14.12.11

National Emergency?          
'Is British humour dead?' asks Prospect magazine. You will not be surprised to learn that Sam Leith’s answer is ‘No’ (an article with that title being unlikely to conclude otherwise). A more interesting question (which, to be fair, much of Leith’s article considers) is what counts as British humour? Leith mentions in passing a traditional idea of Britishness, but his reference points are arguably more English than British (tellingly, he includes cricket). Getting a handle on a British comic sensibility is complicated by the need to have some idea of what makes it British. And to do that, one must also negotiate differences of class and region (indeed, one striking feature of British humour is that it crams in so many micro-varieties).
For example, one might seek to define British comedy by reference to undeniably classic instances: so Peter Cook and Billy Connolly might each be taken to epitomise a British comic sensibility (which they surely do, if there is one). But what do their respective brands of humour have in common? More importantly, what do they have in common that, say, Woody Allen or Dave Allen do not also share?
Another route is to focus on characteristic topics: class and sexual repression are the two which usually get a mention at this point. But each of these illustrate, in different ways, the problem with trying to define British humour. It no longer seems mandatory for comics to attack or even acknowledge the class system (though there has been a recent revival, which may or may not be related to the fact that Britain has its first Old Etonian Prime Minister since Alec Douglas-Home). Sexual failure brought about by social awkwardness is a more common topic: at a stand-up open mic night, one will hear of little else. (A female comic I knew used to open that part of her set with the line ‘Like all stand-ups, I don’t have a girlfriend…’.) However, as an Irishman I can testify that this sort of thing is common currency among comics (both on and off the stage) in at least some other countries. The kinds of theme often mentioned as British turn out to be either too limited or too universal.
We shouldn’t be tempted to conclude from even this brief survey that there is no such thing as British humour. Rather, we just need to scale back our expectations as to how clearly it can be defined. The various examples of British humour share very little except a common tradition, a loose set of reference points none of which on its own could define a national comic sensibility. So Peter Cook, Billy Connolly, class and sex are all relevant, but none are decisive. In a sense, this is an ‘opt in’ (or out) understanding; a sketch troupe in Duluth or Durban could be usefully classed as sharing a British comic sensibility if their act was modelled with sufficient precision on Monty Python or Fry & Laurie. But this is just what we should expect. Humour can flit across national boundaries as easily as venture capital, but unlike money it will usually have a passport, an accent and a family.




21.11.11

Ars Longa, Vita Brevis? (Life’s Too Short, BBC2)

You’re Ricky Gervais. You’ve created one of the best and most-loved entertainments since John Logie Baird first stuck his finger in a cathode ray tube. You’ve endured the Difficult Second Sitcom (not a classic, but not a disaster either), performed hugely successful stand-up and podcasts, written somewhat less successful films, made fun of the rich and famous at awards ceremonies, become quite rich and famous yourself, and duly made fun of yourself for it. What do you do now?

The answer, apparently, is to do it all again. There’s been quite a bit of comment on how Life’s Too Short, the new Gervais/Merchant sitcom, recapitulates many of his trademarks: the faux-documentary format, awkward situations, edgy humour, celebrity walk-ons. The scenes with Gervais and Merchant even feel like a televised podcast. The series co-writers sit on one side of a table in their office, joshing with Warwick Davis, vertically challenged star of the show, sometimes with a celebrity guest in tow. All we’re missing is Karl Pilkington to make Gervais crease with strangely un-infectious laughter.

All of which does raise the question: what is the point of these scenes, given the already animated existence of The Ricky Gervais Show? More generally, what is the point of this show? Not, I hasten to add, that’s it’s rubbish. Davis is a strong lead, though a little too close to Gervais/Brent in manner and outlook. He particularly excels at the sideways worried glance that a show built from awkward encounters gives him plenty of chances to deploy. The supporting cast, including Rosamund Hanson as Davis’ assistant drone and Jo Enright as his estranged wife, is pitch-perfect for the strained naturalism the format requires. A couple of scenes in the first episode were brilliant: Davis caught by his wife attempting a unorthodox return to his house, and the scene with Liam Neeson. His cameo, demanding to learn the secrets of comic improvisation from Gervais and Merchant, is a masterpiece of earnest bafflement with an undertow of unhinged menace. The writing was crisp (though I could have done without the references to Schindler’s List – they felt too jokey), but Neeson took it beyond anything else seen thus far.

The reason for this is telling. Apart from Neeson’s performance, the exchanges felt like they had a point; that they revealed something about his character, in a way that wasn’t merely contrived to produce uncomfortable silences (though it produced plenty of those). In contrast, much of the show feels aimless, comedy awkwardness for its own sake. The point isn’t that awkwardness is passé, or that Gervais and Merchant are recycling the same tropes. It’s that proper awkward comedy demands attention to plot and character. Precisely because no-one is allowed to crack wise every twenty seconds, the humour has to come from telling details of characterisation and motivation; it has to make sense for the characters to get into these situations, to realise what’s happened, and to react as they do. Curb Your Enthusiasm does this season after season (the most recent series is arguably the best yet). The Office was a superb example of how to build this kind of comedy out of everyday non-events.

In contrast, Life’s Too Short is far too episodic and short on plot (no pun intended).[i] Worse, it’s short on milieu. Davis floats in a sitcom nowhere, not quite the media, not quite entertainment, not quite office life or domesticity. It all feels frictionless, lacking the undertows of frustration or resentment that might result in consistent comedy. We’re left with a collection of individual scenes – some very good, some featuring Johnny Depp, and some with Gervais and Merchant that will make you think of other shows you have seen them in. You hope they won’t end up wondering where the time went.


