Tag Archives: Derngate

Review – Aisha and Abhaya, Rambert Dance Company, Royal and Derngate, Northampton, 18th January 2022

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It’s been a very long time since we’ve seen some dance and we always jump at the chance to watch Rambert, one of the best Contemporary Dance companies around, with a massive reputation for excellence and innovation – always a pleasure, often a challenge.

With their latest production, Aisha and Abhaya, it was all challenge and not much pleasure. Pre-show marketing explained that this was a combination of dance and multimedia video, which can be a very heady mix when it dovetails beautifully. It can also enthral when the one creates a fascinating tangent from the other. However, in this show, both Mrs Chrisparkle and I failed to see the remotest connection between the live action and Kibwe Tavares’ video story of the two sisters – princesses, maybe? – attacked and refugeed, trying to survive in an alien environment. Mrs C was shocked by the violence in the video; but then again, refugees often have a violent story to tell.

Much more successful was the video backdrop to the live action, which took us through endless mysterious corridors, leading out into an abstract cityscape, and finally a nightmare dance scenario where identical figures fill the screen all dancing to the same movements. That was genuinely spectacular. However, if you were expecting a furiously frenetic, visually and musically exciting finale to the show – you’ll be disappointed, it ends with definitely a whimper rather than a bang. Several long seconds of an audience staring in silence at a blank stage with one thought between them – is that it?

The show, which fractionally exceeds one hour’s length, started at 7.30pm and it was 7.48 by my watch before we saw any live action – which, for a dance show, I have to say did try our patience somewhat. And when the dance started, whilst there’s absolutely no doubting the extraordinary skill and strength of the group of seven dancers, Sharon Eyal’s unattractive choreography had an alienating effect on me, with the dancers’ body spasms and jerks reminding one of one’s worst ever attack of gastroenteritis. To be fair, the second, shorter, dance scene towards the end of the show had more traditional, graceful movement and felt much more rewarding.

This is a joint production between Rambert and The Royal Ballet; and I have read that the first audiences at the Linbury Theatre were offered earplugs to protect them from the loud and relentless techno music by Ori Lichtik and GAIKA. In fact, the music was driving, pulsating and inspiring, to the extent that the show was probably more entertaining on the audio side than the visual. Sadly, for the performance on Tuesday night at the Royal and Derngate, there was no programme; and Rambert’s website unusually gives no information on which dancers were performing. Try as I might, I’ve been unable to identify them, which I think is a disservice to them. They were all excellent, no question.

Occasionally the harsh critic, Mrs C’s observation at the end was that it had all the charm and appeal of a rave at 10 Downing Street. For me, being able to watch top class (if nameless) dancers perform their hearts and souls out means I enjoyed it more than she did. But at £33.50 for top price seats to see, what, 35 minutes of live action maybe, I thought the price was a bit steep. I guess videography is expensive. Rambert are currently announcing their 2023 production of a dance version of Peaky Blinders – fingers crossed that it’s more en pointe.

 

Review – Screaming Blue Murder, Underground at the Derngate, Northampton, 14th January 2022

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Hurrah for the return of the Screaming Blue Murder comedy nights at the Derngate, the first of the New Year and with a capacity audience which is how we like it. We were a bright and cheery bunch, keen for a good laugh, and up for whatever the Gods of Comedy decided to throw at us. I must say though, it was a surprisingly patchy night. The fantastic just about outweighed the not-so-fantastic – but more of that later.

We welcomed back our usual genial host Dan Evans, who had his work cut out encouraging/controlling members of the audience who included Big Nana and her unruly family of Spencer/Browns, the Four Siblings, the man who drove the human waste truck and the Landed Gentry who open up their garden for charity. Not to mention the vociferous lady from the back who wanted to be a member of Big Nana’s family. Rather like the now defunct News of the World, all human life was there. But, as always, Dan handled it with deft aplomb and only the occasional downright offensive insult.

Our first act was James Bran, whom we last saw here almost four years ago, and is a likeable chap with a rather thoughtful, quiet approach to comedy, which can make a nice change from the more frenzied style. He started off with the best exchange of the night, by boldly asking who’s been vaccinated (yay shouted by far the majority) followed by who’s not been vaccinated (a slightly more guilty yay muttered by a tiny few) to which a lady in the front row shouted out “twats!” which took the conversation in a very different direction from which Mr Bran had I think intended. A great moment of interactive drama. However, after that the energy started to fall, and I found that most of Mr B’s material didn’t really engage me. Although there were some good laughs it never soared. And at the end he did a long sequence about bananas which I’m afraid left us both completely cold. Maybe it’s important to have seen the YouTube video he’s referring to.

