Tag: Leicester Square Theatre

Stewart Lee: Snowflake/Tornado review *****

Stewart Lee: Snowflake/Tornado

Leicester Square Theatre, 10th December 2019

It’s Stewart Lee. He is so far above other comedians that it makes me wonder why they bother. Of course it is a 5* review. Even when he is meandering he is a genius. Here the show was delayed by a power failure. Just more for him to get his teeth into. This double header routine is already lighter than the shows of recent years. The old boy is mellowing. But it is still as sharp as it needs to be and he wants it to be.

Went with BD who, by virtue of age, education and upbringing will not lot anything offensive pass. This is the only fat, bearded, privileged, cantankerous, white, straight, fifty-something bloke that she has the time of day for. Apart from Dad of course. And that is touch and go. I took her to see Ben Elton a week or so later. Based on my memory and our shared love of Blackadder. He was awful. An embarrassment. Pretending to be aware but reverting to lazy, tired cliche. I didn’t need BD to tell me what was wrong. We walked as soon as we could.

SL, beyond the deconstruction, reconstruction, repetition, dissonance, surreality, clever-clever, childish, audience prodding, provocation, intimidation, irony, sarcasm, faux self-regard, self-deprecation, is an optimist, a moral crusader who cannot tolerate hypocrisy even in himself. In a world where everyone is seeking offence or victimhood, he is critical in all senses. Of course you already know that and will have already signed up to see the show. Of which there are many. As he says, without him us liberals have been “starved of the opportunity to participate in mass agreement”. If you haven’t why don’t you go and see what all the fuss is about.

Snowflake works because it defends the “politically correct” that the uncritical rail against largely through the confrontation they employ. The attack of Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s comedy conceit. The painful put-down of Ricky Gervais “saying the unsayable”. Tornado works through incongruity. The confused Netflix listing, the Alan Bennett expansion and the Dave Chapelle anecdote. And those on just the hooks on which so many other laughs are secured.

For he is very, very, very funny.

Murder She Didn’t Write at the Leicester Square Theatre review ****

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Murder She Didn’t Write, Degrees of Error, Something for the Weekend

Leicester Square Theatre, 25th March 2018

Flushed with success from our previous outing to the LST for a bit of class improv, BD, LD and the Tourist slope off to see Degrees of Error and Something for the Weekend and their commended show Murder She Didn’t Write. If this was as anything like as good as Austentatious we were in with a treat (Austentatious at Leicester Square Theatre review ****).

Well, I can report, it is,  and we were. You wouldn’t think to look at kindly Agatha Christie that she could have such a devious and sly mind. For how else to explain how she re-wrote the rules on whodunnit plotting. Which delights in exposing human cruelty. Take a look at Sarah Phelps’s riveting adaptations courtesy of the BBC, Ordeal By Innocence on now, Witness For The Prosecution and And Then There Were None, if you want to see how Christie should be done.

Agatha Christie is, by some margin, the most famous product of Torbay. If the Tourist, who is similarly scion-ed, is to catch her up he needs to come up with something sharpish. This blog, with its still pitiful double digit readership, is not it. Her holiday home, Greenway House, is well worth a visit, and happens to be just down the road from the Tourist’s alma mater.

The classic Christie tropes, the grand locations, the secretive characters, the class divisions, the disguises and assumed identities, the clues and red herrings, the inspired investigator, the big reveal, are as amenable to spoofing as they are to cracking drama. So it’s not really a great surprise to see an improvisation troupe alight on Agatha as a source for its entertainment.

