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| REVIEWS: APRIL - AUGUST 1998 | |||
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Welcome to Archive Reviews: April - August 1998 KEVIN HAYES, The Stand Comedy Club, Edinburgh Fringe Comedy FestivalAFFABLE Irishman Kevin Hayes has been appearing in two shows - and excelling in both. Education met wit in Beyond The Pale (A History of Ireland) in which he achieved one of the toughest tasks a comedian can set himself: teaching an audience history while amusing and entertaining them. It was a truly outstanding show; one of the most thoroughly-enjoyable hours I've spent in Edinburgh and a joy to attend. His late-night straight stand-up performance, at the Stand as well, was also excellent. And I'd say not a single punter there would disagree with that assessment. STAR RATING (out of five): ***** August 1998 IVOR DEMBINA and IAN COGNITO, The Pleasance, Edinburgh Fringe Comedy Festival WAS it supposed to be an honour that these big cheeses of the London comedy circuit put on a late free-entry show? Their contrasting styles - Ivor, disingenously diffident and intellectual; Ian, ranting arsehole - made them an obvious, albeit uncomfortable, pairing. But what they both forgot on one of the most important nights of the festival was that comedians are meant to be funny. The midnight performance started very low key: I thought Dembina was going to compere a little and then introduce the so-called 'fierce and funny' Cognito. But no, he gave us a runaround of British Judaism in the 1990s. Nothing wrong with that. No doubt Dominic Lawson would have enjoyed it immensely. But I suspect the Edinburgh audience had come to laugh. Dembina also made the mistake of getting into a debate with a drunken critic who wanted to smoke. He ended up accused of fascism by the journalist and slipped from the stage with hardly a word to say in his defence. It was a piss-poor start to the show, but worse was to come. Cognito shattered the embarrassed silence with an unfunny rant of a performance worthy of a tube train nutter. The tedious account of dragging himself up by his bootstraps, marital shipwreck, hollowness of fame (has he ever been famous?), great drugs he's done (where have we heard that before?), was indistinguishable from the blether of a thousand pub bores rolled into one spitting, sweating ball of bitterness. Successful comics Nick Wilty and Stuart Lee were in the audience and didn't laugh much. And I'm angry now I gave as much as an old button to the silent collection at the end of the show. There are plenty of street beggars more deserving of the cash than these two smug conmen. Cognito should go back into the retirement he so richly deserves. As for sad old Dembina, he's committing comedy suicide on the circuit by nottelling jokes. Perhaps, old comics never die; they just go a bit senile and become an embarrassment to anyone who knows them. STAR RATING (out of five): ZERO -- GEORGINA GUSH / August 1998 LEE MACK, Return of the Mack, The Pleasance, Edinburgh Fringe Comedy Festival THE publicity for this show portrayed Mack sending up a rap star: an image followed through by a short film sequence - shown before the performance - of him donning rap gear. But it all proved a gimmick. When Mack appeared before the tiny audience (about 30 people in a 150-capacity room), he was casually dressed and trotted out his regular routines, almost none of them involving rap. Nonetheless, he is energetic and his material is strong, although there wasn't enough top-notch stuff to fill an hour-long show. STAR RATING (for talent and potential): **** (out of five) /August 1998 BOOTHBY GRAFFOE, The Pleasance, Edinburgh Fringe Comedy Festival THE best thing about this show was newish comic Simon Evans as a stooge in the audience. Otherwise, it came down to a couple of songs, unspontaneous rapartee and adolescent sketches. Graffoe's material was thinly spread and his references to past glowing reviews made one wonder how on earth he has achieved his high profile. He may be excellent over 30 minutes, but an hour-long show makes him diffuse and ill-tempered. He even resorted to dragging in dope-smoking to win a knowing cheer. It's time for him to do something new. STAR RATING (out of five): ** -- GEORGINA GUSH/August 1998 MIKE GUNN, Good Grief, The Pleasance, Edinburgh Fringe Comedy Festival GUNN was one of the acts I most wanted to see. . . but turned out the most disappointing. His material was quite good but his performance was amazingly weak for a comedian of his experience. Gunn seemed more camp than deadpan - like a comedic Dale Winton clad as a funeral director. And his handling of hecklers was cliched. He wasn't thinking on his feet and, as a result, was half-dying on his arse. No wonder only 10 punters had come to see him. STAR RATING (out of five): ** August 1998 RICH HALL, Assembly Rooms, Edinburgh Fringe Comedy Festival WOW! This show proved why the established guys hold their own against the young tyros. It was slick, topical, political, well paced and well funny. Some silly but genuinely