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Showing posts with label stand up comedy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label stand up comedy. Show all posts
Friday, January 30, 2015
Friday, January 30, 2015
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As always, please bear in mind that The Pleasance's current comedy season is intended to showcase works in progress. It's a dick move to criticise someone working out the particulars of their act; you don't get to be a shining star at the Edinburgh Fringe without a bit of trial and error.
I've always been wary of including technology in performance. The moment you bring a laptop, projector or phone on stage you're introducing a thousand different variables. Before you know it you're bound up in a cocoon of USB, HDMI and power cables, each with their own very important socket to be in. James Veitch lives within this rat's nest of wires, his act relying on a Macbook Pro, an iPhone, a projector, a keyboard and the co-operation of a sound man way up high. Bigger men than Veitch have foundered against technological rocks like these.
Fortunately, Veitch is a genius - it says so on his business cards. Coming straight to us from the corporate world of Apple, if anyone canget all this technology synchronised it's him. Even if he wasn't wearing an Apple branded t-shirt you'd figure him for the Genius support type; rake-skinny, thick-framed glasses and a pallid complexion that suggests long, late nights in, illuminated only by the cold glow of a Retina screen.
In terms of personality he's flighty and high-strung, flitting between several different subjects at once, all peppered with self-deprecation. It's as if his lips can't keep up with the speed of his mind, uhmm-ing and ahh-ing down a couple of trains of thought at once. He reminded me of a young Woody Allen, performing as much to himself as to the audience - a stage persona that flirts with innocence and optimism before collapsing down to a rueful core.
Much of what saw being worked out last night were tricks and games played with websites and apps. The best example was lifted from his previous show. Veitch signed up 'Guardian Soulmates', his profile picture showing him with a friendly duck. Upon his account being suspended on the grounds that no other person was allowed to be in the picture, he complained and got it reinstated. He then followed this up by sending the website an angry letter from the duck. The duck then got it's own (far more successful) dating profile.
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| Veitch & duck |
Told through Powerpoint it's an engrossing, surreal and deeply funny routine, apparently influenced by the precise geekiness of Dave Gorman. But the theme of screwing with the established rules of websites and apps goes on to head pretty damn close to the bone. The most striking part of the set revolves around 'Be My Eyes'; an app for people who're blind that lets them contact a sighted person who will describe what their phone camera is pointed at.
Problem is, there's a huge imbalance between potential helpers and those who need assistance. Veitch decides to have some fun with this enormous bank of patiently waiting eyes. Feigning blindness he holds a letter up the camera: it's a goodbye from his dying Grandmother. She says she has one, final, crucial, all-important piece of advice for him - but the letter eventually trails off into frustrating incoherence.
The idea of some good-natured soul getting suckered into first breaking a death to a blind guy, then being unable to finish reading the letter, is funny. Funny in a goddamn cruel and morally questionable way granted, but still funny. Problem is, in technical terms it doesn't quite come together. Maybe the app is crappily coded, but the voices coming down the line sound like drowning robots, reduced to disjointed metallic whining.
Things get even more confusing when Veitch bravely attempts it live. The randomly picked responder sounds like he's in a bathroom and seems to care little about reading the letter. It's the kind of great idea that, if it worked as planned, would be the delicious cherry atop a fluffy comedy cake. But there's a heck of a lot riding against it working live - so many stars have to align just right.
Despite the technical hitches throughout the act, momentum is just about maintained. We skip willy-nilly between topics, but usually alight on some well-observed aside. My favourites were a great gag about being unable to connect to the omnipresent BTOpenzone wifi, the realisation that living alone finally allows you to see how long shower gel really lasts and using the looparound 'Lost Forest' level in The Legend of Zelda as a metaphor for life.
Veitch is clearly not short of inspiration; tossing out original, interesting and imaginative ideas like confetti. It's an extremely promising act, especially when you take into account how polished the older stuff is and imagine the newer stuff taken to the same level. I'd love to see this show with the creases firmly ironed out and the gags polished to a mirror sheen. It's brimming over with potential and as long as the tech behaves itself this should knock audience's socks off.
Monday, January 26, 2015
Monday, January 26, 2015
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From December to February, The Pleasance Theatre is transforming into a laboratory. Clad in surgical whites, clipboard in hand, comedians are playing scientist; experimenting with new material, figuring out timing and discarding the failures. The audience are white rats; gags being tested on us and our reactions intently studied. Given that these are works in progress it'd be wrong to rigorously review them, but comment? Ah why not?
