Dylan Moran offers his unique take on love, politics, misery and the everyday absurdities of life in his latest show DR COSMOS
If you want to know how Dylan Moran copes with life and all its little infuriating injustices, then Dr Cosmos is the show for you! Moran’s observations on the philosophical questions, the meaning of life, how the internet has changed the world we live in as we knew it then and know it now, couples and just how weird and quite frankly, just how ridiculous they are.
Moran was the youngest ever winner of the Perrier Award at the 1996 Edinburgh Fringe and has been gifting us with his pessimistic take on life ever since. He is, however, a little fresher since he’s taken an indefinite break from drinking, something that he confirms quite strongly is just a hiatus and hasn’t been ordered by a Doctor, he just felt like it! “This is why this show is a little wonky, somewhat confused, I’m not used to it!” This newfound sobriety, surprisingly, hasn’t taken away from Moran’s performance in any way, he still meanders off on a tangent from his scripted performance, we are unsure of where he’s off next and it usually ends in laughter from the audience.
We lay head first into a topic he tells us he doesn’t want to discuss, but he does anyway, angry and purposeful, he talks about it at length. Trump! “Try explaining to anyone under 40 what is going on these days, YOU CAN’T!”
The conversation inevitably leads to Brexit and the audience is questioned about who exactly they were exacting their revenge upon if indeed they did vote leave? The writer of Black Books has obviously been seriously politically miffed off of late and is trying to make sense of it all!
A routine about cats and their personalities was entertaining, with an impression of the similarity to Alan Rickman’s blasé self which had me and the rest of the crowd with tears in our eyes and hands clapping in applause. A very self-deprecating routine about his 46 year old state of self, frustrated at a singular PT session in which after a minute, he has to inform the instructor that indeed he has no core, that everything is on the outside and it was his job to get it back in, “USE A SPOON IF YOU HAVE TO!” A vivid description of his body’s decline to decay and devastation and disdain for the average 25-year-old TV ad in the shower, with bodies that are like caramel having sex with caramel!
His faux disdain for the millennial generation doesn’t stop there, launching into a skit about how we had to deal with landlines and a complete lack of GPS meant that we were always lost is common stand up fodder but Moran’s bleak but arresting panache makes it work. Millennial’s returning to live at home find themselves “masturbating with the corpse old dreams” when realising that they are in fact the failures they think they are, and whilst Moran vehemently nods in agreement that they are, you can tell this is just playful empathy.
Dylan Moran DR COSMOS played at The Lowry, Salford on 16 September 2018.
Lola Maguire leases cars by day and has evolved to live off movies, books, gin and sarcasm; probably the best cheese eater in the world. Guitarist and singer in a band, co-creator of two kids, currently writes for Frankly My Dear.
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