[i] Oh alright, it was.

8.11.11

A Brief Entry In Lieu Of A Proper Post

The Adventures of Tintin: Secret of the Unicorn – not the kind of ungainly title you’d expect to see at the start of the post on a comedy blog. (I imagine the film is no laughing matter either, though I have no plans to find out.[i])

But digging through some of the ridiculous internet sturm und drang that has blown up around the film, I discovered something worthy of note, if little more. The latest Stephen Speilberg project, produced by Peter Jackson, is written by a Scot and two Englishmen who are, to all intents and purposes, comedy writers: Steven Moffat (writer of various sitcoms, and co-creator of last year’s Sherlock); Edgar Wright (director of Spaced, co-writer and director of Shaun of the Death and Hot Fuzz); and Joe Cornish (one half of Adam and Joe).

Is this the future for the animated blockbuster? Should we brace ourselves for Pixar movies scripted by Graham Linehan, or Dreamworks commissioning Chris Morris to write yet another Shrek sequel? Will this influx of British sitcom expertise revive a slumbering giant, or will these writers become lost in the labyrinthine bowels of the Hollywood system?

The real mystery, of course, is how Stephen Moffat, a man who co-created the latest version of Sherlock Holmes and wrote the excellent first episode, could also have been responsible for Coupling, one of the most wearily formulaic sitcoms I have ever seen. Something for an intrepid Belgian boy journalist to investigate, perhaps (if he ever makes it back to the big screen).


[i] I did see the trailer, so let’s say it felt like I saw a whole film, and leave it at that.

18.10.11

Brave New World (The Hunt for Tony Blair, Channel 4)

Satire departs in varying degrees from the facts; indeed, this departure is part of what makes it satirical. Its intent can register in a slight exaggeration of a vocal inclination, or in depicting recognisable persons as animals or inanimate objects. The Hunt For Tony Blair presents a familiar cast in a recognisably different universe, not one created specifically for satirical purposes, but drawing on our knowledge of genre. Blair, Mandelson, Brown and the rest scuttle around in a Cold War-era thriller, which is perhaps suitable given that as a piece of satire it’s a little out of date (one reference to trusting the bankers and a mention of Afghanistan apart, there’s little that speaks to Cameron’s Britain).

And yes, the central theme is Blair as a Tory Boy shyster, on the run from a murder charge: the stuff of a million placards. But don’t let that put you off (too much): this is slick, smart stuff, and a lot better than anything else I’ve seen from The Comic Strip. There aren’t too many outstanding jokes, but the conceit introduces us to a black-and-white world where the theme from A Summer Place swoons over the action, bobbies toot on their whistles while ineffectually chasing fugitives, and the Evening Post is sold at London train stations; but it’s also a world with Iraq, New Labour, and an endless stream of political biographies.

The show is all about this world and its stylish execution: there is little attempt to dig into the coils of politics or present the New Labour years in a remotely realistic fashion. A couple of the actors could pass for distant relatives of their characters (notably Nigel Planer as a drooping Peter Mandelson), but in general there’s little attempt at physically matching the targets; Michael Sheen can rest easy. Stephen Mangan does essay the familiar Blair mannerisms, but it’s not so much a portrait as an aide-memoire to remind us who he’s meant to be. Jennifer Saunders does this even more blatantly with Margaret Thatcher; you’re never in any doubt that you’re watching a comedienne doing a Maggie impression (one of the better things in the show, as it happens). The fun lies in seeing how these characters appear differently in this world, and how it reflects on our perceptions of them in ours. Blair’s perpetually nervous grin suggested a man forever on the defensive; here, he’s got Robbie Coltrane’s hulking detective on his tail. Mandelson’s combination of entitlement and false deferrence to whomever he speaks makes him an ideal subject for police cross-examination. Thatcher is perfect as a faded diva, with Norman Tebbit as the butler playing her newsreel footage of her martial triumphs. Not all the characters are placed so delicately: the portrayals of Bush and Brown are one-dimensional, and the likes of Cherie Blair and Alistair Campbell get cameos at best. But by placing these rogues in a glamorous age, it emphasises their seediness without spelling it out for us. And – who knows – maybe it’s a deliberate attempt to portray them as yesterday’s men and women, their problems seemingly as remote from us as tiny black-and-white televisions, smoking cigarettes indoors, and Barbara Windsor’s East End accent.

3.10.11

Not with a Bang, but a Tinkle: NF Simpson

Prayer: Let us throw back our heads and laugh at reality:
Response: Which is an illusion caused by mescalin deficiency.
(from A Resounding Tinkle)

NF Simpson, perhaps Britain’s most influential absurdist playwright, suffered a fatal underdose of mescalin at the end of August.
Before I start, a confession: I have not seen any of Simpson’s plays. My appreciation of him is therefore necessarily more limited than might be ideal. There is an argument that the best way to judge a playwright is by the words on the page, avoiding the risk of any actors, directors or other interested parties making it look better than it actually is. Tempting though this thought may be, I think it must be dismissed. Judging a play in this fashion is like judging a painter only by examining the oils in their bottles. Nevertheless, after reading Simpson’s two most famous works, I have formed an impression which is hopefully worth a blog post at any rate.