On last night was David Elms, who comes lightly garlanded with a smattering of awards; making two 'Best One-Liner' lists from the Edinburgh Fringe, finalist in the Chortle Student Comedy Awards and Edinburgh University's Stand Up of the year. I'd never heard of him, but those who had spoke highly of him so expectations were sort of high.
Then again, stand-up comedy at 8pm on a Sunday evening doesn't quite feel right. After a busy weekend all I wanted to do was cocoon myself in a duvet and burrow far into the sofa. But there's no time for lazing around and so, groggy and sore-limbed, I ventured into the frozen January night. In my heart of hearts I hoped he wasn't going to be the kind of comedian that spends an hour yelling and furiously showering the front row with spit.
Thankfully David Elms is to Sunday evenings as raspberry jam is to a steaming slice of hot toast. He's an introverted, almost priest-like, presence; softly whispering into the mic in cool, measured tones. Each syllable and glottal stop is precisely deployed, fluttering softly over the audience like confetti. He's so hushed that the bustling sounds of the bar below threaten to drown him out. There's a fragile meekness in the way he peers out over the stage lights and says "go easy on me" .
I don't think he had too much to worry about, the audience appeared to be solidly composed of fans. When he asked if anyone was here that hadn't seen him before, just a few hands popped into the air. Though this was a sold out show he appeared a bemused that anyone had turned up at all, asking "why are you here anyway?" His ultra low-key style seems relies on a well-behaved audience (I find it difficult to imagine someone heckling him), all of us happy to tolerate the odd scrappy digression and meandering anecdote
The act itself consists of 'yer average white middle-class miseries; though as this is 'yer average white middle-class Islington audience they go down a treat. So we get material about buying a hypoallergenic dog, worries over a receding hairline, giving up sugar and liberal guilt over appearing in advertisements. Domestic observational humour usually drives me straight to cynicism, but well, it's Sunday evening and who's got the energy for that? It reminded me of flicking through The Observer supplements and being dozily amused at what Tim Dowling's kids have gotten up to this week.
At the core of this is a desire to "get across what life is really like"; Elms explaining that he's trying to inject some genuine truths about life into the show. High points are a beautifully played bit about how people are always looking at his new wife and expectantly saying "not long now..." Through a combination of cranking up the ridiculousness of his delivery and a mischievous glint he makes an innocuous phrase deeply surreal, building to a really kickass punchline.
Somewhat less successful is a late shift into drag. The sight of Elms in a wig and dress is worth a giggle (though honestly he looks pretty good), but once you've chuckled it doesn't really go anywhere else. Putting on a cod-Spanish falsetto voice, the already languorous pace slows to a frustrating crawl, and worse, a crawl bereft of jokes. It's a relief when he finally takes the wig off and resumes playing 'himself'.
There's a conspiratorial nature to Elms' stage persona; as if purely by attending we're in on a secret joke. He's at his most charismatic when chatting with the audience; tossing out the gentlest of gentle burns, asking people about their lives with sincere interest, peering curiously into the crowd when someone laughs randomly and fretting over what might think of him. Late in the show he confesses that he was paranoid that tonight wasn't going to work, that this was nowhere near close enough to be a show. He needn't have worried; though the focus could be a little stronger everything is securely laced together through sheer force of personality.
Elms is an easy man to like, which makes it easy to root for him, which makes it more than easy to laugh along. I think he is pinning down "what life is really like": it just so happens that his life is pretty blissful right now, which is reflected in the cheery content. Comedy as cosy as a goose-down duvet might not be everyone's cup of tea, but on a Sunday evening? Yes please.
The Work in Progress Season continues at the Pleasance Theatre until 25th Feb. Tickets here.
Wednesday, November 26, 2014
Wednesday, November 26, 2014
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Can you be beautiful and funny? Cast your eyes around the dressing room of the average comedy club and you'll see a dowdy group of distinctly average looking bozos. Is being funny a way for those who'll never grace a catwalk to stand out from the crowd? After all, if they won't respect you for your lumpy, misshapen body then surely they'll pay bow down to your razorblade wit and pinpoint comedy timing? And if you are beautiful, why make the effort to be funny when people will hang on your every word, no matter what you say?
This question lies at the root of Marion Deprez is Gorgeous, a show as smart as it is frustrating. You see, Marion Deprez is gorgeous. From the tips of her toes to the top of her head she's looks like she's stepped off the front of a yé-yé album. Throughout the show she continually strikes 'cutie poses', giving us a sugar-sweet smile and widening her eyes to gaze off at some indeterminate point in the upper right corner of the room.
