New Comics Make Belfast Laugh at Itself : Northern Ireland: Since the IRA and the British declared cease-fire last fall, comedy has flourished. As Lenny Bruce said, comedy is tragedy plus time.

Daddy’s an IRA commander. His daughter is engaged to a Protestant policeman. Every time the lad visits, he smashes the Roman Catholic family’s Virgin Mary statues out of habit.

“Two Ceasefires and a Wedding,” Northern Ireland’s newest TV comedy, is the latest jab by combative young comedians who sling dark humor at the bigotry that has brought the British province such grief.

Belfast’s humor was long confined to partisan turf, where you laughed at “them” but never at “us.” But in recent years a new generation has been willing to laugh at both sides equally.

And since the gunmen on both sides declared cease-fires last fall, the comedy is thriving on neutral turf, where young Protestants and Catholics feel increasingly comfortable laughing together at all factions.

“For the first time in years, we’re actually having to write new sketches because things are--can you believe it?--changing!” said Tim McGarry of the Hole in the Wall Gang, a five-member satire troupe.

In the Empire comedy club, in the basement of a converted church in southern Belfast, the stand-up talk turns to Prods and Taigs, Orangies and Fenians--street slang for Protestants and Catholics.

“Lenny Bruce once said that comedy is tragedy plus time,” said Paddy Kielty, 24, one of the originators of the Empire comedy night.

On stage each Tuesday, Kielty tears through factions and personalities. The young crowd of students and professionals, both Catholic and Protestant, takes it in with gusto.

Kielty plays former IRA commander Martin McGuinness, a negotiator for the IRA-allied Sinn Fein Party in talks with Britain, starring in the Irish version of time-travel comedy “Back to the Future.”

McGuinness, riding in the time-machine DeLorean, is stuck at the start of the violence in the 1960s, trying to get “back to 1998, when there’s a united Ireland.”

The crowd laughs--how could anyone imagine Britain giving up Northern Ireland that soon?

Kielty next skewers the Rev. Ian Paisley, the militant Protestant leader, who was forced earlier in the day to pose with Catholic politicians.

“Yes, yes, we’re all friends now,” Kielty says, hissing his s’s and hunching his shoulders Paisley-style. “Me and these . . . Fenians.”

For some of his shtick, Kielty dons a balaclava, the mask used by gunmen on both sides.

“You find that the closer the people are to the situation, the more likely they are to laugh. If you use a balaclava on stage in Dublin or London, people go, ‘Hmmm . . . risky’,” Kielty said.

“You use a balaclava in west Belfast, and they go, ‘Whoa! What a laugh and a half!’ ”

Kielty says he tries to cut “close to the knuckle” without going out of the way to offend.

“I’ve had the mike pulled off me a couple times. I’ve had people walk out. You sometimes get strange looks from guys with tattoos and stuff like that. But no one’s ever harmed me.

“Really, is a paramilitary organization going to be responsible for the death of a comedian?” he asked, his blue eyes widening. “Can you imagine the 6 o’clock news?--’It was when Mr. Kielty did his balaclava routine that shots rang out.’ ”

But he also knows where to draw the line. His father, a prosperous Catholic construction company owner, was killed in 1988 by Protestant “loyalist” extremists.

“Death isn’t big laughs,” Kielty said, suddenly serious.

“Maybe collusion and corruption surrounding those deaths, you might get a chuckle out of that, right? Maybe the politicians, the situation that allows those deaths to happen, that can be big laughs.”

Will peace be funny?

Since the Irish Republican Army laid down its guns in a year ago this month and the Protestant militants followed suit in mid-October, Belfast’s comedy fraternity has faced jibes that it will soon be out of business.

“Peace has ruined my act! I’ve nothing to say!” Colin Murphy tells a disbelieving Empire crowd.

Then he launches into his plan to undermine the morale of pro-British “unionists” by closing down gourmet food shops in well-heeled Protestant suburbs.

“The unionist people would starve,” says Murphy.

Switching to a high-pitched voice, he mimics a Protestant woman pleading for help by ham radio: “My sweet husband Gerald--no, not Gerard, that’s a Catholic name--Gerald, he’s withering away. Could you airdrop us some of that grated cheese in the bag--so han -dy!”

McGarry, who works days as a lawyer, finds peace demanding.

“It used to be that you’d do a sketch on Sinn Fein and it could have a shelf life of five years,” he said. “You could dust off sketches about Paisley from the 17th Century and they’d be fresh as daisies.”