amusing songs made it a sheer delight - and a good reason why Hall should give masterclasses to young comics. The secret is in the writing and the realisation that you shouldn't expect to get by on charm alone. STAR RATING (out of five): **** -- GEORGINA GUSH/August 1998 THE COMEDY ZONE, The Pleasance, Edinburgh Fringe Comedy Festival THIS was definitely one of the most over-rated shows of the festival. Four newish comics did their best to join the big boys of comedy, but looked hopelessly out of their depth. Dan Evans seemed uncomfortable as the compere, desperately rattling out his own material rather than concentrating on interaction with the audience. Anton did his joke (doggy style). It's high time he wrote another gag. His shambling image is effective but you can't help wondering if he's genuinely a bit of a Scouse fuckwit. Gorden Southern's act wasn't bad. He's an assured performer and has some sharp and funny lines. But he's better seen in a small venue. And headliner Simon Evans was enjoyable. He trotted out his familiar act with great confidence and precision and was undoubtedly the best of a mediocre bunch. OVERALL STAR RATING (out of five): **and a bit SEAN LOCK, 'Hello Mums', Battersea Art Centre (Short BAC and Sides) London SW11 BLOKEY is the obvious adjective for Sean; he's not a style guru, not Oxbridge mafia (in presentation, I don't know his true credentials). Good natured geezerhood rules. On an unfeasibly sweaty night - so hot that Harry Hill took off his baseball cap, in a blackbox auditorium where the air-conditioning must have been provided by a toxic dragon - we started with a film of various members of the Lock family dancing against a white background. Very art school, not very funny, but setting up for a cracking gag when Sean got on. He has a good balance of meandering chat and big tags - the 50-minute format allowing him to develop strands of thought rather than demand a big laugh every 10 seconds. Obviously still a work in progress (which must be a bit scary for him, with Edinburgh just two weeks away), the first half is stronger than the second, which has some good stories that definitely are in search of closure. Personal favourite was the cat-stretching routine, but some work on the girlfriend routines is in order to make them less ordinary. It's all very well seeming like the funny guy down the pub, but if you're Sean Lock, you have to be bigger and better. Definitely worth catching if you're up there, or in one of the squillion previews down here. OVERALL STAR RATING (out of five): *** -- GEORGINA GUSH/July 1998 Lee Canterbury, Natalie Haynes and Addy Borg, COMEDY AT SOHO HO, Crown and Two Chairmen, W1 THESE three comics are not presenting a show together in Edinburgh, although each will be there in a bill show of some description. (Lee Canterbury is in the Daily Telegraph Open Mic finals, Addy is compering one of Screaming Blue Murder's superb Big Value Comedy Shows, and Natalie's in another show). Last night was a chance for each to bash through up to 20 minutes of material, with no heckling (we'd been told, and amazingly everyone behaved as though at a Sunday tea with a rich aunt - laughing at every joke and glossing over any embarrassing moments). Even better with no interval and no compere, this was a tight hour of entertainment without any of the stock in trade Q &A with an audience which can drain energy from a gig. Lee Canterbury, has a former incarnation as a holiday rep, and I can well believe it. So good-natured and smiley and full of bounce you want to hide in the sand dunes. He had the hard job in opening, and his material, recalling '70s animal progs, disco and teen angst was amusing but somehow dated - not so much nostalgia, more a lack of development. He tore through a short set and lost some material just through garbling. Natalie Haynes has the making of a good comic, she's got tons of material and doesn't depending on a gurrl-gimmick to get laughs. She raced along as though complete amnesia were just a heart beat away and if she didn't spit all the material out it would go forever. As with much relationship humour, which can be so poignant, it sailed perilously close to therapy, covering revenge, betrayal, mercy shags and the anxiety about parents seeing the show. Natalie is funny, like most women are, talking about personal life, but she just has give it an extra push to be more a performer and less the amusing dinner companion. Finally to Addy Borg, polishing some old material, still funny on its tenth hearing, spicing it up with new stuff. This man has the ready-brek glow of the confident comic. Falling on the good-looking side of odd (think Marty Feldman meets Antonio Banderas), he relaxes the audience by enjoying himself, without ever lapsing into smugness. He's excellent with an audience who are on his side - can't wait to see him in Edinburgh with a bigger and more lippy crowd to put him on his mettle. OVERALL STAR RATING (out of five): *** -- GEORGINA GUSH/July 1998 ED BYRNE and STUART LEE, The Banana Cabaret, SW12 STUART LEE is so thrilled with having had