as Fern Brady or Joe Wells, he went to some lengths to emphasise he’s never been diagnosed. The presumption that he could be so readily defined took up a good chunk of his opening gambit, as he cleverly subverted expectations and confronted that very assumption. When his namedrop of “Norwich” was met by silence - which he then riffed off - that might have been due to an indifferent audience, or just one that was asleep at the will. Far more likely, however, immaculate timing masquerading as a pause for thought.  I suppose it’s best we don’t know how much artifice goes into what looks like reactive improvisation, but his benign manipulation of the audience and its collective, hurtful laughter was masterful.

Along the way, we learned of his disdain for teachers, voice-over actors, Coldplay, and car parks. There was more provocative material — about abortion, funerals, and a jaw-dropping 9/11 gag - but the jokes themselves were almost a sideshow compared to the craft he brought to the evening’s overarching arc. Callbacks, meta humour, and knowingly awful puns were artfully woven into a comedic tapestry that nibbled away at your funny bone until you had no choice but to give in.

By the time we got to Ray's proposed sitcom, aided and abetted by two members of the audience, the laughs were building to a crescendo.

"No improvising!" demanded Ray as his volunteer went off script.

Was this a giveaway that we’d been running on rails all evening? Whatever the truth of that, like all good nights of comedy, when the end came, it seemed far too soon. It felt like he and we were just warming up. What a refreshing introduction to a genuinely different breed of comic.