Next up, and new to us, was Daman Bamrah, who cuts an imposing stage presence; it’s the first time I’ve ever seen a Sikh gentleman as a stand-up comedian, and Mr Bamrah knows that his personality and presence is something he can work to his advantage. His other great gift is accents, and his opening few minutes were comedy gold as he explores a beautiful audio/visual juxtaposition and when the joke lands, it’s firmly on us – brilliant. There were also some nice observations about growing up in Wembley and mispronouncing his name. Unfortunately, his subsequent material isn’t quite substantial enough to sustain this high watermark and after a while it felt rather meandering, and any punchlines weren’t quite sharp enough to properly hit home. He’s obviously a naturally funny guy, and I know he’s relatively new to the comedy scene, so with some better material he could be a strong contender.

Our headline act was someone we’ve seen twice before but not since 2012, comedy/music act Richard Morton. The evening needed to end on a high note and by jiminy did Mr Morton provide it. Starting off with some great interaction with the crowd, tempered with some entertaining self-deprecation, he then moved on to his guitar-based musical parodies which are just sensational. He absolutely gets the style right of whatever musician or group he’s playing with (so to speak) and his comedy lyrics are both hilarious and bang up-to-date. I loved his selection of pandemic songs, and the act culminated with a now the groups are old selection – and he was completely hysterical. We left the theatre on a comedy high!

The next Screaming Blue Murder is on Saturday 29th January. We can’t make it – but I’m sure you can.

Review – Waitress, Royal and Derngate, Northampton, 10th January 2022

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You don’t need me to tell you how damaging Covid restrictions and lockdowns have been to the Arts, gentle reader. A case in point came a couple of weeks ago when the Toronto production of Come From Away decided it wouldn’t reopen after Christmas, thus prematurely ending a record-breaking run of 855 performances. And here in the UK, the West End production of Waitress was permanently closed in March 2020 after 13 successful months at the Adelphi Theatre due to the darned pandy. The UK tour had been scheduled to start in November 2020 but didn’t finally get started until last September. If anything proves that The Show Must Go On, I guess the tour of Waitress is a pretty good example!

JennaI’d never heard of the 2007 film on which the musical is based, but the show’s plot seems pretty much to follow the original story. Jenna is one of three waitresses at Joe’s Diner. Each brings her own individual personality to her job, but Jenna’s particular speciality is baking fantastically delicious and inventive pies. She’s trapped in an abusive marriage and longs to break free; and when she discovers there’s a big cash prize for a pie-baking contest, she sees that as a way of getting out of Earl’s clutches and back into freedom. However, she unexpectedly falls pregnant; and on meeting her new obstetrician, Dr Pomatter, they both realise there is an attraction. Do they have an affair? Will she leave her rotten husband? Does she win the pie-baking contest? You’ll have to see the show to find out!

Or alternatively, read on, as there are a lot of spoilers here! Scott Pask’s design beautifully recreates one of those timeless American Diners, all sass and over-eating, and any minute you expect Ritchie Cunningham to walk through the doors accompanied by Potsie and Ralph Malph. You sense this is not only the world of Happy Days, but also Grease, Footloose, or Hairspray, or any place where an ordinary kid can think big and make it to The American Dream. And what could be more wholesome than sweet homemade pies, crammed full of sugar, cream and all those delicious things we know we shouldn’t eat? OK, as she’s been told many times, Jenna may be no Sara Lee, but she sure does know how to create sweet comfort food. As wholesome as apple pie, just like Grandma used to make.

Dawn waitressBut it isn’t. That’s the façade. Sure, there are homemade pies, but there’s also domestic abuse, coercive control, medical malpractice and multiple adulteries. And for Waitress to tell its story to its fullest effect, this juxtaposition of sweet homeliness versus grim reality needs to be brought into the sharpest possible focus. And whilst there are telling moments, primarily in the scenes where husband Earl abuses Jenna, both physically and financially, for the most part the bittersweetness is blurred and sacrificed on the altar of musical comedy.

PomatterTake, for example, the role of Dr Pomatter. His character is presented as a tentative, inept, neurotic clown; medically he knows his stuff, but when it comes to personal contact he’s almost irresistibly childlike, and when Jenna plants a whopper of a kiss on his chops, he doesn’t say what about your husband and what about my wife and what about medical ethics, he just responds in that time-honoured tradition of thinking with his d*ck. And that always leads to trouble. Interestingly, almost the first thing that Jenna says to him is that she’s not happy being pregnant and she’d prefer not to be. Pomatter offers to refer her to someone who will perform a termination. Oh no, she says, semi-affronted, I’m going to have the baby, affirming traditional American Christian apple pie family values. But what’s key here is that Pomatter himself is not prepared to perform an abortion, but he is perfectly happy carry on an affair with one of his married patients. Curious morality where you can pick and choose at will.