a long stint on telly that he bases half his act on people he's been told he looks like. How deeply thrilling for us that he has been likened to pop star Roland Gift and Mark Fowler from EastEnders. His languor sails perilously close to lazy and I was struggling to work out why he has acquired celebrity status. Having been cursed, by his own admission, with a sarcastic sounding voice, he could at least smile. He's like a sneery adolescent boy that most mums would dread being brought home by their little girls. By contrast, Ed Byrne would be the one that they're making sandwiches for and showing the baby pictures to. Twenty-six going on 18, he's got shy charm worked out to a 'T': he's energetic, chatty, natural seeming. Even when he's talking about wanking, you get the feeling that mum would be giggling behind her hand rather than disapproving. OVERALL STAR RATING (out of five): *** -- GEORGINA GUSH STAND UP TWO, COMEDY CAFE, EC1 RICHARD MORTON hosted this recording for a Radio Two show, warming up the stodgy audience with energy and aplomb. Gentle Kevin Gildea did some amusing relationship stuff, Trevor Crook entertained with whales and butterflies - and Parsons and Naylor died on their arses, very much to their own surprise. Song titles as conversation harks back to Punt and Dennis of 12 years ago. Must try harder. Lucrative advertising contracts obviously make you lazy. OVERALL STAR RATING (out of five): ** -- GEORGINA GUSH CHARLOTTE PALMER at Buccaneers Comedy, W1 WHAT is wrong with Charlotte Palmer? Blah blah tampons, blah blah vibrators, blah blah genitalia. Then she turns into Mary Poppins, getting out her flute to play Ski Sunday. Get lost, Charlotte! I'm sure there's a market for people who enjoy your brand of anatomically accurate humour, but they are probably sweating over their GCSEs and not old enough to go into a pub anyway. And squealing girley-style at the audience that they're all crazy is not going to get up the energy (your avowed intent). If you're too tired to perform, stand aside for someone who isn't. Mind you, I suspect a long kip wouldn't make an iota of difference to Palmer. She's been trotting this garbage out for more than a year. Remember, Jenny Eclair was doing it four years ago, and it wasn't funny then either. Get an act, Charlotte, or get another career! But it wasn't all bunk at the Buccaneer. New act Mike Meakin showed strong stage presence which bodes well for when his material comes in. Kevin Precious has been around for longer and has a relaxed, daffy presentation, and credits his audience with enough intelligence not to have to spell out every punchline. Noel James, cursed in London what's on guide Time Out a few weeks ago with the tag of "a comedian's comedian", gave the lie to that dreadful description which normally means enormously unfunny. He is surreal and gets away with punning, throwing away enough good quips for the comedy scavengers to swoop in and knit themselves an extra five minutes. And Noel boasts a likeable, schoolboy charm which tickles away at an audience, almost persuading them to let him off doing his homework. However, he skates through on charisma - and it's no substitute for putting in more work on the writing. OVERALL STAR RATING (out of five): *** -- GEORGINA GUSH FIRST BIRTHDAY PARTY AT JOE'S COMEDY MADHOUSE, LONDON N16 NORTH LONDON'S quirkiest comedy club did not disappoint as it celebrated its first birthday in typically eccentric style. Talented Rob Rouse opened the show with a rousing half-hour set which was truly at the cutting edge. Few young stand-ups have the energy or pluck that he displays in everything from his highly controversial (often taboo) material to the extraordinary musical finale. Rouse is one of the few newish acts on the London circuit who really looks like he has stardom written all over him. Then there was a string of shorter performances: Danny Hurst struggled a little but Mick Twelves fared better with some top gags; musical impressionist Pamela Philips went down well. Compère Michael Eaves kept the night bubbling along, only losing his temper with the wretched Enis who virtually refused to leave the stage! As Joe Wilson explained when he handed round undercooked birthday cake he had baked himself, lunacy is every bit as much a part of the Madhouse as comedy - a fact illustrated by the prehistoric Dennis "Two-brushes" Ahearn who came out of retirement for another public grooming of his hair. But no-one could doubt the comedy talent of the highline act Micky Flanagan who had kicked off the club exactly a year before. His hilarious repartee with the audience, and particularly one drunken heckler, showed the remarkable degree to which he can think on his feet to superb comedic effect. Flanagan's 35-minute performance was one of the finest and funniest I have seen on any comedy stage. STAR RATING (out of five): ***** -- PETER GUEST ROLLY MOE at the Buccaneers Comedy, W1. THE BUCCANEERS again - one of my fave clubs - where compere Andy Laud could give George Clooney handsome lessons, but can't warm-up a TV dinner - never mind an