Delta O’Hara performed her one-woman show ‘Farce in the City’ at the Kilmainham Hilton yesterday (Sunday 5th Sept.) as part of the Kilmainham Arts Festival and what a great show it is. I’ve seen each of the ‘acts’ in separate performances in town at open mics over the past two years and am very glad to see them coming together as a complete piece of theatre. Each ‘act’ is a very good ‘stand-alone’ comic session in its own right, but each act draws strengths from the others when performed together.

The work consists of a series of monologues treating of the life of a call-sex worker, (fictional, Delta hastens to point out) with the rest of her working colleagues playing a large part in the procedings. Delta has a range of voices, and an even larger range of attitudes, which enable her to get into svearal roles almost all at once. It’s upoarious fun, but there’s a pathetic side to the work as well (‘pathetic’ as in ‘pathos’). Some of the characters we are laughing at are really quite pitiable… True comedy, then. Delta was helped out by local comedienne Marion Nagle who got the audience into the mood for laughs before Delta took over.

A very enjoyable performance of a work-in-progress.