Reading A Resounding Tinkle and One-Way Pendulum, I was struck by somewhat contradictory thoughts. Each script was fiercely inventive, but each relied heavily on a particular comic approach which I feel would not work nearly as well nowadays. Humour can date to much the same degree as anything else. There must have been a time, perhaps between the evolution of the opposable thumb and the cultivation of fire, when stories finishing with ‘...and that was just the men!’ were cutting edge stuff. Simpson’s humour was of a much more individual kind, mixing absurdism, farcical events and a recognisably English whimsy which litters both scripts (the playwright complaining that most of his work came to him in Portuguese; the judge asking whether the defendant has any “negro blood”, and being told that he might have one or two bottles of it in his room).

What does not work so well is Simpson’s use of the satiric/absurdist set-piece, in which characters in a recognisable setting earnestly debate or work through some Big Idea, in the process reducing it to something smaller: comedians discussing the purpose of the universe; the spoof radio service quoted from above; the trial which takes up almost half of One-Way Pendulum. These came across as clunky, at times didactic. The hand of the author is too readily discerned in them, carefully positioning his mannequins for maximum effect; the point of the exercise is too obvious. One feels as though each such scene should finish with the author emerging from the wings (as happens in A Resounding Tinkle – another rather creaky device) to triumphantly declare ‘QED!’

I suspect the absurdism which runs through Simpson’s writing might be the root of the problem. The great strength and limitation of the Theatre of the Absurd was the sweeping assumptions it was premised upon. If your claim is that society or the family or middle-class certainties are not just wrong or need to be revised, but are meaningless through-and-through, the temptation will be to present them in as dismissive a manner as possible.  The result tended to be plays which made strong, even thrilling claims, but which had little subtlety to reward closer inspection. Kenneth Tynan, a staunch defender of Simpson, noted that few plays by Eugene Ionesco survived a second hearing. I fear this may also be true of Simpson’s work.

25.9.11

Fresh Feeling? (Fresh Meat, Channel 4)

For many people watching Fresh Meat, it will serve both as a warning and a tantalising suggestion of the squalid glamour of university life. For others, it is a reminder of things we would often prefer to forget, be they grotty student houses or clichéd campus comedies.[i] [ii]When a sitcom is focused on such a narrow slice of life, one’s experiences and expectations of its subject-matter are going to play an important part in how one feels about it. It’s not just a matter of perspective, though. After all, Fresh Meat has garnered generally positive notices from reviewers whose salad days are presumably behind them.  Hopefully it’s not just ageist bias or a fuddy-duddy distaste for Young People Today that’s at work when I suggest that this meat is a little undercooked.

Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong’s ouvre includes the peerless Peep Show, which at its best perfected a blend of awkwardness, stupidity and pithy dialogue. Their latest offering takes the same ingredients and pours them into a house with seven students, plus forays to the pub and an English tutorial. But Peep Show worked not because of the first-person gimmick or because it was set in a particularly interesting situation, but because the main characters were developed far enough beyond their respective stereotypes. With this in mind, we should give Fresh Meat a chance to uncover any nuance hidden in its humdrum setup. But going on the first episode, the signs aren’t great. Most of the characters seemed pretty thin, their interactions rarely sparked, and perhaps oddly for a show with such a tight ‘sit’, it lacks as yet the focus of a central conflict or relationship.

Joe Thomas (Kingsley) and Jake Whitehall (JP) came closest to providing a fulcrum. Whitehall’s public-school monstrosity had the best lines going, Thomas the most properly-developed character. It is telling that their exchanges most resembled those familiar from Peep Show; if any of the housemates are going to lodge themselves in the popular consciousness à la Mark and Jeremy, my money is on these two.

None of the other characters seemed to be figured out. Greg McHugh (Howard) – one half of Will and Greg, one of my favourite sketch shows – over-sold every line, perhaps under instruction to appear weirder than anyone else. The most obvious pitch at awkward comedy, the exchanges between Vod (Zawe Ashton) and Oregon (Charlotte Ritchie) didn’t work for the opposite reason. Neither character was sharply defined enough to create the tension required. Ritchie was too polite to be nervous, Ashton too relaxed to come across as taking advantage of her.

Early days, you’ll agree. But speaking as someone who has to teach specimens not too far removed from those on display here, I can tell you that you learn to sniff out the over-achievers and no-hopers quite early. Fresh Meat falls into neither category, as of yet. For all that, I have my suspicions.


[i] Not Campus. Campus would have been doing very well to reach the level of a clichéd comedy.
[ii] A bye-law seems to have been passed forbidding reviews of Fresh Meat from omitting mention of either Campus or Peep Show. This blog plans to tow this line, Vichy-style.

19.9.11

Paris Match (Midnight in Paris)

Like all sentient beings from this planet and beyond, I prefer Woody Allen’s earlier, funny films. Actually, I tell a lie – my favourite Allens are found in the decade between Annie Hall and Hannah and her Sisters. Since then it’s been, to paint in very broad strokes, a long decline, with (increasingly fewer) excellent offerings (Crimes and Misdemeanours; Everyone Says I Love You), amusing miniatures and genre pieces (Curse of the Jade Scorpion; Bullets Over Broadway; Sweet and Lowdown), good ideas that only work to a certain extent (Hollywood Ending; Melinda and Melinda[i]) and some downright stinkers (September; Match Point; Vicky Cristina Barcelona[ii]).

