A spoonful of sugar _{by Alessia Belsito-Riera}

Though a therapist would probably have suggested Ed Byrne not tour his comedy show quite as extensively and intensively, the Irish comedian has touched down in New Zealand along his world tour to bring Tragedy Plus Time to Wellington’s Opera House on the 17^th of August.

His new show was partially inspired by the quote “comedy equals tragedy plus time”, which Byrne says is supposed to have been attributed to Mark Twain, though there is “very little evidence that he ever said it”. The idea was to examine the quote through the lens of a minor and major tragedy of his own, he tells me.

“The minor tragedy being having my car being broken into and how the very next day I was on stage making jokes about it, and then the major tragedy being the death of my little brother and how it took a bit longer before I could spin that into comedy gold. It sounds like a weighty, serious, downer topic, but it’s definitely what he would have wanted and, if I say so myself, it’s a funny show.”

What’s your take on the relationship between comedy and tragedy?

It’s very rarely that I’m getting humour out of how awesome my life is. Generally, frustration and anger is where a lot of the best comedy comes from. It’s rare for me to try and weave comedy out of full-on sadness, though. But it’s also how people in general – certainly me and my family – deal with everything: with a joke. It was inevitable when I lost my little brother that it was going to end up being part of my next show, but it just took over the whole thing. It’s become the backbone. It’s not a nonstop onslaught of death. There’s plenty of asides and other subjects tackled as well: conspiracy theorists, watching Wimbledon with my wife – spoonfuls of sugar to help the medicine go down.

Have many people related to the show?

I didn’t even expect it to be the case, but it’s been very gratifying hearing people’s stories and how much this show helped them in their own grief. There were two women in Melbourne in the front row who both lost their brothers in the last year. You're obviously sorry for people’s losses, but it is very gratifying. The most amazing comment was from a guy who’d lost his brother to COVID. He said that having watched the show with his wife, he felt that she now understood what he went through better than he could have explained it to her. Previously, all I’ve ever wanted to do is just make people laugh. So all of this bonus content is new to me.

It’s nice that hundreds of people come along every night who didn’t know who Paul Byrne was and they leave knowing. And I do think that when I stop doing this show it’s gonna feel weird. It’s gonna be like another step in the grieving process, another goodbye. So that’s my excuse for continuing to do it forever! It’s not that I’ve run out of fuel creatively, I don’t want to say goodbye to the show.