Watching her is like leafing through a particularly stylish fashion magazine, becoming slowly intoxicated on her confidence, presence and beauty. She strikes a series of coquettish poses, granting and denying permission for members of the audience to drool over her. This is all done in a faintly comic hyper-cute French accent, allowing us an easy route to not only adore Deprez, but to fetishise her.
But then this is supposed to be a comedy show and (in her words): "I don't need to be funny. Men need to be funny all the time. I'm not funny." She's (kinda) right, Marion Deprez isn't very funny. Her miming is half-assed, her anecdotes trail off right before the punchlines and her skits are long-winded and predictable. This makes for a slightly uncomfortable audience experience. The laughs are few and far between and when they come, rather polite; some in the audience becoming palpably uncomfortable at this Kaufmanesque anti-humour.
You see, Deprez is being unfunny on purpose. The idea is that we'll put with an awful amount of shit just because she strikes sweet poses, giggles girlishly and flutters her eyelashes. It's a sophisticated concept for a routine and slightly brave in that for it to 'work' relies on the audience putting up with something that's purposefully crap.
Tucked away within all the sweetness and light are some rather acidic moments; the best being a moment where she picks someone from the audience she considers beautiful. Telling him to stand up she instructs us to look at him and marvel about how handsome he is; explaining that she wishes a hunk like this could be her boyfriend. Then she asks him to take his top off. Understandably he bridles at the prospect so Deprez shoots back the tart one-liner: "you're just not used to being objectified like me."
This cuts to the quick of what Deprez is getting at. While "I don't need to be funny" could be considered a plus, it cuts both ways. When she is being funny people still gaze on adoringly; preoccupied with the plumpness of her lips rather than the words that trip from them.
What's most frustrating about this is that she's absolutely right, and I know this because I was doing that exact thing. Frankly I would have enjoyed watching her read the phone book, and I was more than prepared to tolerate some shitty sketches purely because the person skipping through them was attractive.
It's an odd experience to end a show feeling disappointed with your own shallowness, but that's what Marion Deprez is going for. In those terms it's an unreserved success, but one that's more intellectual than actually funny.
Marion Deprez is Gorgeous is at Mimetic Festival on the 26, 27, 28, 29, November 2014 Time: 8:20:pm. Tickets £9.50 available here.
Wednesday, November 19, 2014
Wednesday, November 19, 2014
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Two seconds in: "Wow, she's really naked!". Ten seconds in: "I can't believe I'm watching a naked stand up comedian, this is so cool!". Thirty seconds in: "Okay I get it, what now?". Miss Glory Pearl presents me with a somewhat annoying dilemma. See, I'm pretty much your stereotypical Guardian-reading do-gooder. I live in London. I go on protests. I'm a vegetarian. I shop at Waitrose. You get the picture. Theoretically a naked feminist leftie stand-up comedian doing a show about body positivity is something I should go doolally for. So why was I so damn bored for most of the show?
The routine consists of a potted history of the performer's life; outlining her history as a burlesque dancer, stripper, secondary school teacher and finally now stand up. This is mixed with a talk about the legal ramifications of nudity, the body fascism of women's magazines and finally trying to salve the audience's own internalised self-disgust.
Credit where credit's due; doing a stand-up show butt naked takes serious gumption. I've done performance pieces in just my pants and wondered if I should be completely naked, but told myself it would distract from the rest of the performance (though there was a definite element of cowardice involved too). So simply being so this confident while naked in front of a crowd earns Glory Pearl some kudos, if only for bravery.
Thing is, once we've gotten over the initial novelty of her nudity there's not much of substance here. The routine has a tendency to slide into inspirational cliche - I can't argue with the basic sentiment that people should be happy in their own skin - but it's still a rather obvious observation and not a rich seam of humour.
The low points come in an excruciatingly awkward audience interaction bit where we're told to point to part of our body we don't like. Pearl singles out audience members at random to explain to us what we're ashamed of and why, followed by her awkwardly trying to explain that it isn't so bad after all. A man pops his hand up with and says he hates his beer belly and gets told to think of all the times he's spent drinking with his friends and remember how much he enjoyed the takeaways he's eaten. In essence to 'love his belly'.
