Comedy gig notes
Specifically, Mach comedy festival, a couple of weeks ago now. It was really nice, small and friendly. Not many hotel rooms in the town (it being a fairly small country town and all) so it's mostly hostels or camping; I was in a hostel with a bunch of the people who were doing the admin and running venues. I think another time I'd book a few less things beforehand so I had a bit more opportunity for going to some of the "surprise" events (and getting proper meals). It's mainly people trying stuff out for Edinburgh, but quite a few people were doing one finished show and one in progress.
Friday highlights:
White did a "Mrs Haringey 2014" character, and a rather nice tour guide one, very quiet, with an awful map, and eating her lunch as she went. "Anyone have any allergies? There will be traces of dairy."
Demetriou had a big thing of this being her first year of doing an act alllllllll alone (her friend and her brother popped up to do bits with her.) I liked a character trying to pitch an idea for selling pizza in clubs. "I want £16 for 100% of this concept. This is a burden to me.")
Mike Wozniak I'd been hoping to see for a while, and will try to see again, he was very good. I liked his coping with a heckler by going "Well, that's one-up to you." "Sorry, I don't have the skillset to deal with that." Baffled them into silence. The show took in an hour of frustration heaped on frustration, living with his mother-in-law, sky-diving, police horses, filing sheds, his grandmother's deathbed- all beautifully structured to tie in.
Saturday:
Mabey, who autocorrect really doesn't like, was working up an hour about having a baby- there were some nice acerbic bits, and also a lot about sausage rolls (substitute "sausage roll" into almost any song about rock'n'roll. You'll thank her.) There was a bit of a theme about men who claim to find women "mysterious"- called back in a gag about being called "it" for some reason, and "even misogynists rarely call women "it". They don't think we're *that* mysterious."
Nadia Kamil! So good- my favourite act of the weekend. I'm so sad she's moving to America. It was in a tiny room under a mediaeval cafe, people squeezed in and sitting on windowsills and things (I was sitting next to Bridget Christie) She had a mix of old and new material, and was selecting what bit to do next with a spinner. A bit about being a runner, and being honked at and catcalled, and designing the "honk if you love feminism" t-shirt as a response- "I gave the profits to a charity... bit cross now, I didn't think it'd sell that as many as it has..." a very silly bit about Wham, where she played a George Michael song and there Wham bars at the audience… a bit about bringing a red ribbon to section off the VIP section of the audience: "Psych, I'm a socialist, I don't believe in VIPs", and the whole audience got corralled in ribbon… a bit about being Welsh-Iraqi, and the national flower of each. (Leek. Moustache.) A really ridiculous unicorn costume, clopping Bounty bars together instead of coconut shells, and telling people to "smize", while she "smorned" (smiled with her horn). And a bit about gender in advertising- "I'd love to see a man eating yogurt!" (so she gave a bloke a yogurt. And told him to "smogurt".) And how odd it was to be in LA and sincerely be told "That was great", and a tour of UK accents to prove it would always sound sarcastic or sinister- oh, and just tons of ridiculous, offbeat, (angry- a bit with "women is not a genre" about clubs only putting one woman on a bill), silly stuff. So much fun.
Three sketch acts in a row. I saw Birthday Girls last year but had only heard of Sheeps and Toby before this.
I liked Sheeps- they're doing one of those shows-about-being-in-a-sketch-group, where you get to know the personas of the performers outside the sketches- this group has a dictatorial one, a gormless one, and an angry one. The gormless one had managed to accidentally book them in to perform at Wembley, and they were having a breakdown trying to write a show that would pull in hundreds of thousands, and so they'd only got one sketch- set in an aquarium, with an evil jellyfish trying to persuade a worker to kill his friend; so you got the sketch again and again, longer, darker, in different settings, from the POV of a character originally at the other end of a phone call; and the group breaks down and chucks out a member, and eventually reconciles. Good stuff.
Birthday Girls had a show with a narrative last year but this year seem to have gone for separate sketches (tied together by dancing between them, which sounds a bit odd but worked well, although leaving them quite out of breath sometimes). Some nice repeating situations, like surgeons flirting over a patient/generals flirting in a war room, and someone who forgets why they've come into the room.
The framework of Toby's show was more memorable than the sketches- they're RL sisters, and the set-up was that one had been in a car accident and lost her memory, and the other was helping her back to independence, by training her with dog treats, forcing her to sing inane songs about their childhood, etc- the denouement is of course that the "car crash" was nothing of the sort.
Sunday:
Widdecome and James are old friends- I quite liked the stand-up bits they each did (James had a nice bit about nearly missing a train), but it was more fun when they were just chatting for a few minutes, about when they shared a bed for a bit, and which modern sweets would blow Victorians' minds, and such. (James plugged his "greatest hits" show later that day and Widdecombe said "I know all your greatest hits- I might go and sing along.")
