Pat Shortt brings new show to Westport

NEW MATERIAL Pat Shortt’s new show ‘Hey!’ is coming to Westport Town Hall Theatre at the end of June.

New show Hey! coming west on June 29

Pat Shortt is returning to Westport Town Hall Theatre on Saturday, June 29, with a brand new stand-up comedy stage show called ‘Hey!’
Following the sell-out successes of ‘The Hall’, ‘Selfie’ and ‘How’s Tings?’ and fresh from starring roles in the hit play ‘A Skull In Connemara’ and the film ‘The Belly of The Whale’, one of Ireland’s best loved comedians is on the road with his latest quirky look at Irish life. Featuring brand new material and sketches, Hey! is a rogue’s gallery of odd ball characters, bizarre situations and even a song or two.
Pat promises a whole raft of new characters and also promises to get ‘down and dirty with the audience’. ‘Hey!’ delivers a peculiar take on modern life that only the unique imagination of Pat Shortt could conjure up.
Describing one of his characters, Pat says: “The opening character is very ignorant, but in a nice way.  He’s oblivious to his own ignorance, no harm in him whatsoever, and I think that’s what makes him so daft and silly and a lot of my characters are like that.  They can say mad and daft things about people but they don’t mean any badness in it and that’s what I find funny, and the darker you go with some of that stuff, the funnier it makes the character.”
The hook of the show is a beauty pageant, the Tipperary Tulip, and three finalists are chosen from the audience: “I don’t embarrass anybody,” Shortt cutely assures. 
“The joke is not on them, it’s on me.  You really have to see it.  It’s great fun. I love playing with audiences, is probably a better way to describe it. It’s like that energy you get in an audience when you put fear into them, and the whole room comes alive, and the dynamic of the room changes, and the whole gig changes, and it’s great and the craic is mighty and it’s including everybody in a way and it’s just brilliant.”
He’s the most animated when he speaks about his stage show. It’s clear he still gets a kick out of it: “I do, because there is that dynamic,” he says.  “Any comedian or musician will tell you when you play with an audience or you get reaction from an audience that’s amazing. It’s an amazing thing to inject fear and nerves into an audience like that.”

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Tickets available on www.westporttheatre.com or call 098 28459