Jenna is not the only character in an unfulfilled marriage. Her married colleague Becky ends up having an affair with married Diner manager Cal (because of his strong hands, apparently). As we’ve seen, Pomatter gets tempted elsewhere, and when we meet his charming and helpful wife who helps deliver Jenna’s baby, he seems even more of a scoundrel than before. In another juxtaposition – and this one much more successful – we see the partnering up of third waitress Dawn with nerdy geek Ogie, and they are a perfect match, with their complementary eccentricities and outlandish interests. Ogie’s quirky song Never Ever Getting Rid of Me is the only example in the show where the whole true musical comedy genre actually works.

SugarOtherwise, the musical content is functional if a little bland. Ellen Campbell’s band takes a back seat tucked in a far corner of the stage in more ways than one, in that although they are featured as part of the diner’s seating capacity, they never really make their presence felt. However, the big number, She Used to be Mine, is a stand-out moment where Jenna reflects on the disappointment of her life and is the emotional turning point for her finally to take responsibility for her future.

The production sports some great performances. I’m always excited to see Sandra Marvin, one of my favourite performers, and here she’s perfect as the larger-than-life Becky, with her infectious sarcastic laugh and extraordinary ability to inject life into any song. She’s matched with a delightfully kookie performance by Evelyn Hoskins as the offbeat Dawn, tentatively but creatively picking her way through the world of online dating, her wide-eyed amazement and thrill at the tiniest task (like filling up the mustard and ketchup bottles) coming over as a total joy.

OgieI really enjoyed George Crawford as over-enthusiastic weirdo Ogie, ruthless in his determination to secure Dawn for himself, despite her initial horror at the prospect. No one pulls the wool over the eyes of Scarlet Gabriel’s Nurse Norma, and she very nicely conveys the character’s growing contempt for Pomatter’s indiscretions. And there’s a superb performance from Tamlyn Henderson as the abusive Earl; neither pantomime villain nor overtly vicious, but subtly undermining and a very credibly self-centred louse. Keeping all his wife’s earnings to waste in the bar without the slightest guilt, wheedling selfish affection out of her with a promise that she’ll love him more than she will the baby, whilst still congratulating himself on the prospect of being a father – the legend lives on, he tells himself, with misplaced arrogance. It’s all about him, and Mr Henderson conveys that perfectly.

BeckyThe first night in Northampton was pivotal in many ways; not only was it the local press night, but it marked the new casting of Chelsea Halfpenny as Jenna, instead of Lucie Jones who had played it in the West End and on tour and is now going to perform in Wicked. But Ms Halfpenny didn’t play the role on the first night; instead, Jenna was played by ensemble performer Aimée Fisher, who has an excellent voice and gave a very strong and likeable performance. Busted’s Matt Jay-Willis plays Dr Pomatter with a convincing blend of fumbling fool and medical expert, but with the addition of chancing his arm to keep his secret affair alive. It’s an odd characterisation and I could never quite decide whether we were meant to find him lovable or despicable. Both, probably.

waitressesThere were a couple of moments that put me in mind of Avenue Q at its most comical excesses; Dawn and Ogi romping away to Civil War sex, and Pomatter indulging in what can only be described as cake cunnilingus. But somehow the production doesn’t quite balance the frothy light musical comedy element with the more disturbing dark content. I think this is one of those shows that you either get or you don’t get – and on the whole we didn’t get it. As a scrummy delicious fruity pie, it was nice enough, but it didn’t leave me wanting more. I’ve heard from more than one source that this a show that’s primarily targeted at women, and indeed, famously the creative team is exclusively female, so maybe I’m not the target demographic. I also know that many people see this show several times, so it must be doing something right for somebody! The tour continues all the way through to August.

Production photos by Johan Persson and Matt Crockett3-starsNice and three-sy does it!

Review – Ahir Shah, Dress, Underground at the Derngate, Northampton, 27th November 2021

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We saw Ahir Shah’s Dots show at the Edinburgh Fringe and enjoyed his cunning blend of intelligent and political comedy so much that he won the Chrisparkle Award for Best Stand Up in Edinburgh for 2019. Naturally we decided to book for his next show, Dress, particularly as we wouldn’t have to go all the way up to Edinburgh to see him!