I hate this feel good crap. Self-loathing has always been a decent motivator in my book; if there's a part of your body that you're ashamed of, exercise and eating better do wonders for fixing that, not acceptance. By the time Pearl is singing the praises of lying on the sofa, watching TV and eating a "dirty Dominos" I felt a little depressed. I get that you can do whatever you want with your body and however anyone looks is basically okay, but that doesn't mean that motionless consumption of junk food is something to cheer on. It just feels like a rather boring, limited and sad set of pleasures.
By the end any surprise at Pearl's nakedness has long-since vanished and we're left with a routine that feels a bit like watching an episode of Loose Women. As in it's not particularly funny. So there was the odd polite chuckle, but never any particularly huge eruptions of laughter and the crowd didn't seem particularly enthused during the interactive bits either.
I'll grant you that I'm not the target audience for this show, but the impression I was left with was that the nakedness was a shock factor to conceal a pretty humdrum routine.
Monday, July 16, 2012
Monday, July 16, 2012
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| This is Lawrence Leung |
How much control do we have over our own identities? And if we lose control, how can we win it back? These are the questions underpinning Lawrence Leung’s current show – and they spring from a fairly unlikely source. I had never heard of Leung before, although he is apparently relatively popular on television in his native Australia. I can see why – he’s got an awkward and vulnerable ‘nice-guy’ charm; a very easy man to like. Sitting down in the theatre, I first spotted him dressed in a ‘Soho Theatre’ t-shirt, helping the staff to greet and sit the audience. On stage he dresses geekily and childishly, in a shirt that’s buttoned up just a little too high, and the stage has a forced perspective design to it, adding to the effect, and making him look even smaller.
The inspiration behind the show is a piece of er0tic fan-fiction, ‘Scandal on Ramsey Street’ (part 1 here, and part 2 here) that features Leung in a romantic tryst with Toadfish Rebecchi from Neighbours. A singularly unappealing prospect. Leung’s brother discovered this, much to his amusement, and Leung’s reactions to the bizarre find fuel the show. Ordinarily I would assume that this piece of fan-fiction was written as a joke to create something intentionally bizarre – but hey, this is the internet, and a piece of fiction where ‘television’s Lawrence Leung’ is transformed into a girl and becomes pregnant by Toadfish probably pushes someone’s buttons. It must be a very unsettling and creepy experience to read some complete stranger’s fiction about you, especially if you’re having weird genderbending sex in it. When reading it, I imagine you feel that you aren’t in control of your identity anymore – someone has taken you, and twisted you into a piece of their fetishistic dreams. This is a price of the curse of celebrity, but on some level it’s something we all have done to us, and all do. It can be illuminating and also distressing at times to peer into the gap between how we perceive ourselves and how others percieve us.
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| This is Toadfish from Neighbours |
This is fertile ground for comedy, and the first part of the show that focuses on this is hilarious. Leung’s disbelief at consistently being described as effeminate, and his fear and disgust about what this anonymous internet writer is putting ‘him’ through works very well. Throughout this section of the show we get a quick showcase of how effective a physical presence he is. I know nothing at all about Leung’s career, but just based on the way he moves around the stage I think he’s probably a very good dancer. If he’s not, then he could be – the way he contorts, gesticulates and twists his body to underline his emotions wrings a lot of laughs from the audience.
Following the dissection of the er0tic story, the act takes a little bit of a dip towards the middle. He begins talking about his experiences with a girl, Millicent, that he’d had a crush on in university. This is still good material, but the connection to the professed themes of ‘taking control of your identity’ seems a bit tenuous. This kind of relationship humour seems a little bit cliched after the great opening. Fortunately he brings it back around to another high point where he dissects the appeal of Colin Firth.
Leung’s use of technology for humour throughout his act is spot-on, and his use of Powerpoint during his act nicely complements his slightly geekish persona. The ‘Powerpoint comedian’ is a strain of stand-up that, as far as I know, originated with Dave Gorman’s ‘Are You Dave Gorman?’ show in 2001. It’s style of stand-up that paints the comedian as overly obsessive – showing us graphs and charts of the obscure data they’ve collected. Leung uses it to calculate why women find Colin Firth as Mr Darcy in ‘Pride and Prejudice’ so irresistable, analysing the time he spends on screen, then dividing that by the time spent staring out of windows, or leaning against fireplaces. It’s a skilful skewering of Firth’s persona, and while it doesn’t really feed into the professed aim of the show, it works nicely as a contrast to Leung’s own personality.
