After making a comedy career for herself in New York where she has been living since 2014, Katie Boyle has recently been thinking that she should maybe try and get noticed on this side of the Atlantic too. So she has a show at the Fringe this year.
Actually, it’s her second time here. She came in 2025, too, when she worked with a promoter. But that meant she didn’t make much money, she tells us, so she’s doing it all herself this year. It’s OK, she adds, she’s got ADHD, so she’s very organised.
She’s also a very good comedian. This is a fun show. If anything, it’s more about Ireland than her home in New York, although there are plenty of compare-and-contrast moments (in particular about the respective sexual mores in both cities; let’s just say, they are very different).
Near the beginning of Irish Immigrant, when Boyle starts talking about Tir na nOg and Irish fairies, I did fear that it might be a show that was going to lean into Irish stereotypes with an eye for an American audience. But what follows is more interesting and less conventional than that. Her point is that Ireland is itself not quite the Catholic country it’s usually portrayed as.
Boyle jumps back and forth across the Atlantic, taking material from her own life and mixing it up with Irish folk tales (she’s doing something similar to Scotland’s Marjeolein Robertson here and it’s something she could expand going forward).
Yes, it can feel a little bitty and unfocused to begin with, but by the end you realise that she has just been casting her net wide only to then pull it all together very satisfyingly at the climax of the show.
Does solid seem a diminishing way to describe an hour of comedy? It’s not meant to be here. Because this is a pleasingly sturdy stand-up show well worth your time and money. More jokes about Cu Chulainn please.
Monkey Barrel Comedy at O’Neill’s (The Tron), until August 28
https://www.edfringe.com/tickets/whats-on/katie-boyle-irish-immigrant