For Dress, Mr Shah has made a reminiscence compilation of the various stages of the last 18 months or so, and is a personal account of his lockdown/pandemic journey. We’ve all had one of these, so it’s easy for us to identify with his sequence of highs and lows, reliving the emotions, idiocies and tragedies that the last two years have dealt us. He also reflects the pandemic through a political viewpoint, making no secret of his Labour leanings and his revulsion of All Things Tory.

He’s pretty much up to date, with his speculation that who knew how cheap it was to buy a Tory MP – only 100k for Owen Patterson, and he’s a proper “Shropshire White”; you would have thought they’d run into seven figures at least. His dream is to be rich enough to buy a Tory and still have Communist kids; and, if lockdowns continue, being a house-husband is a thoroughly rewarding way of life (having done it myself I can completely concur). Having spent much of 2020 cooped up at home with a go-getting but work-from-home girlfriend, he discovered the joys of soup-making and repositioning ornaments, and was never happier. We all had our own ways of coping with lockdown!

He’s a very engaging and charming chap on stage; his voice has a warmth of plummy poshness that isn’t so much evocative of a Rees-Mogg, but reminds me more of the young Tom Conti in The Norman Conquests, tittering at his own naughtiness and getting away with murder because he suggests it so politely. He’s excellent at interacting with the audience, chatting effortlessly with property developer Remy and charity-entrepreneur Sam in the front row; only for them to realise they are old friends neither of whom knew the other was going to be there that night – true serendipity! He also reinforces the fact that there has to be an interval for no other reason than, in the post-pandemic financial situation, the venue needs the income from the bar. Culture thrives on our alcoholism. At least that meant he could sample a pint of local Phipps IPA.

Despite his frequent forays into the audience, Dress is a closely-constructed, deftly scripted routine, jam-packed with callbacks and delivered with terrific comic precision. It’s a very positive show; he tells us about meeting his dad outside Tate Modern for a socially-distanced reunion just as it started to become possible to do such a thing – and I have to say I found it quite an emotional tale. If you were there at the theatre, or if you’re here reading this, the one thing we have in common is that we have all survived this far somehow. Mr Shah’s message is to cherish that fact and consider what’s gone before as a dress rehearsal for what’s to come. Enjoyable, intelligent, reflective, and with plenty to laugh about. After a couple of months’ break, his tour continues at the end of January into March. Recommended!

Review – Blue/Orange, Royal and Derngate, Northampton, 24th November 2021

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Wasn’t it F R David who said – and I think it was – Words Don’t Come Easy To Me? Of course, he was “just a music man”, and his “melodies were his best friend”, but his “words were coming out wrong”. It’s a common problem, and rarely seen more acutely than in Joe Penhall’s Blue/Orange, which won both the Olivier and Evening Standard Theatre Award for Best Play when it first appeared in 2000. Now James Dacre, Artistic Director of the Royal and Derngate, has directed a new production of the play which opened in Bath a few weeks ago, visited Oxford en route, and has now finally come to its spiritual home at the Royal and Derngate.

The set-up is deceptively simple. At an NHS psychiatric hospital in London, patient Christopher is itching to leave, having already spent 28 days in its care. Dr Bruce Flaherty, under whose supervision Christopher has been treated, isn’t sure he’s ready to leave, and asks Senior Consultant Robert Smith to sit in on a final consultation for his opinion. Both Robert and Christopher are adamant that he should leave – although for different reasons. Attempting to make Christopher reveal his true mental state, Bruce offers him an orange to eat and challenges him to tell Robert what he thinks its colour is. Blue, is Christopher’s response. And the fruit inside? Also blue. He also manages to make Christopher reveal that his father is Field Marshal Idi Amin of Uganda; perhaps unsurprisingly as he was known as Dada to his friends. Robert suggests that he and Christopher should have a private consultation together. But what is the outcome of that consultation? Are Robert’s motives for wanting Christopher to leave in everyone’s best interests? Has Bruce been as correct in his dealings with Christopher as he should have? And is Christopher satisfied with the way he has been treated? You’ll have to see the play to find out!

This is a cunning play that openly exposes all its secrets without the audience realising it, and then asks us to consider what we had heard earlier and understand it now in a different light. With only three scenes/conversations, all taking place within 24 hours, and all in the same consulting room, it very nearly observes the traditional unities of classical drama. Even the requirement for any cataclysmic event to happen off-stage is recognised, with the important hospital management meeting taking place in a different room whilst we’re all enjoying the interval. It’s fascinating to see the unities being observed in a modern play. It certainly concentrates the mind.