Midnight in Paris is a hard film to fit into any of these loose categories. It has many of the expected Allen touches (star turns; a writer dissatisfied with both his commercial success and his relationship; loving shots of historic buildings and boulevards, presumably arranged in conjunction with the tourist board of the relevant European city). The conceit – Owen Wilson’s frustrated scribbler finds himself able to travel back to the Paris of Hemingway, the Fitzgeralds and the Lost Generation – is both lovely and recognisable as a variation on plot devices in other Allen films (most obviously The Purple Rose of Cairo). It’s also developed in a way that both brings out the theme and is easy to follow, proving that Allen is still capable of coming up with engrossing plots.

The passages between the present day and the gilded past are sweetly achieved – no effects or attempted explanations, just an old-time taxi cab crawling around a corner. The 1920s scenes are a little bit name-droppy, at times an elaborate game of émigré lit talent-spotting – Djuna Barnes pops up at one point – with artists ranging from Man Ray to Modigliani getting walk-on parts or mentions. I rather enjoyed this aspect of the film, but I can imagine if you’re in the wrong mood it would come across as smug, or even desperate to impress. Not a great deal happens in these scenes, but the atmosphere is every bit as bright and fragile as you’d expect. Watching them, I really wanted to be there, which is surely the highest praise you can give a film depicting high-class carousing.

The bigger problems are also familiar from Allen’s recent work. Some of the characters are too eager to state the point the film is obviously making; the treatment of Gil’s wife and her family is perfunctory to the point of being annoying; and, while very enjoyable and occasionally amusing, it is not particularly funny. One feels compelled to class it as a comedy, but perhaps an adjacent genre – light fantasy? – would more easily accommodate it. It hardly matters though; Midnight in Paris is, if not a triumph, then at least an accomplishment of charm over substance.


[i] Well, I thought it was a good idea anyway.
[ii] Face it, it was awful. Stop living in denial.

13.9.11

Toby or not Toby?

If asked for an antonym of ‘comic’, one might plump for ‘serious’, but it’s never been obvious to me that each excludes the other. Not only does some comedy concern serious themes, but it can be a serious examination of them, rather than frivolous light relief. The best character and situation comedy usually has a sincerity about it. Not only will the comedians, writers or actors take the characters seriously, but the piece will work only if the audience take them seriously as well. Hancock (the character from perhaps the first recognisable sitcom, not Will Smith’s grungy superhero) is in many ways a ridiculous character, and takes himself too seriously by far, but for the show to work the audience have to empathise with him.

I saw a lovely example of this approach to comedy in the second-last show I caught at the Fringe, Lucky, by the sketch duo Toby. Ostensibly, Lucky is a sketch show about a troupe struggling to put on a sketch show, falling out with each other over creative differences which are really personal, and so on. This is a familiar device, to the point where any troupe using it need to add some sort of spin of their own to make it worth their (and our) while. One easy way to do this is by making the characters in the sketch troupe, the ones struggling to stage the show-within-the-show, as oddball and different from each other as possible.

Toby do this, in that the on-stage characters are very different; they are also sisters (Sarah and Lizzie Daykin), which itself adds a certain frisson to their exchanges. The basic dynamic between the two is relatively simple: Lizzie’s resentment simmers as Sarah hogs sketches and proclaims her greatness to the audience. However, the duo also do something much more interesting: they take these characters very seriously. This is the first sketch show of this sort I’ve seen where the characters struggling to stage the show are written and acted with enough detail and concern to make their plight genuinely poignant. It’s still comedy, mind, but it’s slow-burn stuff, particularly during the numerous pauses and awkward moments between the two. These are employed to wonderful effect in the sketches the two stage, where the relationship between them warps the performances without, for the most part, being referred to. (Lucky is one of the few sketch shows of which it can be truly be said that none of the material would work as well performed on its own.) In the sketch where they play a married couple, Sarah (the wife) browbeats her husband, who for the most part sits silently. Lizzie’s one lengthy speech in this scene, a story told to the unseen waiter, is a lovely little character detail, showing us the character’s predicament without having him or his wife refer to it it. The hugely exaggerated pause while his wife reads the menu is the funniest bit of the sketch, but it is all the funnier for coming from such a finely crafted scenario.

There are probably a dozen other moments in the show like this one, where the characters don’t do or say anything funny but the comedy comes anyway, from who they are, their mannerisms, and the show’s inevitable spiral into disaster. It’s a high-risk strategy, eschewing the basic set-up/punchline structure for something more slanted and tangential, but Toby make it work every time.

12.9.11

I Know, It’s Serious (Coma Girl, Channel 4; Totally Tom, E4)

Television showcases, box of chocolates, never know what you’re going to get – you know the drill.

Channel 4 and E4 screened what were in effect two very different pitches to commissioning editors. Coma Girls, written by Abigail Wilson, went for the slow burn, with a lot of character detail and humour pitched in a generally low key (small incidents, generating smiles rather than laughs). It benefitted from an exemplary cast, and showed a willingness to play with sitcom conventions, particularly in the portrayal of the comatose Lucy (Anna Crilly, whose onstage partner Katy Wix plays one of her friends). It also wasn’t afraid to spend long stretches fitting the situation together without throwing out a joke every twenty seconds to keep our attention.

The danger with slow burn comedy is that the fuse goes out before anything has a chance to explode. This, unfortunately, was the case here. There was no moment at which the awkwardness and the difficulty of how the characters had been brought together emerged as the uncomfortable comedy which was threatened. It all felt too polite, and not as interesting as it appeared – the use of the soundtrack was rather faux-indie-movie, as were the scenes with Crilly. It might be that this needs a longer running time to tease out the ideas (this is often a feature of very character-based, relatively slow-paced comedy). But it is also possible that the ideas might not be sharp enough to be stretched over a full run.

