Caroline Mabey Archives - The Real Chrisparkle

Hurrah for another Screaming Blue Murder, and another episode in the continuing mystery saga, Would Dan Evans Get There On Time? Answer: No. This time there was a crash on the M1 which put a 25 minute delay onto his journey. I’m beginning to think The Gods of Comedy have got it in for him. And perhaps they have. Every so often you get a really weird Screaming Blue Murder; something about the dynamic in the audience that just doesn’t gel. This was one of those weeks. Firstly, they’d changed the staging so that it looked really showbiz. Black curtains in front of a lit-up, shimmering red curtain, to create a very glamorous effect. Not the usual cellar where the bodies are kept look that we’re accustomed to. Dan did his usual let’s meet the front row routine, and got on well with the ladies from the Danes Camp gym, and then he moved on to another couple (no names)… and that’s where it all got a bit difficult.

It’s a bit bizarre to have to review the audience rather than the show, but to make sense of the evening, this particular Screaming Blue needs it. So, back to this couple; to be fair, he was fine. A cheery paper salesman whose answer to the problem of the diminishing need to buy paper because of the Internet was to “sell more paper”. Absolutely. She, however… I’m sure she’s a lovely person but she came across as a cross between Rosa Klebb and Lord Snooty. She sells people (her words) and lives in an “undisclosed location” and clearly looks down on Northampton. Normally the audience is quite happy to go along with the usual “What’s Northampton like?” “It’s sh*t” routine, but this time – no. “If you hate it, why don’t you leave then?” came an unexpected bellowing voice from behind. An audience silently quivered, not knowing where this was going. Dan continued with as much jollity as possible, but it wasn’t long before the voice came back with “Get her a lead”, which really was a bit much. If anyone had shouted that out about Mrs Chrisparkle, I would have stood up and demanded satisfaction with a duel in the car park. Instead, Dan turned to a couple of guys in the corner and tried to spark off them but they were as sullen as hell.

First up was Luke Toulson, who came on thanking Dan for putting us all at our ease and making his life easy! We’ve seen Mr Toulson twice before and he’s always good value. He’s done some of the material about collecting the kids from school before, but we loved his pretentious critiques of school plays, and the urge guys get to propose the higher from the ground they are. He ended with a great sequence about the one hour slot to deliver your sperm sample for testing and a great play on words about a medic’s wages. He was just what we needed to set the evening back on course.

Next was Caroline Mabey; we’ve also seen her before and, last time, frankly, she wasn’t very good. This time, well… she’s gutsy and has some good material but I still think she’s trying to be someone on stage that she isn’t. She reminded me very much of a younger Helen Lederer, with an act crammed full of self-deprecation; trouble is she doesn’t really get us on her side at the start of her act, so we end up just being onlookers rather than participators. I can see how it all would work perfectly on paper, but on stage it just doesn’t quite hold together. Mind you, the weird vibe of the evening certainly didn’t help.

What the night needed was for the last act to bounce out, stamp their authority on us, and not let up until the final joke – and that’s exactly what Michael Fabbri did. We’ve never seen Mr Fabbri before and it’s been our loss. He uses his material and sharp delivery to take control without ever being aggressive or too laddish like some comics. There’s a fantastic sequence about spending the night in someone else’s hotel room, but his set was full of sideways looks at life and what I can only describe as inventive moments of ridiculousness. He was great, we’d love to see him again.

There are two more Screaming Blue Murders this year – hopefully they’ll run a little more smoothly than this one did. Alas, we are unable to attend either of them, so I hope you’ll go on our behalf.

We’ve been a bit on-off with our Screaming Blue attendances this season, as other juicy sounding shows had been up for sale before the Screaming Blue dates were announced. But at least we were free for this one. Unfortunately, our regular host Dan obviously wasn’t, and we were treated to a replacement host for the night in the shape of Mr James Sherwood, whom we’d seen once before and enjoyed his act.

It’s the task of the compere to get us punters nicely warmed up for the first act. Unfortunately, no matter which tack Mr Sherwood took, it ended up as a dead end. We weren’t particularly responsive as a group, and his questioning line of “who’s had a nice day” just didn’t elicit the right kind of engagement. Things took a turn hugely for the better between the first and second acts though, when he reverted to his usual act and simply sat at the keyboard and played funny songs from a grammatically pedantic point of view. That was great. He also attempted some political humour, but we didn’t bite – we don’t normally do political humour here in Northampton. That said, simply mentioning the words “Michael Gove” isn’t really political humour.

So, on to our acts proper. First up, and new to us, was Caroline Mabey. She was at a disadvantage because at that stage we weren’t properly warmed up, but she seemed bright and breezy enough. Somehow, somewhere into the act we all realised that it wasn’t quite working, but Caroline kept on with gritty determination to get through it as best she could. I think the problem was that she adopts an “I’m mad, me!” type of persona but I don’t think that’s really who she is, so it comes over as rather forced instead of natural. Her voice and mannerisms are those of the bastard love child of Mel Giedroyc and Frankie Howerd, and I wouldn’t see that relationship ever getting off the ground. It was all a bit painful but we all got through it in the end.

Second act, and also new to us, was Peter Brush. A complete opposite to Caroline in many respects, because he too adopted a persona – that of a nerdy fish out of water – but you completely believed that that’s exactly how he is in real life. He paced his act beautifully, mined each moment for its full laughter quotient and above all had some marvellous material. With a surname like that, he must have been called “Daft-as-a” at school.

Final act, and someone we had seen once before, was Jonny Awsum. He was very good then but this time he completely smashed it, as common parlance would have it. He just comes out on stage and the mere sight of him makes you happy. His mix of comedy and music works brilliantly, and you are powerless to resist joining in and making silly noises to accompany his songs. It would be too much to hope that he really does rejoice in the surname “Awsum”.