Nevertheless, the play takes a number of themes, from the obvious coping with life in the NHS, to power struggles between colleagues, racial equality within a range of relationships and situations including that of healthcare, and trust and deception. Joe Penhall has slightly revised the play for audiences twenty years on, and for the first time the role of Robert is performed by a Black actor, which changes the racial imbalance of the play in the other direction and adds a different level of complexity to the disagreements that all the characters face. There’s also this question of words. F R David was right, they don’t come easy, or at least the right words don’t. Bruce insists to Christopher that you can’t use the word crazy anymore, and schizophrenia is a complete no-no. He will later discover that there are many other words you can’t use, even when you’re quoting someone else.

There’s no doubt this is a very wordy play; and in the first Act in particular, the conversations become extremely intense, and at times you need to keep your wits about you to make sure you follow everything that’s said. However, after the interval, the wordiness gives way to a much more emotional involvement from all three characters, the interchanges become much livelier, and the intensity changes from intellectual to pure drama. You never really know which way the plot is going to twist, and then it twists again in its final moments. It’s one of those splendid plays that become even more splendid the more you think about it after curtain down. Hidden depths, character give-aways, secret agendas continue to become clearer as you reflect on what’s happened.

Simon Kenny’s simple but effective design reveals the grey, austere consulting room, its only features being three chairs, a bowl of oranges and a water-cooler. Deliberately harsh lighting emphasises the claustrophobic box nature of the room and adds to the strangely unsettling image presented to us. Composer Valgeir SigurÞsson’s haunting incidental music creeps in softly at odd moments to unsettle us even more.

The three characters are all given tremendous performances by a sterling cast. Ralph Davis gives an excellent portrayal of a rather dishevelled but strict doctor who works all the hours under the sun in his performance as Bruce, quickly getting aggravated when his patience is tried a little too far, not realising the traps that have been set for him. Giles Terera is every bit as excellent as you would expect as the outwardly pleasant, inwardly manipulative Robert, putting his research before his patient’s wellbeing, and switching from old pal to arch enemy on the turn of a sixpence. But for me the discovery of this production is the amazing performance by Michael Balogun, whom we last saw as Macduff in Chichester (at least until the glass floor shattered). Here he plays Christopher, channelling all the emotions of a mental health patient railing against the machine, and conveying all the aspects of this complicated character from the wide-eyed innocent to the courtroom cynic.

A very strong production of a very strong play. It continues at the Royal and Derngate until 4th December- after which, who knows? But I reckon it could fit very nicely into an intimate West End theatre.

Production photos by Marc Brenner

4-starsFour they’re jolly good fellows!

Review – Paul Chowdhry, Family-Friendly Comedian, Royal and Derngate, Northampton, 23rd November 2021

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Paul Chowdhry, the legendary sweet-talkin’ bastard, comes on stage and advises us that, if we’d seen him before here at the Royal and Deansgate (sic) in Live Innit (we had), or What’s Happening White People (we hadn’t – but he didn’t mention PC’s World, which we had), he’s now a completely different person from the one before. He has reinvented himself as a family-friendly comedian. And then he proceeds to lambast the front row with a series of what I presume are Hindi swear words and body-part slang terms. He was only teasing. He hasn’t changed.

But I’m jumping ahead of myself because the show started with his support act, Rory O’Hanlon. We knew we’d seen him recently but couldn’t quite place when – turns out it was in the back garden of the Black Prince three months ago. He’s a terrific comic, with a typical Dublin gift of the gab, and with some very funny material. Sadly – for us – 90% of his act was what we had heard in August, so we were left to admire his comedic skills rather than actually laugh out loud at the material, as we had done the first time. Presumably he was new to everyone else as he went down a storm in the audience. With a very serendipitous turn of events, he had been bad-mouthing how horrible Coventry is, when a group of rowdy chaps turned up late and made their way to the middle of the front row. Where have you come from, asked Mr O’H. Coventry, came the answer. Thus a major part of the groundwork was set for the whole evening.

After the interval, and the Coventry guys had got even more tanked up, Paul Chowdhry must have looked down on the rowdy Sikhs in the front row waving their lagers at him, and thought this is going to be a doddle. Time and again, during the course of the evening, he went back to them to take the mickey in the way that really only Mr C can. Ridiculing their speech, their behaviour, their protestations of sobriety, everything; it’s amazing how he can be so directly aggressive to individual audience members – and they love it. And so do the rest of the audience. If you go to see a Paul Chowdhry gig, so much of your time with this extraordinarily skilled and quick-witted comic will be spent with him trading the most dangerous banter with the audience, getting away with murder, spreading the comedy of offence far and wide, and, against all odds, it works so well.

