On Sept. 4, comedian Eric O’Shea came to Wygal Hall for one of Lancer Productions’ first events of the year.
According to Lancer Productions, the New York City based comedian has appeared on NBC, VH-1 and Sirius XM Radio. O’Shea has quite the resume with over 4 million hits on YouTube, seven nominations for national college comedian of the year and a performance with Betty White at the Creative Emmy Awards.
With such a resume and back history, O’Shea has built himself a bit of pressure to deliver. But rest assured, O’Shea lived up to the bill delivering a terrific show that perfectly appealed to the college crowd.
The veteran comedian found a balance in his rapid style of comedic delivery, firing off bits of what seemed to be a combination of free formed and pre-written jokes. O’Shea’s pumped up routine kept the show at a good pace as his semi-long tangents usually elicited laughter long enough to find pockets to layer in his written material.
Nonetheless, O’Shea was consistently entertaining, particularly in finding his niche playfully imitating the crowd’s young wide-eyed students. In fact, a majority of the content was based off of imitating the students and their coming-of-age moments while being in college. He also took great pleasure in making fun of Farmville’s population or lack thereof.
O’Shea frequently picked on audience members, never hurtfully, rather singling out people for particular oddities. Such was the case with a student whom often laughed seconds after the audience, only notably obvious because of the intimate space in Wygal Hall.
Another older audience member seemed to be positioned squarely in the back to be the butt of a lot of O’Shea’s jokes. “Red-shirt guy” as O’Shea would later name him, seemed to be in good spirits as the jokes piled on.
Amongst O’Shea’s strongest attributes on display was his ability to relate to the audience. He constantly poked fun at his life in relation to everyone else’s; for example, one standout statement was his exclamation, “We’re all whacked!”
The ending skit, which drew the biggest applause was a rendition of popular songs throughout the years serving as the music for advertisement parodies. Among those were The Weeknd’s “Can’t Feel My Face,” acting as an advertisement for Novocain.
There aren’t many criticisms to make about O’Shea’s performance; for the most part, he was constantly entertaining while pandering the audience. His raunchy jokes were just enough to make the audience laugh but not too overwhelming.
He cursed in bits throughout the night, making sure the explicit jokes had exclamation and were not simply for the sake of cursing. If anything, he may have been a bit silly, but not to the point that it became annoying to the audience.
O’shea delivered a solid set that went over well with the audience while keeping them engaged and laughing throughout the night.