audience. And so on to the dishonourable Rolly Moe. This whip thin character is a glutton for punishment. I saw him buried by a silent walk-out by six people at a club a few weeks ago, and why the Buccaneers' crowd didn't flee to the bar for the Brazil match I do not know. His ultra-slow, high-pitched delivery and strangled wheezing is reminiscent of Emo Phillips of blessed memory. But unlike musicians, comedians are not allowed to be a one-man tribute-band. Moe borrows his vocal style from Emo, and his sartorial presentation is that of the skinny fundamentalist preacher from David Byrne's 'Once in a Lifetime' video. Why does he imagine it's funny to be as dislocated as a male loony on the bus and offering horribly to flirt with lone women in the audience? This is like being caught up in the grimmest performance in a seventies cafe-theatre. Whatever private agenda he is working out, it should not see the light of day. Avoid at all costs! STAR RATING (out of five): * -- GEORGINA GUSH THE IMPROV, LONDON W1 WHAT a night to be in the audience at this club in Tottenham Court Road! I was one of only 20 seated in London's most comfy barn. Phil Davey, an acclimatised aussie, managed to talk to everyone in his role as MC - playing with a table of travelling Americans to great success without boring the rest of the audience. Roly poly Andre Vincent, looking ten years younger than he did three months ago (amazing what a trip to San Francisco can do), raised the energy with a cheeky set about fat lads, obese women, the Titanic, and Louise Woodward as the next James Bond. How these two guys stayed so good humoured playing to a couple of acres of check table-cloth I don't know, but they didn't moan at the audience like lesser comics might have done. They worked hard and brought us in to them. Best of all was Trevor Crook. He makes a virtue of inertia and doesn't "do animated". His ability to captivate an audience with a set on depression, S & M, bad marriages, Socrates and whales was as funny and original as anything you'll see this year. Never before has calculated lethargy been so endearing. The antithesis of the brutally-loud, bronzed Australian, he is slight, scruffy and softly spoken (anything else would be too much effort). And Crook appears like a nocturnal animal blinking in the spotlight, the occasional lifting grin being the give-away that he's rather enjoying himself. He only had to depart from his ambling, story-of-his-life approach to sort out a bunch of yappy barristers (I think they'd seen This Life once too often and fancied themselves.) He gave the legal beagles the attention they'd been courting, snuffed them out and proceeded with the only successful unscripted, Q & A session I've ever seen. Ace! STAR RATING (out of five): **** -- GEORGINA GUSH NELSON COMEDY CLUB, South Wimbledon Ooh, what a chatty lot they are down at the newly stripped and scrubbed Nelson. It was compered by the splendid Mandy Muden who scored highly on organising the audience, jazzing them up and launching the acts with unforced warmth. Brian Damage's world-weary songs (or should I say song, since everything comes out to the same plinka-plinka tune) and deliberately lacklustre repartee cut through the table of students obviously used to entertainment with a pause and rewind button. Danny Buckler impressed the hell out of anyone who was paying attention with a bit of magical escapology before our very eyes and James Holmes could build his career around a bad hair day, joyfully constructing his act on the basis that we're all caring, sharing, therapied fluffy bunnies. And who's to say we're not. Woody Bop Muddy stormed the last section, roaring and smashing his way through the world's most embarrassing record collection. The audience roared back in delight. STAR RATING (out of five): *** -- GEORGINA GUSH A FRIDAY NIGHT AT THE BANANA CABARET, BALHAM, SW12. THE queue formed at as ever at 7.45 pm with punters jostling to get through the doors first to nab the best seats. Comedy fans at the front, hen parties and general pissheads at the back, the terminally late hanging off the balcony. First off the block was affable and sweary Andy Parsons who more than warmed up a benevolent crowd with a set on drugs, chocolate, breakfast cereal (see the connections?) - and cat litter. But it was try-out Keith Tilbury who won the crowd over with his aggressive lads-turning-into-hens routine. . . and promptly lost his audience with a nasty torrent of abuse about his girlfriend. Ritual slagging off isn't always funny, Keith. Next act Martin Soan gaves the impression of being a lanky, wide-boy with Hollywood teeth (fine) but I groaned inwardly when he started wheeling out props. There can be nothing more dismal than a prop act, but Soan transcends the form by having so many, whipping through some surreal combinations and being damn funny. He closed his set with the funniest and most alarming use of rubber bands I've been privileged to guffaw at. In the second half, Gina Yashere ripped the roof off with a bawdy, eyeball-rolling performance that left us begging for more. You