Two things help here; one is Mr C’s superb mimicry skills, which allow him to populate his chat with a range of stereotype accents, from his posh Susan and Giles voices, and his Neanderthal Dave voice, to a full panoply of Asian imitations. His voices can be hectoring, whining, intimidating, offended, and so on; in other words, all the emotions, in all the races. The other is that he attracts such a wide variety of audience members from all races, all ages, and, particularly useful, all family groupings. Nothing can give him more scope than an extended Asian family of parents, aunties, uncles, kids, grannies and so on. As he pointed out, the lockdown rules where you could only meet six people at a time were specifically for white people. For Bengalis, six people constitutes the queue for the bathroom.

The show wasn’t just a sequence of audience interactions with no interconnecting theme other than insults; not quite, at any rate. As part of the show, Mr C dwelt on everyone’s lockdown and pandemic experiences, including how we now do our best to suppress a cough, which, in the good old days, would have been an open invitation for the most wallowed-in, phlegmatic and catarrh-filled airway clearing exercise – as he frequently and very audibly demonstrated. He does a brilliant take-down of those who take their vaccination advice from Nicki Minaj – probably worth your ticket price alone  – and he fantasises about a Saudi Arabian version of TV’s Naked Attraction.

If you’re like us, you’d probably think, “I know that Paul Chowdhry is a master of the comedy of offence, and I’m going to appreciate it for what it is, and not get offended”. Wrong. Despite our best efforts, we were offended on at least two occasions, and, as Mr C also tells us, it’s as white people being offended on behalf of others – whilst those “others” are probably not in the least offended. If it’s good to be challenged in the theatre, I can’t see why it shouldn’t be good to be challenged by comedy too.

As when we saw Live Innit, I think it’s fair to say that I enjoyed it more than Mrs Chrisparkle. Whilst still laughing lots, she finds Mr C’s repetitive and aggressive style a little overwhelming – or her killer description, relentless – whereas I either don’t notice it, don’t mind it, or just find it funny. It’s a boy thing, innit. His tour is nearing its end, with a few more dates until Nottingham on 16th December. And, despite the title, don’t bring the kids.

Review – Jayde Adams, The Ballad of Kylie Jenner’s Old Face, Underground at the Derngate, Northampton, 20th November 2021

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I booked this show on a risky punt when it first went on sale, when it was pretty much at the height of the pandemic and I hadn’t booked a show for months, and I really needed the sense of having something new to look forward to when it was all over – not that we’re there yet. I hadn’t actually heard of Jayde Adams before; in fact, I’d still seen nothing new about her by the time we went to see Saturday’s show.

But that was my bad, as Ms Adams clearly has a devoted following, and a history of extravagant stage performances as was revealed in the opening part of The Ballad of Kylie Jenner’s Old Face, the significance of which title only became revealed as the show neared its end. I didn’t actually know who Kylie Jenner was either, but fortunately Ms Adams includes an explanatory segment for the over 50s in the show, which was damn useful. I did know the Kardashians were grotesque, but this really helped me understand just how grotesque they are.

The show is basically a comedy TED talk (or lecture, as we used to say in the old days) where Ms Adams grapples with her love/hate relationship with both the word and the concept of feminism. She loves it when it means what it’s meant to mean, and hates it when it is misappropriated by the likes of Beyonce and Jay-Z, as she revealed in a hilarious sequence describing a certain stage performance that took place (literally) Under That Word.

She also brings in the magical power of the Serious Black Jumper as part of her material (no pun intended). Having been advised that no one took her seriously when she was camping it up in catsuits, she donned a serious black jumper to gain gravitas and found that people’s reactions are so different. And it’s true! She gives us a number of examples of influential people wearing a serious black jumper and it certainly helps you take them seriously; especially when viewed side by side with the same person in mufti.

I mustn’t give the impression that this show is in any way po-faced or academically serious. It isn’t. It’s jam-packed full of laughs. Jayde Adams has a terrific interaction with the audience and a wonderfully natural comic persona, that’s part strong and self-assured, and part vulnerable and uncertain – just like most people really, so we identify with her easily (even us chaps).

To conclude she ties feminism in with the concept of confidence, and gives us a healthy and positive definition of gaining confidence rather than relying on the outward fripperies of the likes of the Kardashians. It’s a powerful and overwhelmingly positive message and you leave the theatre buoyed up with dignity and optimism. And also having had a really good laugh – what more could you want? It’s always refreshing to enjoy intelligent, thoughtful comedy, and this show has it by the bucketful. This was almost the last night of the tour, just one more show left at Leicester Square – but she’s writing more material, so hopefully she’ll be touring again soon!