Totally Tom, on the other hand, made it quite clear that they craved our laughter, bombarding us with silly accents, cultural references and outsized acting galore. Toms Palmer and Stourtan are both capable performers, but some of the relatively lengthy sketches (particularly the riff on Trainspotting) could have benefitted from more sober direction. But a larger problem was the rather familiar feel of the material and the approach taken (take familiar television/movie scenario, insert silliness and/or inappropriate locale, ferment comedy). Coma Girl, whatever reservations one might have, is clearly a fully thought-out show, with an unusual take on the sitcom format. Totally Tom felt like a (well-made) first draft, with little to distinguish it from many other television sketch shows. This isn’t to say it’s rubbish – worse shows have been commissioned (and recommissioned). But I wouldn’t have any great desire to see any more of this, at the moment anyway; whereas I think I would watch another episode of Coma Girl.

29.8.11

Reviews o'clock

Two more for Chortle: WitTank (I've just noticed that their publicity puff compares them to "a runaway carnival of invention", which is a bit of a lie - if they had said "a runaway carnival of silliness, big faces and high energy", it would be more accurate, but perhaps that's the reason I don't have a job writing puff pieces for sketch shows.)
And Ralph Shirley's Philosophical Investigations (for the record, my note that Shirley ordered his topics using Tractarian notation rather than the numberless paragraphs Wittgenstein used in the Investigations was cut by the editor. Unbelievable.)

And two from edfringereview.com: Nottingham newcomers Chaps on Legs, and Singles Collection, a double-bill curio featuring Tim Shishodia, often weird and sometimes wonderful.

I have seen various other shows at the Fringe, and I shall endeavour to write something about them as soon as I get the chance.

28.8.11

Review of Benny Boot...

...can be found here. It's the best thing I've seen so far.

25.8.11

Best Joke of the Fringe?

As voted by the viewers of Dave (The Home Of Witty Banter):

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-14646532

Two things to note: first and most obviously, no-one takes this sort of vote seriously, not even people who take the whole business of jokes very seriously indeed. (Actually, that's not quite true - Dan Antopolski's Best Joke award from a couple of years ago is mentioned in the publicity for his sketch show, Jigsaw.)

Second, it's often hard to know how jokes get onto the best and worst lists. For the sake of drawing conclusions of a Biblically unscientific nature, I read two of my flatmates here the best and worst jokes from the above article. Both preferred Paul Daniels' effort. Personally, I would rather Helm's, but it's not as though there's a chasm between them. They're both puns, both fairly cheesy, and neither are as good as DeAnne Smith's (which, for obvious reasons, was never going to win).

22.8.11

Crowd Surfing (Naz Osmanoglu & Stuart Goldsmith Edinburgh previews, Glassblowers 6/7/2011)

How do you stand out from a crowd? That’s the question facing every stand-up at the Fringe, where the number of acts gathered could form an independent country (they outnumber the population of the Vatican City at any rate). It might be easier if you’re performing in Urdu, or on stilts, or improvising topical hip-hop versions of classic tunes (‘The Night They Drove Old Brixton Down’?), but these strategies bring their own dangers. At the risk of painting in extremely broad strokes, most stand-ups at least gravitate towards a middle ground: one man (usually, although less so of late), one mic, telling stories about themselves and modern life. The trick, then, is how to make a niche for yourself by developing small but important variations on this formula.

Naz Osmanoglu and Stuart Goldsmith illustrate two of the possibilities. Neither tries to reinvent the stand-up wheel, but there are notable differences between them. Osmanoglu is more about a number of set-piece routines, definite high points which his set is structured around. This suits his onstage energy – always bristling, but positively ricochetting around the stage during the climax to one of his stories. He manages to be propulsive without skidding into mania, and importantly manages to keep the stretches between the big set pieces pretty lively as well.

Material-wise, Osmanoglu’s selling-point is his Turkish-British heritage. He has a few adroit but rather standard observations on the respective stereotypes, but things become more interesting when he burrows into his relationship with his father. There are no unsettling revelations here, unless you count a hilariously disgusting lads’ night out in Amsterdam (yes, I know - but trust me, it’s funny). It would be interesting to see if the high-octane delivery would be muted if he took on more personal themes.

I’m guessing Stuart Goldsmith doesn’t have a convoluted ethnic heritage to draw on. It’s very much the trials and tribulations of a middle-class bloke for him. Unlike Osmanoglu, his delivery and material is geared towards lower-key incidents and smaller details. Indeed, for much of the set, his material, enjoyable though it is, reveals less about him than his manner.

Where Osmanoglu is high on energy, Goldsmith charms us into submission. He has the kind of twinkle in his eye and relaxed manner that apparently characterises every second Irish stand-up. This makes him delightful company (unlike every second Irish stand-up), but does mean that the set as whole sometimes drifts. However, this manner does very neatly counterpoint Goldsmith’s theme, that of taking responsibility. He doesn’t speak like a man shouldering much of a burden, but this makes his tales of anxiety and negative thinking that much easier to warm to. There’s very little by way of exaggeration for comic effect here; the stories are low-key enough to sound real even if one hundred per cent fiction. It makes for a show which burns more slowly than Osmanoglu’s, but with just as much warmth.



20.8.11

Comedy Snobbery

Blimy. It only seems like yesterday I was defending Stewart Lee against charges of being a posturing, indulgent dead end. Now comes some rather more loaded criticism from the Telegraph.