That is not in any way to decry the skill which Degrees of Error bring this to the stage. DoE are an improv theatre company based in Bristol and have been taking Murder She Didn’t Write to Edinburgh and on tour since 2013. So they know what they are about. Even so, as with Austentatious, improv comedy theatre on this scale, (we got around 90 minutes of action for our 15 quid each), is a tough gig. So they wisely help themselves in a number of ways. One of the company, (I think Tom Bridges but with no cribsheet I can’t be sure so forgive me if I am mistaken), plays the detective, who guides us through the “plot” with occasional interjections to give his “acting” colleagues time to pause for breath and to suggest scenarios which might add to the gag quotient. He also recruits a member of the audience to be his sidekick, Jerkins, who picks out both victim and murderer. Our cast is “colour-coded” Cluedo fashion to assist in the process. Jerkins also ultimately decides on the location and event for the murder mystery based on audience suggestions vetted by the Inspector.

All this buys a bit of time for cast to prepare and to fit the classic Christie tropes to their characters. Even so, early on, there are a few awkward diversions and cross-talking, but after the first 20 minutes or so the direction is set and the cast can settle into the flow. Then they start making it look easy. After the interval you would barely know it was improvised.

It is very, very funny. Our setting, a wine tasting, and location, a wine-glass factory worked a treat. I don’t know how much they might have squeezed in from previous improvs but nothing ever feels forced or less than spontaneous. Watching the comic ideas coalesce is delightful and seeing the cast grinning when they hit the comedy jackpot makes the whole thing even funnier. That is the shared joy of improv.

I think the cast was Peter Baker, Lizzy Skrzypiec, Tessa Gaukroger, Caitlin Campbell, Rachel Lane and John Lomas, but I can’t be sure as I say. No point singling out anyone in particular, the whole ensemble was fabulous.

If this even slightly piques your interest I strongly encourage you to take the plunge. The London gigs at the LST are at 4pm on a Sunday. What else are you going to be doing then FFS? This is one of those outings where you absolutely can take your mates along without worrying they won’t enjoy it and you will look like a tit, and there is, for a couple of hours at least, no question of FOMO or phone-withdrawal kicking in.

http://www.degreesoferror.com/tour/

 

 

Austentatious at Leicester Square Theatre review ****

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Austentatious

Leicester Square Theatre, 26th February 2017

So I am guessing that a good number of people have already stumbled across the comedy joy that this improvisatory troupe bring. So I’ll get to the point. The premise is simple. Take some suggestions from the audience for daft, “unpublished” Jane Austen novel titles and then improvise plot and character over the thick end of an hour around that. I suspect there may be a little “deus ex machina” in the choice of title that is actually picked out of the hat but even so, the revolving cast of actors are so honed at this that there are guaranteed chuckles, titters and, for me, quite a few belly laughs.

Now obviously if you see this you probably will have some regard for the work of Austen. And it helps that the great lady herself was a master at the art of gentle situation comedy. So taking her stock situations and characters and poking fun at them was, in hindsight, always going to be a winner. But this lot are doing it in real time, whilst having to gauge the reactions of each other and audience, resolve the narrative twist and turns, and make it properly funny. I massively take my hat off to anyone brave enough to do improv and it is often a device that disappoints or annoys. But not here. They are outstanding, including the cellist on the night we went, and very clever, as they have to be to incorporate the multiplicity of references and the barrage of sight gags. And I assume the more they practice they better they have become.

So if you think this sounds like your cup of tea then do not hesitate. They regular pitch up here, elsewhere in London, in Edinburgh during the festival and on tour, so it should be easy enough to track them down.

There is very little on which the tourist’s family can agree on in terms of entertainment. The complex negotiations required even to watch a DVD or Netflix film would test the Foreign Office. We are constantly praying for a new comedy series to appear on the box as this is the one likely constant in a sea of argument and resentment. MS, and even more so MSC, are careful to time their visits to avoid any potential TV watching longueurs. We can, just occasionally, look forward to the next Bond movie or backwards, misty-eyed, to anything by Mischief Theatre, but otherwise it every man or woman for him/herself, tapping away or staring aimlessly at their own devices.

For one precious hour though Austentatious brought us together. It might work for you too. “For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbours and laugh at them in our turn” as Ms A apparently wrote in P and P.