Review – Screaming Blue Murder, Underground at the Derngate, Northampton, 19th November 2021

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It’s odd how the same format of three fabulous acts, two wonderful intervals and one marvellous compere can create a different vibe from show to show. There was something odd and ill at ease about October’s Screaming Blue Murder, but last Friday’s show was a crackeroony of a night. Host Dan Evans was on fine form indeed with his welcomes and entr’actes, mining the comedy out of the front rows, including Texaco Josh who was 29 but looked 13, Oundle Will who was 17 and looked 17, and Farmer Alice who, according to Dan, had to get up at 5am every day just to fill out all the refund forms, thus receiving the biggest laugh of the night.

An innovative line-up featured two female comics and one male, which may be an indication of some progress where it comes to equality in comedy. We’d seen all the acts before, some more recently than others, and it’s interesting to see how they mixed and matched the same material we’ve seen before but to different effect.

First up was Juliet Meyers, whom I was expecting to use the C word within the first couple of minutes as she always does, but this time she didn’t – maybe she thought we were posher than we were. It wasn’t until she made a disparaging remark about our beloved Prime Minister, at which point Front Row Tom got up in a magnificent display of what appeared to be disgust which I think took us all slightly aback, only to get to the door to turn around and say by the way I agree, Boris Johnson is a massive c*nt (I may be paraphrasing). After that we were all relieved and Ms Meyers had the green light to use the C word as much as she wanted, and then everything fell nicely into place. Front Row Tom returned (he’d only nipped out to the loo), and Juliet got on with some great material about dogs’ unconditional love, Brexit in the canine world, and why men have become more tender in the bedroom. Great stuff.

Next up was James Sherwood, who reminds me of what David Mitchell would look like if he was just relaxing down the pub. He has a great interaction with the audience, very wry and dry, gently laconic and I really enjoyed his material regarding sex versus drugs and the pros and cons of both. He split up his act with a few musical jokes at the keyboard, which are his trademark, but for some reason they didn’t quite hit home in the way they have in the past. Nevertheless a good fun set.

Our headline act was someone we’ve seen twice already this year, Jenny Collier, and I feared that listening to the same material again so soon after hearing it before would be a little disappointing. Not a bit of it. Ms Collier has honed this routine to perfection, working on the just the right words and intonations to make it as funny as possible – and she went down a complete storm. She is one of those comics who plays beautifully on her rather sweet and innocent appearance and contrasts it with the unexpected power of her material; a posh versus filthy balance, which she gauges perfectly. She uses her experience working in the NHS to great effect; has a great joke about a gag reflex; tells us about all the new Welsh words she learned this year; and ends up with a riotous routine about providing a stool sample. Left us all wanting a lot more – fabulous work.

That was the last Screaming Blue Murder for 2021, but, if we have unearnéd luck, we’ll all be back in January. See you there!

Review – Sarah Millican, Bobby Dazzler, Royal and Derngate, Northampton, 11th November 2021

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She may be from South Shields, but I think we should welcome Sarah Millican in as one of Northampton’s adopted daughters, as her Bobby Dazzler show last night was the first of three that she will be performing at the Royal and Derngate (18th and 21st November shows still to come) as well as having had a couple of secret gigs in their Underground studio to hone the show into perfection as Work in Progress nights. Much more of this and she’ll be supporting the Cobblers and pronouncing Cogenhoe correctly.

She came on to do a little welcoming warm up before introducing her support act, Gearoid Farrelly. A name new to us, he’s a cheeky chap from the Emerald Isle, with a confiding style and ebullient personality, who spun some entertaining tales of seeing Shania Twain in Dublin (not to be recommended apparently, although primarily not because of Shania Twain) and how a gay man’s insecurities come to the fore when having to deal with a “real man” in a DIY store. Good delivery, heaps of confidence and he did a great job.

When Sarah Millican returned she encountered a bit of a problem – a loud, drunken woman in the upper boxes who had no compunction about constantly engaging in conversation with her. Not a heckle, nothing spiteful, but an absolute bloody nuisance. Several times she stopped Ms Millican in her flow and it really sapped the energy of the audience and made us feel uncomfortable. She wasn’t deterred by Sarah’s put-downs or admonitions, but, fortunately, she was eventually encouraged to sober up somewhere outside (preferably at home) – pity that didn’t happen sooner rather than later.

Once that was out of the way, it left Sarah Millican free rein to discuss all her favourite usual topics – the things that happen to a woman in her mid-40s, interaction (both domestic and romantic) with her husband, fondness for confectionary self-indulgence, and the confidence to be herself, which she transmits to the audience, boosting our self-confidence too.

