Tag Archives: Derngate

Review – Screaming Blue Murder, Underground at the Derngate, Northampton, 27th February 2015

Posted on by

Once again it was a full house at the Screaming Blue Murder, with Lady Duncansby procuring the last available ticket just a couple of days ago. Regular host Dan Evans had his work cut out to keep order at first, with a number of late arrivals, some of which were rather on the noisy side; some chatty ladies in the front row, some older blokes who carried their years well, a couple who brought their own curry takeaway, a rather vague student from Liverpool University, and, in comparison, the most demure and elegantly well behaved hen party imaginable. But Dan was on excellent form as usual, with an engaging mixture of new and old material that went down a treat. As proof of how good he was, he even sold a few copies of his book.

There was a little uncertainty before our first act appeared, because she should have been our second. Our original first was apparently suffering from something icky in the stomach department and couldn’t be prised out of the loo. Nice way of announcing the guests! So we stared off with Susan Murray, a somewhat regular comic here as this was the fourth time we’d seen her! She’s always good for a laugh, with less accent-based material than usual and more about, well, sex. With jokes about vaginas being too big and the positioning of a six-inch tattoo on her thigh, there was more than enough to get your teeth into, so to speak. By bouncing off the Liverpool student, she did quite a lot of scouse jokes, which rather alienated Lady D – pick on any part of the country and you’re bound to offend someone somewhere.

Our second act, who should have been our first, was Paul T Eyres, who was new to us, a bright, entertaining young chap with lots of good material about class, relationships and kids. I enjoyed his confident delivery and easy style with the audience. A superb performance if he was actually suffering from a dicky tummy. One to watch, methinks.

Our headline act was someone we’ve seen twice before, the splendid Markus Birdman. Winner of the Chrisparkle award for Best Screaming Blue Murder Standup in 2013, he has an amazing lightness of touch combined with genuinely fantastic material. There was a fair deal of repetition from his act a couple of years ago, but like New York, it’s so good you can hear it twice. There’s no finer joke to be heard than his one about the “speed of ejaculate”, trust me on this one. Since we last saw him he’s now coping with having a ten-year-old daughter and a marriage breakup, which in typical Birdman fashion becomes the springboard for lots of brilliant observational comedy. I admit it, I’m a fan.

Next show is in two weeks. You’d better book up quickly!

Review – Peter Pan Goes Wrong, Royal and Derngate, Northampton, 26th February 2015

Posted on by

It was only last year that the Cornley Polytechnic Drama Society showed us their Murder at Haversham Manor and what a thrilling night of drama and suspense that was. Their immensely flexible approach to riding the storm when things occasionally went wrong showed them to be troupers beyond compare, and so to endorse their true spirit of The Show Must Go On, we thought we would return for their Christmas play (not a panto) Peter Pan, which due to an administrative oversight, would be staged in February.

Fifteen minutes before curtain up things were still – shall we say – falling into place. The stage manager and his ASMs were still searching for a hammer, handing our hard hats, and getting the people behind us to tear paper up into really tiny pieces – because without it, the snowflakes would be too large. Nevertheless, there was still a sense of hope and confidence crackling in the air as one of the stars of the play, Francis Beaumont, joined Mrs Chrisparkle and me for a chat in the stalls. Not just us, he walked around welcoming everyone to the play; a very thoughtful and personal touch. He seemed extremely happy when he discovered a celebrity in the front row, Simon, who apparently had appeared in Skyfall, and we all sang him Happy Birthday, before discovering it wasn’t his birthday after all. Chris Bean, the dactor, that’s a director and actor to you and me, was also scurrying around in a very fetching Pringle top (the woollen mill, not the crisps), before officially welcoming us all from the stage together with co-director, I mean Assistant Director, Robert Grove.

If you’ve seen The Play That Goes Wrong – and if you haven’t you really need to get on over to the Duchess Theatre – you might be asking yourself, do I also need to see Peter Pan Goes Wrong, are they basically the same show in a different setting? Well, the answers are yes and yes. Once again the excruciatingly awful actors of the CPDS are to be seen desecrating the beautiful Royal theatre with their ham-fisted performances, overweening self-belief, and a set that has a mind of its own. This kind of humour is not for everyone. It is hugely slapstick, totally lacking in subtlety, and encourages you to laugh at things that in many respects one ought not to find funny – like an out of control wheelchair. It is also immensely likeable, enormously character-driven, and performed with a degree of accuracy, timing and all-round skill of Bolshoi proportions (if they were doing dance). Which they’re not.

It may be easy to dismiss the play itself as being just a box of tricks, but actually it’s extraordinarily well written and beautifully structured. Something in the text and performance encourages the audience to shout back and participate in the play in a way you wouldn’t dream of in any other comedy; it’s like a mutual confidence between cast and audience grows organically as the show develops. There’s a wonderful scene where Laurence Pears, playing Dactor Chris Bean, playing Captain Hook, is really losing it. So many things have gone wrong and the audience are laughing at him when he’s not meant to be funny. “Stop laughing at me!!!” he bellows, like the spoiltest brat in the school, which only makes us laugh at him more. He starts picking on individual members of the audience who have heckled in previous scenes, but they only heckled because the play welcomed it. “It’s not a panto!” he exclaims. “Oh yes it is” we all reply. And so on. As we learn more about what they all think of actor Max Bennett, our sympathy for him grows so that eventually his every movement is greeted with enthusiastic support and appreciation – note to audience, it isn’t real, it is just a play. They must have a Plan B for a smaller or less enthusiastic audience, but they certainly didn’t need it last night (the Royal was pretty much full, as it is for the rest of the run).