Gabby Best was doing a single (new) character for an hour, a model-cum-guru- one of her mediations was occasionally staring at a bit of paper with some notes on it… a nice bit where she asked for fears to write on the floor in order to banish them (someone contributed "doorknobs") and then found that the chalk wouldn't wipe off.
John-Luke Roberts was my other favourite act of the festival. There were a couple of recurring features, Alan the Button and pre-written insults, and Mr Bitey (those chattering jaw toys); a man was pulled out of the audience to feed him mint cake periodically, and he also ended up having to operate a Mr Bitey in Roberts' underwe... There was also some stuff about books, referencing the John Waters quote about not fucking someone with no books in the house, and concluding that people might just be taking good care of their books by not having them out on shelves to be touched (John Waters hates books); and a bit about splitting up with his ex, made a bit more difficult by her being in the audience; "It was October last year, she said she wanted us to spend some time apart. I asked her if she was trying to spoil the Doctor Who 50th for me. Didn't I?" ("Yes!") "So lonely." There was also a bit of a theme around having been called a cerebral comic- not being able to keep up with people playing Shakespeare games at a party; and a very very silly topless section about earwax; and Mensa being his perfect audience- "they think they're as clever as I think I am'.
Freeze! is Tim Key and Tom Basden- they mostly do solo stuff these days so it was nice to see them back in the relationship of Key abusing and belittling Basden (there was a whole thing of Basden holding Key's beer in the right place- and mopping up a spill with his sock). They showed a couple of videos; I liked one an ad for shampoo where people washing their heair *actually* got transported to a pastoral landscape. They also did some solo poems and songs, and there was a very nice bit with an interrupted magic trick.
The Bearpit Podcast (Podcast)* has the format of a podcast from a minor comedy club, where a comedians do a bit of their act and then an interview; it's improvised character stuff, I guess? This time they blindfolded an audience member and got him to draw a giraffe by geometrical figures, there was a German who solved people's problems (the best problem as being afraid of public speaking); there was a hyper-observational comedian who couldn't stop observing everything, and John Kearns nearly couldn't work out how to back down from a fight. The ending was created by a fluke of the venue- it was in a meeting room, and there was a list of old council members on the wall, so Kearns did impressions of eg Hywll Roberts, 1932 (they were mostly just one word, which we were assured definitely summed up the essence of that person)- when somebody spotted that there was a John Thomas on the list, the pressure of expectation was too much to avoid...
*not a podcast
This entry was originally posted at http://shark-hat.dreamwidth.org/192284.html. Comment here or there.
Friday highlights:
White did a "Mrs Haringey 2014" character, and a rather nice tour guide one, very quiet, with an awful map, and eating her lunch as she went. "Anyone have any allergies? There will be traces of dairy."
Demetriou had a big thing of this being her first year of doing an act alllllllll alone (her friend and her brother popped up to do bits with her.) I liked a character trying to pitch an idea for selling pizza in clubs. "I want £16 for 100% of this concept. This is a burden to me.")
Mike Wozniak I'd been hoping to see for a while, and will try to see again, he was very good. I liked his coping with a heckler by going "Well, that's one-up to you." "Sorry, I don't have the skillset to deal with that." Baffled them into silence. The show took in an hour of frustration heaped on frustration, living with his mother-in-law, sky-diving, police horses, filing sheds, his grandmother's deathbed- all beautifully structured to tie in.
Saturday:
Mabey, who autocorrect really doesn't like, was working up an hour about having a baby- there were some nice acerbic bits, and also a lot about sausage rolls (substitute "sausage roll" into almost any song about rock'n'roll. You'll thank her.) There was a bit of a theme about men who claim to find women "mysterious"- called back in a gag about being called "it" for some reason, and "even misogynists rarely call women "it". They don't think we're *that* mysterious."
Nadia Kamil! So good- my favourite act of the weekend. I'm so sad she's moving to America. It was in a tiny room under a mediaeval cafe, people squeezed in and sitting on windowsills and things (I was sitting next to Bridget Christie) She had a mix of old and new material, and was selecting what bit to do next with a spinner. A bit about being a runner, and being honked at and catcalled, and designing the "honk if you love feminism" t-shirt as a response- "I gave the profits to a charity... bit cross now, I didn't think it'd sell that as many as it has..." a very silly bit about Wham, where she played a George Michael song and there Wham bars at the audience… a bit about bringing a red ribbon to section off the VIP section of the audience: "Psych, I'm a socialist, I don't believe in VIPs", and the whole audience got corralled in ribbon… a bit about being Welsh-Iraqi, and the national flower of each. (Leek. Moustache.) A really ridiculous unicorn costume, clopping Bounty bars together instead of coconut shells, and telling people to "smize", while she "smorned" (smiled with her horn). And a bit about gender in advertising- "I'd love to see a man eating yogurt!" (so she gave a bloke a yogurt. And told him to "smogurt".) And how odd it was to be in LA and sincerely be told "That was great", and a tour of UK accents to prove it would always sound sarcastic or sinister- oh, and just tons of ridiculous, offbeat, (angry- a bit with "women is not a genre" about clubs only putting one woman on a bill), silly stuff. So much fun.
