ALL KIDDING ASIDE
Comic O’Shea’s new outlook
Morgan O’Shea performs Thursday
at 8:30 p.m. and Friday and Saturday at 8:30 and 10:30 p.m. at the Comedyworks, 1238 Bishop St. Saturday’s shows will be recorded for his first album Adultish. Opening on Saturday only are Faisal Butt, Kris Dulgar, David Heti, Ellie MacDonald and George Hamilton Braithwaite. Tickets cost $15. Call 514-503-8121 to reserve. The setting was the Comedyworks, nearly four years ago. A dozen comics were auditioning for the 2014 Just for Laughs festival. The fest judges and the crowd at the packed venue seemed to concur that at least one of the comics was destined for a long, lucrative career in the biz: Morgan O’Shea.
A Calgary native, O’Shea had moved to Montreal six years earlier to pursue comedy. He showed up at open-mike nights and eventually landed opening and hosting gigs.
He won audiences over with his woes. Such as having to supplement his income as a cat sitter or seeing the bright side in being given the boot by his girlfriend: finding a nice shirt in a dumpster.
O’Shea received thunderous applause, but, alas, no gig at a JFL gala that summer. He has since appeared in less glam fest gigs and has taken his act across the land.
Then it dawned on him that perhaps it would boost his career if he stopped pretending he was still a kid. To that end, O’Shea is set to record his first comedy disc, appropriately titled Adultish, where he first started chirping for beer money: the Comedyworks.
O’Shea performs Thursday to Saturday at the Works with Saturday’s performances being recorded for the album. (He toyed with the idea of calling his disc Since No One Asked, but figured that might send the wrong message to prospective buyers.)
Though he moved to Toronto a year and a half ago, O’Shea still considers Montreal his spiritual home, where audiences cottoned to him well before those in other parts of the country.
“I’m still trying to figure out how to be an adult, so that’s why I refer to myself as ‘adultish,’ ” he says. “But I realize that at 33 I’m no longer the kid I thought I was.
“I also realize that all my friends my age are having kids and that I don’t even have enough money in my bank account to buy my next skateboard. So I figured the time was ripe for me to grow up. But I believe I have been making strides.”
Before, O’Shea would never answer the phone if it was an unknown caller, but he will now.
“I used to be afraid the calls were coming from debt collectors — and they usually were. Not that much has changed in that area, but now, as kind of an adult, I will answer blocked calls with complete confidence.”
Regardless, the concept of money still eludes him.
“I thought I would impress the ladies by saying I was making all of $12,000 a year as a rock star,” he would often say in his act. “A struggling comedian has no clue what real people make and what real money is.”
That gag still resonates today. He has been supplementing his income by taking on a few part-time jobs. One entails him working two days a week at a bar “because I felt there was a need for more surly bartenders in the world.”
Which leads to another issue: his failed relationships resulting from working at night and drinking during the day at the bar.
O’Shea also had a part-time job as a strip-club DJ.
“Actually, this had led to me getting more jobs than anything I’ve done in comedy, even Just for Laughs,” he says. “Which was bizarre because I played the wrong kind of music for the place. Depressing songs like Closing Time, which are real hard to strip to. Or Hall and Oates’ Rich Girl, which had the customers all singing, but the dancers not dancing. I wasn’t very popular with the strippers, but the customers seemed to find me funny.
“As a comic, you always want to have a unique perspective. You want to stand out, which is hard to do. Well, the same thing goes for being a strip-club DJ. But I can also guarantee that I’m the only person who has ever read all of War and Peace at my strip-club booth. And not the comic-book version, either. It took me eight months, but I finished it.”
O’Shea recently ceased working at the strip club, but not before he got at least 15 minutes worth of material from the gig.
Most of his material is derived from his insecurity. “And there’s plenty of it. Every time someone meets me, they always say that I look like a celebrity, but it never ends in a compliment,” he notes. “Like: ‘Hey, anyone ever told you that you look like Joaquin Phoenix … with a drug addiction?’ I say that took a left turn quickly. But the worst I ever got was that I looked like Kurt Cobain in an altered state of consciousness.”
Whether or not O’Shea’s Adultish antics will raise demand for his act, he plans to keep plugging away.
“When I first got into this game, I told myself not to be concerned with people doing better than I was and not to be jealous, but rather to focus on the art of comedy,” he says. “I love what
I do and I’ll never stop doing it. Even if nothing ever happens with my career, I’ll still end up as a 72-year-old standup going to open mikes because I just love the craft.”
I’m still trying to figure out how to be an adult ... But I realize that at 33 I’m no longer the kid I thought I was. I also realize that all my friends my age are having kids and that I don’t even have enough money in my bank account to buy my next skateboard.