Comedy Night 8
Production: Comedy Night 8
Venue: York Theatre Royal
Date: 15/06/09
Rating: **
I only like my comedy a certain way. It has to be that quasi-contradictory comedy of subtle controversy and haphazard discretion: think Faulty Towers meets Jimmy Carr.
York Theatre Royal’s Comedy Night seemed to be offering a line-up that could potentially fulfill such criteria: Patrick Monahan offers the energetic (slightly nauseating) banter; Steve Griffin supplies some of his scabrous Scouse stories; whilst Craig Campbell presents elements of terse transnational respite. Or so we would hope.
The fusion didn’t work. In fact, there was no fusion. The three acts were introduced by Monahan with such squealing and slapdash that I wanted to leave before the show even began. The continuity between the acts was reaching impressive minus figures by the show’s closing act.
But all was not lost: there was an advantage to Monahan’s introductions. His voice became so excruciating after five minutes that most of the audience will have been coveting an alternative. Any comedian approaching the stage was a timely relief. His opening joke about York’s population of old people (there wasn’t much of an evolution after this) must have lasted for over 15 minutes, although it was dying an imminent death after three.
Geoff Norcott opened with an innocuous set of masculine gags about his wife and kids: all slightly bland but relatively amiable. Next up was the true star of the night, guitar-strumming satirist Steve Griffin. Plunging straight into shocking political criticism, he knocked the audience straight out of its semi-slumber. Perhaps some gags – especially ones concerning stoning in Iran – pierced the safety zone of the audience; but this was a relief after the annoyance of Griffin and the tedium of Norcott.
All hope of the show culminating on an even more successful note was lost after just a few moments of Campbell’s set. His first contrived gags centred on insulting the Scottish which, whilst unimaginative, still at least managed to raise a few eyebrows. If I knew that this was the apex of his set I would have left there and then. His set then slipped into dull anecdotes about him driving his motorbikes (all a bit predictable and cheesy, due to the tight leather trousers he was donning) and more hackneyed observations about – you guessed it – female drivers. Yawn.
Perhaps the show would have made more sense if the comedians had not been thrust together without much synthesis. Individually, I’m sure their sets, especially Griffin’s, would have had more autonomy. I also understand that my expectation from comedy is not exactly all-encompassing, so I appreciate that Norcott’s timid humour has its fans. I’m just not one of them.
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