Three sketch acts in a row. I saw Birthday Girls last year but had only heard of Sheeps and Toby before this.
I liked Sheeps- they're doing one of those shows-about-being-in-a-sketch-group, where you get to know the personas of the performers outside the sketches- this group has a dictatorial one, a gormless one, and an angry one. The gormless one had managed to accidentally book them in to perform at Wembley, and they were having a breakdown trying to write a show that would pull in hundreds of thousands, and so they'd only got one sketch- set in an aquarium, with an evil jellyfish trying to persuade a worker to kill his friend; so you got the sketch again and again, longer, darker, in different settings, from the POV of a character originally at the other end of a phone call; and the group breaks down and chucks out a member, and eventually reconciles. Good stuff.
Birthday Girls had a show with a narrative last year but this year seem to have gone for separate sketches (tied together by dancing between them, which sounds a bit odd but worked well, although leaving them quite out of breath sometimes). Some nice repeating situations, like surgeons flirting over a patient/generals flirting in a war room, and someone who forgets why they've come into the room.
The framework of Toby's show was more memorable than the sketches- they're RL sisters, and the set-up was that one had been in a car accident and lost her memory, and the other was helping her back to independence, by training her with dog treats, forcing her to sing inane songs about their childhood, etc- the denouement is of course that the "car crash" was nothing of the sort.
Sunday:
Widdecome and James are old friends- I quite liked the stand-up bits they each did (James had a nice bit about nearly missing a train), but it was more fun when they were just chatting for a few minutes, about when they shared a bed for a bit, and which modern sweets would blow Victorians' minds, and such. (James plugged his "greatest hits" show later that day and Widdecombe said "I know all your greatest hits- I might go and sing along.")
Gabby Best was doing a single (new) character for an hour, a model-cum-guru- one of her mediations was occasionally staring at a bit of paper with some notes on it… a nice bit where she asked for fears to write on the floor in order to banish them (someone contributed "doorknobs") and then found that the chalk wouldn't wipe off.
John-Luke Roberts was my other favourite act of the festival. There were a couple of recurring features, Alan the Button and pre-written insults, and Mr Bitey (those chattering jaw toys); a man was pulled out of the audience to feed him mint cake periodically, and he also ended up having to operate a Mr Bitey in Roberts' underwe... There was also some stuff about books, referencing the John Waters quote about not fucking someone with no books in the house, and concluding that people might just be taking good care of their books by not having them out on shelves to be touched (John Waters hates books); and a bit about splitting up with his ex, made a bit more difficult by her being in the audience; "It was October last year, she said she wanted us to spend some time apart. I asked her if she was trying to spoil the Doctor Who 50th for me. Didn't I?" ("Yes!") "So lonely." There was also a bit of a theme around having been called a cerebral comic- not being able to keep up with people playing Shakespeare games at a party; and a very very silly topless section about earwax; and Mensa being his perfect audience- "they think they're as clever as I think I am'.
Freeze! is Tim Key and Tom Basden- they mostly do solo stuff these days so it was nice to see them back in the relationship of Key abusing and belittling Basden (there was a whole thing of Basden holding Key's beer in the right place- and mopping up a spill with his sock). They showed a couple of videos; I liked one an ad for shampoo where people washing their heair *actually* got transported to a pastoral landscape. They also did some solo poems and songs, and there was a very nice bit with an interrupted magic trick.
The Bearpit Podcast (Podcast)* has the format of a podcast from a minor comedy club, where a comedians do a bit of their act and then an interview; it's improvised character stuff, I guess? This time they blindfolded an audience member and got him to draw a giraffe by geometrical figures, there was a German who solved people's problems (the best problem as being afraid of public speaking); there was a hyper-observational comedian who couldn't stop observing everything, and John Kearns nearly couldn't work out how to back down from a fight. The ending was created by a fluke of the venue- it was in a meeting room, and there was a list of old council members on the wall, so Kearns did impressions of eg Hywll Roberts, 1932 (they were mostly just one word, which we were assured definitely summed up the essence of that person)- when somebody spotted that there was a John Thomas on the list, the pressure of expectation was too much to avoid...
*not a podcast
This entry was originally posted at http://shark-hat.dreamwidth.org/192284.html. Comment here or there.