Centring a show around multimedia and technology is always a risky proposition – I’ve seen comedians die on stage as a result of their laptop crashing midway through their set. It takes a damn good performer to make them fiddling around with Windows Task Manager and waiting for their laptop to restart funny. Leung manages to avoid these pitfalls, and maybe it’s luck, but everything goes right – there’s was a bit towards the end of the first half where some members of the audience arrived late, and he managed to launch into a quick Powerpoint recap of what they’d missed. I genuinely have no idea how he set this up, if it wasn’t in collusion with those audience members he must have a ‘recap’ button set up to launch whenever people file in. Special mention should also go to the sound and lighting staff – every single cue in the show was bang on. I wouldn’t normally go out of my to complement a comedy show for being technically proficient, but if these cues were missed the show wouldn’t be half as funny.
The show was only about an hour long, but in that time you very quickly learn to like Leung and get an understanding of what makes him tick. I didn’t feel that I was missing out on anything as a result of not knowing who he was, something that I was a bit worried about considering that the crux of the show is how fame is affecting him. His unabrasive nature works in his favour, helping paper over a few cracks in the act. A few jokes do miss the mark, two quick bits about ‘Ghost’ and ‘The Sound of Music’ don’t really make a lot of sense or get much reaction from the audience. Later in the set he makes a ‘My Neighbour Totoro’ reference about the catbus, which does get some laughter - confusingly he then accuses us of not getting it. This is in the middle of some material about a trip to Japan that possibly verges on racial stereotyping, and at one point he makes a cringeworthy l/r substitution gag about Japanese accents. Despite this I find myself prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt, his stage persona makes it easy to forgive him when if he occasionally fluffs a line. In terms of his material these are relatively minor criticisms, and he never comes close at any time to losing the audience’s sympathy.
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| And this is a Catbus. |
A larger flaw is that at times this feels more like a selection of unconnected comedy vignettes rather than a smoothly flowing progression. For a show entitled ‘Beginning, Middle, End’ it’s a bit structurally confused, there’s a sense that this is a way to tie together all of his disparate ideas. The connections between the different parts aren’t particularly smooth, and a lot of it ties pretty tenuously into the central themes of control of identity. Additionally, some parts of the show are him playing sound recordings or videos, which seems to defeat the point of having the comedian on stage. The climax of the show is him playing a video, and while that video is very funny and does pay off much of what was set up in the first half of the show, it feels like something that would work better as part of a television show rather than on stage.
It’s hard to criticise Leung too much, while the structure of the show is a bit rickety, all the individual pieces work to varying degrees of success. If the opening hadn’t outlined that the show wanted to explore a particular theme I wouldn’t have noticed or cared that it felt a bit disjointed. It's a fun night, and a nice introduction to a very pleasant and funny man.
Monday, May 21, 2012
Monday, May 21, 2012
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featuring Ben Elton, Al Murray, Doc Brown, Richard Herring, Hal Cruttenden, Robin Ince, Milton Jones, Francesca Martinez, Sally Phillips, Paul Tonkinson and Kevin Eldon
The Hammersmith Apollo seems like a strange venue for stand up comedy. I’ve been to gigs here before, but only down in the stalls. It’s only when you’re up in the Circle that you can understand just how vast it is. I’ve always thought stand-up works best in somewhat smaller spaces, for one thing you can actually see the expressions on the comedian’s face as they perform. But, on the upside, I suppose being in Row Q of the circle means I’m unlikely to get picked on by the comedian, (unless they come on stage with a telescope or something).
The night was organised by Scope, who seem like a fine and extremely worthy charity by all accounts. The lineup was particularly interesting to me, with a few comedians I’ve long admired, but haven’t had a chance to see. Ben Elton, Al Murray, Richard Herring, Robin Ince, Sally Philips, Kevin Eldon and Paul Tonkinson I am familiar with, but Doc Brown, Hal Cruttenden, Milton Jones and Francesca Martinez were new to me.
I was particularly curious to see Ben Elton. I had a few cassette tapes of his stand-up act when I was about 12 or 13, and I thought he was pretty great then – but haven’t heard of him doing any stand-up in a very long time. He was the compere, and strode onto stage immediately launching into his act. It was somewhat obvious that he hadn’t done much stand-up lately, judging by the topics of his jokes I’d guess he’d maybe written them in the early 00s. Observational routines about spam email and how people are glued to their smartphones seem just a little dusty, as was a bit about the experience of having to wait on hold to buy something over the phone (which has never happened to me or anyone I've asked). But while his material might be pretty dated, he’s still got a good stage presence. It was good to actually see him being funny in a live setting, rather than his usual day job of writing crappy musicals with Andrew Lloyd Webber.
