There’s an excellent joke about art school in Marty Gleeson’s show, but even without it, we might guess that the Irish comic comes from an art school background. In Dog Ear, convention is for the birds, with one leftfield idea following the next in a disorienting array. A visit to the future accompanied by fluttering beats on the bodhrán? A standup set performed by one of the thousands of bugs on Gleeson’s body? A funeral for her 187-year-old alter ego, at which she must solemnly shake the hand of every single audience member? Throughout her fringe debut, Gleeson delights in ensuring we’ve never the slightest idea what’s about to happen next.
That makes it an offbeat delight to encounter, and at its best, this Limerick exile’s material is captivatingly unexpected. Even before its droll punchline, her routine about asking Santa, increasingly ardently, for a “big juicy booty” is quite the gambit. Another, extending the closing credits of a news bulletin ad absurdum, is similarly strange – and, like much of her material, tests the limits of how long something uneasy can happen before a punchline arrives to redeem it.
Occasionally, that might strand you in the middle of a patience-stretching routine that isn’t all that funny: see her set-piece reimagining life as a series of yoga poses. It’s in the nature of non sequitur comedy, meanwhile, that this or that bit may come to feel disposable – a point I reached when Gleeson somehow found herself on trial for touching a tree. The standup set delivered by a face mite never tries to develop beyond divertingly dotty.
But Dog Ear is seldom less than diverting. Gleeson’s hangdog persona nicely grounds the imaginative free-for-all of her material, as does some solid joke-writing. She got me with the pun about a salt shortage, and there’s a David Attenborough routine that marks comedy’s most memorable use of the Jurassic Park theme since Mr Swallow. A closing monologue about attention to detail strives for a significance the show has not hitherto possessed. There’s no need. Significant or otherwise, Gleeson’s debut is fresh and beguiling, with nothing remotely dog-eared about it.
• At Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh, until 30 August
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