There’s probably no other comic in the world who’s so comfortable discussing the most private aspects of the human body – especially the female of the species. We’ve all got bodies, we’ve all got bits and bobs of various shapes and sizes, and Sarah Millican has no inhibitions when it comes to using them as items of mirth. Not content with leaving it there, she lingers over the smells, textures and general misfunctions that flesh is undoubtedly heir to. As a result, her material reflects everyone’s experience, and the laughter she creates is that of personal recognition. No human condition is out of bounds, resulting in the laughter frequently extending into groans of delighted disgust and general ewww, while Ms Millican, her face a picture of innocence, waits for us to regain our composure.

The show is precisely scripted, with well-planned callbacks and deft use of mots justes, all apart from one section, where she invites the audience to share their moments of pandemic madness. One woman learned how to sew; another slung her husband out of the house. But my favourite was the man who chucked his job in as an operations director because after three and a half months he still didn’t understand what the job meant, and went back to his old job – as an operations manager. We also learned about Sarah Millican’s special and perhaps tongue-in-cheek involvement with the Couch to 5K App – and what it would be like to have yourself spur you on with faux-encouragement.

A hugely enjoyable comedy night out in a pair of the safest hands in the business. Sarah Millican’s tour continues right the way round to December 2022, would you believe, but I’d get in there quick with your booking if I were you!

Review – Tez Ilyas – Vicked, Underground at the Derngate, 5th November 2021

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This was another show that we’d booked so long ago that it changed its name in the meantime. Two years elapsed between the initial booking and the actual event! And what was originally Populist became Vicked – although the title is only a serving suggestion of what the show contains – which is Another Evening in the Company of Tez Ilyas Doing his Thing. And a very funny Thing it is.

Tez Ilyas is one of the few performers that I feel comfortable referring to by their first name. Not Mr Ilyas, nor Mr I (which is how I normally refer to comics when I’ve already mentioned their name a few times), but Tez. And that’s because he forms such a sincere connection with his audience that you really feel like you and he are old mates. It’s partly the courtesy that he extends by always coming out on to the stage first for a little chat with us all before introducing his support act; it’s partly the fact that stays behind after the show for a photo and a chat; it’s partly that his delivery is so fluent and genuine that everything he says you believe is true. He refers to us as his Tezbians, which also grants us some familiarity rights. Within a few seconds of coming on stage, he’s brought up two lads from the front row who are from different groups but for all the world look like they’re brothers (and they really did). In that simple act, he brought us all together, united in one purpose, to make a judgment call on these two lads – and we remain united throughout the rest of the show. The audience becomes a very comfortable, safe place, and you just know you’re in for a good time.

And yes, we did indeed have an excellent support act in the capable hands (and plectrum) of comedy-musician Kate Lucas, whom we saw at a Screaming Blue Murder a few years ago. She’s like a coiled serpent with her easy, gentle appearance, delicately beautiful voice, and viperous lyrics to her brilliant songs. She sings us songs of acerbity and Schadenfreude, of revenge and malice, and the audience loves her for it. She even gets us to join in a singalong of dubious taste. It’s all very inventive and very funny, and it was great to see her again.

After the interval, Tez returned to the stage and gave us a good hour-and-three-quarters of top quality material, expertly delivered. This was the fourth time we’ve seen him live – the last time was at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2017 – and he’s truly evolved as a stand-up of immense confidence, linguistic skill and an enviable ability to trade good-hearted banter with anyone and everyone. One minute he hits just the perfect note of self-deprecation, the next he’s on an outrageous attack against someone else and it’s such a cunning blend of humour that you never know what’s coming next. I loved his segment when he played NHS Top Trumps – identifying all the audience members who work for the NHS (there were five) and working out which one most deserved the Thursday Night Minute of Applause. Not only does this allow him to gently tease the audience, and himself, it also opens up the field of political satire, at which Tez excels.

And then, of course, there’s the whole subject of racism, which constantly crops up in his material somehow or another, and he plays it perfectly, using humour not only to show its ridiculousness and cruelty, but also how easy it can be to fall foul of it oneself. He does a wonderful deconstruction of the terms BAME and POC – no matter how politically correct those terms may be, they’re pretty awful. He jests of cultural appropriation when any other ethnic group is involved in terrorism; and he admits to being stumped when it comes to dealing with a cis straight white male who’s neither fat nor ginger. He has a brilliant way of turning prejudice on its head, that not only reveals so much about the human condition but also is just so bloody funny.

There are just a few more dates remaining on this tour – if you’re in any doubt about whether to go – OMA! It’s a humdinger of a show and seventy-two hours later I’m still laughing at it. Fantastic!