So what has Guy Stagg got against Stewart Lee? The rap sheet includes comedy snobbery, the “more poisonous” forms of snobbery which comedy snobbery is apparently a vehicle for, and the hypocrisy of Lee’s showing off his own prejudices while criticising others. ‘Vanity’, ‘cynicism’ and ‘hate’ also get thrown about, and there’s even a mention of the ‘Left-wing elite’. It’s like an Edinburgh Fringe of comedy evils.

Since ‘snobbery’ features twice in Stagg’s Seven Deadly Sins, we’d best be clear what it’s about. Snobs apparently hang around culture and “tell you what to like” and hate. The nerve of them, carrying on like their opinions might matter to anyone else. As Stagg initially presents them, snobs sound like critics, or anyone who leaves comments under an on-line review. I’m going to make a wild guess that someone who blogs on “the fringe arts scene” among other things isn’t suggesting that no-one should air their opinions on the merits or demerits of anything cultural.

So let’s try again. Snobbery, it seems to me, involves at least an element of prejudice, or refusing to engage with something (or someone) on its (or their) own terms, because the validity of those terms is denied. It’s not about telling anyone what to like; it’s about prescribing the criteria by which they ought to make evaluations. And (as Stagg correctly notes) it often involves judgements not just of cultural artefacts but of the people who dare to enjoy them.

Comedy snobbery, it seems, is particularly objectionable. Stagg dismisses it as “indulgent”, since comedians are the worst comedy snobs; but they are often the ones who know and care the most about comedy, and if anyone should be entitled to a little haughtiness towards underwhelming acts, it is they. Comedy snobbery is also “inappropriate”, since laughter is instinctive and inclusive; so too is sexual arousal, but that strikes me as a poor argument against those who would dismiss the artistic merits of pornography.

Stagg’s third point is more interesting: the comedy snob will ignore the laughter of the audience and continue to the judge the joke to be unfunny.  There’s no doubt that being told that something you enjoy ‘isn’t funny’ is aggravating, particularly if one considers comedy to be, fundamentally, a subjective matter. But equally, there are objective criteria by which any comedian can be assessed; they won’t ever capture everything about an act, but they are there just as surely as in composition or dance (if you think that no objective criteria can be applied to dance, you’ve obviously never seen me cutting the rug.)

Michael McIntyre is apparently targeted by snobs for telling simple, popular jokes, free of contempt or bile. For what it’s worth, I suspect that these are among the reasons why it is (or was, at any rate) fashionable to dislike McIntyre. I’m not sure Lee’s ‘My on-stage persona ate my homework’ explanation was entirely convincing; it’s a little too close to giving himself carte blanche to say whatever he, or ‘Stewart Lee’, feels like.

On the other hand, Lee clearly regards McIntyre as part of a burgeoning movement in comedy, one which it’s fair to say he regards with ambivalence rather than contempt. And the fact that it’s popular to criticise McIntyre doesn’t mean that it’s wrong to do so, or evidence of creeping snobbery. Stagg stacks the deck somewhat with his pocket description of McIntyre’s act. For ‘popular’, one could justifiably substitute ‘bland’; for ‘lack of contempt’, ‘lack of ambition’. One’s attitude towards McIntyre will ultimately come down to such value judgements. (Likewise, one’s attitude towards McIntyre’s critics will come down to whether one thinks of them as fashionable snobs or as connoisseurs.)

But the real issue here isn’t attitudes towards comedians, but towards comedy audiences. This is the heart of Stagg’s complaint: Lee’s sets

are a refined way of saying that anyone who reads Dan Brown is stupid and anyone who watches Top Gear is racist. In dissecting the prejudices of others, Stewart Lee is also showing off his own.

Once again, I think there’s a little bit of truth in this. I don’t think Lee is saying precisely what Stagg attributes to him, but it’s hard not to see traces of contempt in some of his stand-up. But Stagg ignores every other aspect of Lee’s criticisms and how he articulates them. It seems odd to note that Lee often ‘savages’ other comedians but to not inquire into why Lee might want to do so, or the significance of him doing so in the context of a stand-up routine, or – most importantly – the fact that he pretty clearly ramps up his dislike of Dan Brown readers and Top Gear audiences for comic effect. He might be indulging his prejudices, but he’s also presenting his own disdain and elitism as something to be sniggered at.

This isn’t to say Stagg himself is being snobbish in dismissing Lee, neat though that conclusion would be. But he does seem guilty of simplifying matters to make his criticisms more plausible, and in doing so arguably missing the point of Lee’s comedy. It’s not snobbery to ignore or misinterpret irony. But it is ironic to do so in the course of dismissing a comedian as prejudiced.

15.8.11

Musique Royale (The Suitcase Royale, ‘The Ballad of Backbone Joe’ – Soho Theatre, 4/7/2011)

It’s not an unusual sight to see comedy troupes wielding rickety props and ramshackle accents in spoof genre plays. Nor is it surprising when they pick up instruments mid-sketch and launch into some appropriate ditty. Australian three-piece The Suitcase Royale invigorate each of these approaches by neatly combining them. Their tale of small-town Australian life (think crooked boxing promoters, detectives, and dark secrets all round) is intercut and underlain with live and recorded music, ranging from cod-jazz crooning to numbers more in the vein of early Johnny Cash or Roy Orbison.