might have seen some of the material before in various forms, but she made it her own. Lacked subtlety, thank God. Finally there was Mark Hurst - skilled enough not to have a gimmick, just up there chatting away with first-rate material, as relaxed as though he's just with a mate in the pub. Belting stuff! STAR RATING (out of five): **** -- GEORGINA GUSH SHELAGH MARTIN, BUCCANEERS COMEDY, W1 NEVER before in my years of reviewing stand-up comedy have I seen a headline act die as absolutely on their backside as Martin did. The so-called surreal comedienne spent her 20 minutes (it felt like 20 hours) telling an incongruous string of feeble jokes to almost total audience silence. From the death of the first pathetic joke, she informed the punters in her patent pedagogic manner that she had around 60 more gags (all numbered) of the same quality - and she wasn't joking. Mind you, if she had been, no-one would have noticed. Her performance was torturous. Wearing a flowery dress, she told the crowd that she hated plantlife. Why? Throughout, Martin spoke like an ivory tower-hamletted fob striving to touch base with the common folk. Even when a teacher heckled, it was met with a ludicrously patronising: "You're trying to help, but, it's not helpful." Is this really what live interactive entertainment has come to? The fact that Martin takes her show to the Edinburgh festival and behoves praise in the eyes of some deluded comedy reviewers shows the pretentious crap still knocking around in stand-up. With the words: "Here endeth tonight's lecture", she rounded off her act as at least one audience member seemed to doze on. Now why would that be... STAR RATING (out of five): ZERO -- Peter Guest BIB & BOB, The Criterion Theatre, Piccadilly Circus, London LET'S make no bones about it. Jerry Sadowitz and Logan Murray's sketch show is one of the most racist, distasteful and obscene productions to ever visit the West End. Yet I found myself laughing like a drain from start to finish as the anarchic pair assaulted the senses with aspects of stand-ups I despise in others. The trick they pulled off was to make everything a parody in a fast-moving orgy of futility - an act in which not a jot seemed to matter. Superman flew again as Christopher Reeve was physically thrown from his wheelchair; an audience member was verbally battered by both performers merely for being bald (eventually he cracked and started to scream back abuse); and Sadowitz delivered an almost-unbelievable racist rant in the guise of an American entertainer. It was highly disturbed stuff. Sadowitz is a mad, menacing figure on stage. I blinked in disbelief as he spat on a girl in the front row. In a sense, that vulgar act was more unexpected and shocking that the distasteful skits. How anyone would dare to heckle a monster like Sadowitz is beyond me. One foolhardy drunk who tried incurred the full Sadowitz wrath. The crazed Scot ran to back of the theatre to scream abuse at the cowardly man who had shouted out something from behind a pillar. The aggression in the room seemed to be contagious. Soon an argument had broken out between another drunk trying to get to the toilet and a middle-class woman whose view had been blocked. Sadowitz heckled one combatant, Logan picked on the other. You could easily imagine the show ending in a riot. It reminded me of the last time I saw Sadowitz perform live, at a tiny backstreet theatre in Soho. During the show, an outraged comedienne in the audience punched him - and it definitely wasn't part of the act. But to be honest, Sadowitz is only picking up where great American comics like Andy Kaufmann and Bill Hicks left off. Bib and Bob are only so refreshing now because they shamelessly break all taboos - saying the unsayable; doing the undoable in the politically-correct Ben Eltonized late 1990s. And not all their act was on the edge. The send-up of observational stand-up ("Do you read the Independent? Have you got a cat?") was inspired, as was their attack on West End theatre critics. (I know the late Jack Tinker would have loved their dig at him). And the Venetian Blinds sketch (in which two blind men from Vienna did a dance routine) was more slapstick than offensive. Ultimately, the show ended up with a good old-fashioned muck around. Murray was down to his boxer shorts and Sadowitz (always wanting to outdo his less famous colleague) was not wearing a stitch, as they enacted a martial arts film spoof casting out liberal quantites of baked beans and ketchup. On my way out of the theatre, I popped into the toilet to find oikish young men weeing in the Criterion sinks - and revelling in the sick and racist elements of show. As ever, the risk with racist and perverted parody is that half your audience will be total asses determined to take it all at face value. -- John Loblich Visit our sister site: Oliver's Poetry home Get your poems published for free Friends' Poetry home Oliver's Poetry Garret Interactive Blog Oliver's Poetry Garret No Frills Blog A-Z of Poetry Oliver's Poetry UK |
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