Richard Herring, on the other hand couldn’t be more of a sure hand at this kind of thing. I follow his blog, and he’s recently finished his exhausting sounding nationwide tour of the country with his “What is Love, Anyway?”. I’ve seen him twice previously, on his ‘”Hitler Moustache” and “Christ on a Bike” tours. I was looking forward to him the most. I’ve liked him ever since he singled my Dad out as looking like a paedophile during the DVD recording of “Hitler Moustache” in Cardiff. It’s a shame then that he wasn’t so great tonight. Maybe it was over-familiarity with the material (I think I’ve seen him do the routine he did tonight twice in various surroundings before). Maybe it’s that I was miles away from him and couldn’t really see what he was doing on stage. Later in the show he did a sketch with Kevin Eldon and Sally Philips that didn’t really work very well. I don’t know if it quite fit in with the rest of the night, and the only highlight was a dig at Ricky Gervais and Frankie Boyle that seemed to go down pretty well. I’m still looking forward to going to the recording of Richard Herring’s podcast with Armando Iannucci in late June though.
The highlights of the evening were the comedians that I hadn’t seen before. Doc Brown’s ‘fill in the blanks’ rap song break down was great – as was his sarcastic look at fuck-the-police rappers. He seemed confident on stage, and nicely self-deprecating. He’s got a kind of slightly over-optimistic personality and gets a lot of mileage from how he’s “supposed” to be angry about things, but can’t help himself from seeing things from a more nuanced point of view.
Milton Jones’ one liners were so witty that I imagine he spends most of his time being angry about other comedians ripping off his jokes. The multi-part joke about school bullies which depended on knowing exactly how the audience will react to each stage of the joke was technically fantastic. He’s obviously indebted to Steven Wright in his deadpan delivery, but if you’re going to do one-liners, you can do a lot worse that Steven Wright.
I’ve always been put off Al Murray’s pub landlord character a bit. I know it’s satirical and ironic, but I’ve seen way too many people enjoying the character unironically, which makes me a bit uncomfortable. I know it’s a mistake to let others perceptions and opinions of things colour my own, and none more than in this case. More than the other acts, Al Murray mostly improvised his material (or at least appeared to), chatting with people sitting on the front row. Some of the other acts were a bit overly scripted, so it was nice to something a bit looser and more unpredictable.
Francesca Martinez was also great. It’s a bit depressing that she doesn’t appear on panel shows because she’s apparently “too scary”. I think producers are being a bit timid if they consider her scary. The anecdote about her being offered a part on a show playing someone who can’t move, can’t talk and can’t make facial expressions was funny but sad. Her performance also clued me into the fact that there’s lots of great comedians who don’t show up on panel shows – if you don’t keep your finger on the stand-up comedy pulse, then how are you supposed to find out about them?
It was a little annoying that Francesca Martinez was the only woman to get a set. I’m a fan of Sally Phillips and after seeing that she got a whole page to herself in the programme it was quite disappointing that she was only on stage for about 5 minutes as part of someone else’s sketch, particularly as she was one of only two female comedians on the bill.
It’s weird that it was the comedians I was a fan of that were a little disappointing. Ben Elton, Robin Ince, Richard Herring and Paul Tonkinson all did extended routines on the perils of middle age and having children. They all went down pretty well, but I don’t really feel much sense of identification with them. Jokes that boil down to “ha, kids can be so precocious”, and “my pubes are turning grey” might be a bit funnier to me later on in life, but not right at the moment. I guess if you’re an 40 something observational comedian, then middle age and children are going to be what you’re observing.
As the show ended, and before Ben Elton finished up the show and thanked everyone for coming, there was a kind of mass exodus from around us as half the audience left, presumably to get a tube home. Seems a little bit rude to leave before the end of the charity comedy gig and skipping out on the applause that everyone on stage deserved.
On the whole the positives far, far outweighed the negatives. I don’t want this review to sound too negative. It’s easier to talk about the jokes that didn’t work, as they were the ones I wasn’t laughing at. These were 10 or so highly experienced comedians doing a fine service in aid of Scope. Even though I was at the back of the room, squinting at the comedians far, far away from me I was surrounded by laughter throughout the show. Well worth the trip out to Hammersmith on a Sunday night.
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