The music itself is very good, in particular the rockabilly pastiches. But where The Suitcase Royale excel is how it is deployed. It would have been easy to play the songs for laughs, particularly considering that the humour and acting style of the show isn’t exactly on the subtle side. There are plenty of winks to the audience, frequent departures from the script, and much fun had with props such as outsize telephone receivers and the skeleton of what looked like a dog but might conceivably have been some obscure marsupial.

But the music mostly works very differently, creating an oddly melancholic atmosphere. This is true even of the songs between scenes, which tended neither to comment directly on the action nor advance it, but to work more in the way background music in films typically does. Mixing this with broad comedy was potentially awkward, but for the most part the different elements were integrated seamlessly. The music helped to create the world of the genre being spoofed, helped by some delicious lighting and judicious sound effects. The spoofing was left to the script and the performers, who were generally more than up to snuff.

The effect is curious, switching from inviting us to sympathise with the characters to laughing at them, and back again. On paper it sounds awkward, as though the cast are forever removing bricks from the fourth wall and peeping through, before filling the gap again. But probably because we’re so familiar with the tropes and the feel of the tough-guy genre, and because those noirish touches are always themselves close to the line between genuine emotion and parody, we can move easily with them. The Suitcase Royale pulled our strings as surely as they played their instruments. I felt used, but in a good way.

The Suitcase Royale are performing Zombatland at Pleasance Courtyard, 11.10pm, until August 28th (except 16th).

9.8.11

Edinburgh preview

Apparently there’s some kind of arts event happening in Scotland this year. Edinburgh, of all places. Who’s idea was that?

It would be remiss of me not to nominate a few acts in the Biggest Comedy Jamboree on Earth. Here are six I spotted flicking through the programme – I’ll have more suggestions presently.

Caveat emptor: I know a couple of the performers listed below. They’re still good, mind - just saying.

Acts I’ve seen and enjoyed previously:

1. Benny Boot – dry-as-dust Australian stand-up. Specialises in lowering the energy in a room, only to lower it further. (Pleasance Courtyard, 9.45 pm)

2. Hannah Gadsby – another pretty dry Australian, but in a more story-telling vein. (Gilded Balloon, 4.45pm)

3. The Gentlemen of Leisure – sketch duo who ransack the world of literature and culture for their topics. Basically, highbrow silliness. (Just the Tonic at The Caves, 3.20pm)

Acts I haven’t seen, but who sound like I would enjoy them

1.Toby – girl-girl sketch group. Last year's show sounded like terrific, inventive fun. That’s my kind of fun. (Pleasance Courtyard, 4.30 pm)

2. David Reed: Shamblehouse – ‘one-man sketch show’ from one-third of the Penny Dreadfuls. I’ve always liked the idea of one person doing a whole sketch show, but I’ve never seen anything that really fits that description. Maybe this will be that show? (Pleasance Courtyard, 8.30 pm)

3. Seminar – Emily Watson Howes specialises in high-concept comedy shows (monologues in ladies toilets, a sketch show set in a gym, that kind of thing). Here she plays a stress expert - it sounds like a close relative to the various management-guru/life-coach characters populating comedy festivals in recent years, but hopefully she has a few interesting twists on the formula. (Pleasance Courtyard, 2.10 pm)

7.8.11

The Future of Comedy?

Everyone loves Stewart Lee, right? Apart from Daily Mail writers, Joe Pasquale, and the kind of person who prefers their funnies to start ‘I’m not saying my mother-in-law is fat...’? And even some of those people probably like Lee, secretly.

I’m simplifying a little – but chances are, if you’re reading this, you’ll be a Lee fan. So it’s refreshing to see Joe Daniels tilting at this loftiest of comedy windmills. Refreshing, but I don’t think he’s got Lee right.

Self-referentiality is perhaps Lee’s main selling-point; both in that his set involves a running commentary on itself, and in the slightly broader sense that he spends a lot of time performing comedy about comedy. It’s fair enough to point out that a great deal of art about art, writing about writing, etc., is smarmy posturing. This is a danger inherent in it, the short step from ‘Let’s poke fun at these hackneyed conventions’ to ‘What kind of fools could take these conventions seriously?’ This might even be a fair criticism of some of Lee's act. But it’s possible to justify quite a bit of his snobbery: inane celebrity biographies and eager-to-please television hosts deserve to be mocked rather than taken seriously. And one of the delights of Lee’s performances is the self-awareness built into this mockery. The audience are both invited to share in the condescension, and at the same time nudged in the ribs at how ridiculous Lee’s irritation is.

Daniels suggests that his mockery leads Lee to set up false dichotomies, between the bits of culture he deems worthy of ridicule (pretty much all of it, apparently), and the elitist standard to which he aspires. While this is true to an extent, I’m inclined to say, ‘Yes, but it’s a comedy set’. Lee exaggerates the blandness of much contemporary culture for comic effect. Again, his audience will be perfectly aware of this; it’s an essential part of their enjoyment. (This might sound very much like I’m saying Lee is having his cake and eating it, inviting his audience to look down on the detritus of popular culture while also finding humour in Lee’s antipathy towards said detritus. Well, he is. Provided this is done skilfully enough, there’s no real contradiction here, just the comic tension that comes from justified irritation at something tugging gently at an obvious over-reaction to it.)

