Comedy Central Stand-Up Presents: David O'Doherty

David O’Doherty sits down with a cheap, plastic children’s keyboard and promises to rock the audience’s world in a gentle way. His delivery is bathed in calculated bathos, contrasting the quiet, hesitant tapping of his instrument with lyrics that either refuse to rhyme or abandon their own premises halfway through. He assumes the persona of a washed-up rap star who goes by the D.O.D., offering soft, looping melodies about what might happen if Shakira showed up at his door. It is an act of deliberate meekness.

Filmed at the Royale in Boston for the inaugural season of Comedy Central’s The Half Hour, this 2012 set captures the Irish comic four years after taking the main prize at the Edinburgh Fringe. O’Doherty uses the television slot to introduce an American crowd to his aggressively lo-fi sensibility. He spends time breaking down the paternal bond he feels with the internet and why thirty-six is a fundamentally disappointing age. The jokes rely on the contrast between his grand pronouncements and the toy piano resting on his lap.