Third, Daniels is right to say that Lee’s act, to the extent that it involves criticising established comic conventions, depends on their continuing popularity: “His act only works when enough people out there like seeing Michael McIntyre bound about in enormo-dromes”. To this extent, Lee’s act is a reaction to the mainstream, and so is ‘reactionary’. But anything (artistic movement, revolutionary vanguard, “silly” “posturing” stand-up) which seeks to subvert something else is reactionary, in the sense that it is a reaction to the thing being subverted. If this is your definition of ‘reactionary’, there will be little that escapes it. One might take this as a clue to find a better definition of ‘reactionary’, or maybe just a better dictionary.

Daniels implicitly sets up his article as considering whether Lee represents a “deadpan dead end” or the future of comedy. I think we should assume he is aware this itself is something of a false dichotomy. A world in which comedians did nothing but endlessly deconstruct each other’s act would be a bit boring, but that’s not what people mean when they speak of Lee as comedy’s future. At least, I hope not. And I suspect Stewart Lee hopes so as well.

4.8.11

Bridesmaids

A blog about comedy isn’t going be able to avoid the gender issue – as part of my licence to litter the internet with my musings, I’m obliged to devote at least five posts a year to such topics as what the producers of Mock the Week have against female stand-ups, or to analysing the latest nuanced and balanced arguments as to why no women anywhere have ever been funny. I thought I might as well face the issue head-on; and it doesn’t come much more head-on than a film called Bridesmaids, written by two women and with an almost perfectly distaff line-up of lead characters.

Paul Feig’s (yes, a man – perhaps he directed in drag) film has been hailed in some quarters as proof (for some, unprecedented; for others, merely the latest) than a surfeit of oestrogen is no barrier to being funny. A more interesting question is what it tells us about male and female approaches to humour. Along with the look!-It’s-a-funny-woman! bromides, there’s been a fair amount of comment on the rather crude nature of the humour. It’s certainly a lot more robust than one might expect of a film with that title. We’re accustomed to male actors casually tossing around scatological and sexual references, while their female counterparts roll their eyes or try to cajole them into taking this relationship more seriously. So to an extent, female characters being voracious, rude and occasionally disgusting are a welcome sight. Kristen Wiig is central to this. Billed as a story of female friendships and relations, Bridesmaids is at least as much a character study. Annie is often humiliated but never judged or demeaned, and Wiig’s dry manner and not-quite-papered-over emotion carries her and the film through every mortifying incident.

It’s possible to overstate how novel this is. The female relationships are the engine of the film, but they’re powering a rather more traditional chassis. The finale is, after all, a white wedding, and Annie gets her dream man, who is as adorably crumpled and open-minded as in any frothy chick-flick. This might be canniness on the part of film-makers pitching their wares to a predominantly female audience, but it might also have been simply following the trail of numerous other Judd Apatow productions where the bonds of friendship hold firm despite the twists and turns of high jinks and low laughs.
           
So what sign is there of distinctively female humour? I have two suggestions. One is a lack of cruelty – we might laugh at what happens to the characters, but we are never invited to sneer at them. That said, the films Apatow has been involved with tend not to be mean-spirited, so this may not be a sign of female comedy as much as a house style showing through.

The other contender for a distinctively feminine touch was the sight of Wiig having sex while still wearing her bra. Isn’t the whole point of underwear and coitus that the first is removed in order to facilitate the second? Having them together is like mixing starter and dessert, and not in a sexy way. But maybe this is just my male viewpoint skewing things.
On Target
(Ben Target Edinburgh preview, Camden Stables, 7/7/2011)

Ben Target enters wearing a scarf wrapped across his face. He pulls it away to uncover a pacifier. This presently falls from his mouth, and he stands revealed, looking like a man who should be running a vegan crunk night (2.25 here).

The starting point for describing this show might be character comedy. But the comedy is not really about the character, so much as a character imposing himself on us through a series of set-pieces. We learn very little about Target’s persona, or what he (as opposed to Target himself) is trying to do. If asked after the show to describe him, it would be difficult to go beyond such generic terms as ‘eccentric’, ‘oddball’, or ‘idiot-savant man-child’. But what happens in the show is clearly the product of a definite, albeit tangential, vision. It makes sense for this person to ride around in a tiny car, get laughs out of juxtaposing a cake with a candle, or earnestly present silly cartoons on a flipchart. Or so at least it seems to me. I daresay it would be quite difficult to enjoy this show if one did not accept this; there would presumably be a strong temptation to regard it as self-indulgent sub-Dada antics.

What’s more interesting is that if one buys into the conceit of the show, it becomes surprisingly difficult to dislike. With a lot of comedy, one can appreciate what the performer is up to without necessarily enjoying it. This is harder in the case of Target; partly because the joke often simply is that he is actually doing what he is doing, and partly because he does it with such dedication, never breaking character even when his vigorous pounding on the door goes unexpectedly awry.

The freedom from character, narrative or any explicit theme is in one sense liberating, but can also be somewhat constricting. For one thing, it gives the show as a whole a rather episodic feel. Target gets round this to an extent by saving the most sustained set-piece for the end, but there is still room for his character to be brought out more. The closest thing we got was a thread of romantic yearning. An early set-piece involves him finagling one member of a couple out of the room on a theatre and champagne date, only to return a moment later, deflated and sadly carrying a large, phallic vegetable. The vegetable (it looked like a long turnip, if that makes sense) did not feature before or after, and he did not draw attention to it. Never mind; it paid its way in poignancy and a low note of innuendo. But this snapshot of emotion was not explored further. There’s something there, and in his ridiculous champion-of-the-world posturing, that could turn a hugely enjoyable and compulsively inventive show into something genuinely moving.