Technically it’s a dream of a show, with so much of the humour depending on the unreliability of the set. From falling trees to collapsing bunks, an overly choppy sea to an amazing revolving set that just refuses to stop, no potential technical disaster is overlooked or under-utilised as a comic weapon. And that’s even before we mention anything to do with flying. Quite rightly the three technicians join the cast on stage for the curtain call – the actors would be lost without them. Everyone works together so seamlessly for the show to succeed – mentally they must be all joined at the hip, if that’s not a mixed metaphor.

Just as in Noises Off, actors play characters playing characters, which gives a double level of fun. The pompous Jonathan (Peter Pan) and the dreadfully over-acting Sandra (Wendy) are in a relationship but useless Max (Nana the Dog and the Crocodile) fancies her something rotten. Added to which, Chris (George Darling and Captain Hook)’s mum appears to have taken up with Robert (Starkey, and for this performance, Michael). Meanwhile, Dennis (John and Jukes) still can’t remember his lines without technical backup, Annie, now upgraded from ASM, (Mary Darling, Lisa, Tinkerbell and Cecco) has too many roles to cope with the costume changes, and Lucy (Tootles) is so traumatised by falling set early on so that she can barely speak and is forced to spend the rest of the performance in a wheelchair. And all that’s before you actually dig down to the Peter Pan level.

The cast are fantastic throughout, and it would be wrong to single out any individual performer, so I’m going to mention them all! Laurence Pears’ Chris is a fantastic study of finite ability stretched too far, patronising both cast and audience with his self-obsessed status. Cornelius Booth makes an ebullient Robert, with a penchant for parking in the ambulance spots, a marvellously whiskery young Michael, enthusiastically encouraging the boys and girls to cheer (which Chris the dactor finds so distasteful) and is comic genius as the unintelligible Starkey, flapping his boat in all angles to knock down anyone in his orbit. He performs some great physical comedy – I particularly loved the scene where he was constantly trying to pick up his hat, his pipe and his paddle. Matt Cavendish’s boisterous Max, too useless an actor to be trusted with speaking roles, loves to come out of character to take additional bows like an old ham, and Leonie Hill’s Sandra was obviously told she was extremely gifted just once too often in her childhood, with her wonderfully over-the-top gestures.

James Marlowe plays a continually perplexed looking Dennis, desperately relying on electronic prompts to remember his lines, no matter how obviously irrelevant they are; Harry Kershaw is a splendidly refined Francis, narrating from the book at all angles and playing Smee as the feyest pirate you’ve ever met. Alex Bartram is a clean cut Jonathan, a spirited Peter Pan with no control over his flying, and Rosie Abraham a resilient and positive Lucy, for whom physical trauma and temporary paralysis are no reason not to tread the boards.

But I think my two favourite performances were from Chris Leask as the tireless Stage Manager Trevor, with a high enough impression of himself to wear a T-shirt that reads “Trevor”, but is hopeless enough to spill beer all over the mixer desk to completely destroy the sound plot. The running gag of his ever-increasing builder’s bum was brilliantly well done. And I really loved Naomi Sheldon as Annie, on a constant quest to change costume, becoming less sweet and more vindictive with every passing disaster.

We both found it hysterically funny, and I am in absolute admiration for the proficiency and accuracy of the physical comedy of all the performers. It’s a wonderful piece of insanely entertaining stupidity; touring till July, but I doubt that will be the last we see of it. Hurrah for Mischief Theatre!

 

Review – Oklahoma! Royal and Derngate, Northampton, 19th February 2015

Posted on by

When it comes to writing the annals of the development of Musical Theatre, few productions are more significant than Oklahoma! Based on Lynn Riggs’ play Green Grow the Lilacs, this was Rodgers and Hammerstein’s first partnership. It wasn’t foreseen that R & H would be a dream team together, even though they’d had considerable successes in previous partnerships (Rodgers and Hart, Hammerstein and Kern). Given that the source play had been a flop on Broadway, chalking up only 64 performances, and that Oscar Hammerstein had had a string of disasters throughout the 30s, commercial backing was hard to come by. Few people thought a folksy musical set in historical Indian Territory would be The Next Big Thing. But those few people who did, laughed all the way to the bank as the original Broadway production of Oklahoma! ran for 2,212 performances (at the time a Broadway record) from 1943 to 1948, and the West End production didn’t do badly either, opening in 1947 and running for 1,543 performances. In London, Curly was played by a young Howard Keel – so young, in fact, that at that stage he hadn’t yet changed his name from Harold Keel. And there was the film version too, directed by Fred Zinnemann in 1955 – I expect that made a few bob.

But it’s not only as a commercial success that it’s significant. Stylistically it was way ahead of its time. Usually musical shows would open with a big ensemble number to get the mood swinging – after all, the musical is the perfect vehicle for upbeat, uptempo, comic, all-singing and all-dancing theatre. The original production of Oklahoma! (like Oliver! you must never forget the exclamation mark) started with an old woman churning butter and a young cowboy singing Oh What a Beautiful Mornin’ offstage, on his own, with no accompaniment. From glitzy and glamorous to minimalist in one fell swoop, you couldn’t get a more reserved, introverted start. In this new production directed by Rachel Kavanaugh, Curly does actually come on stage before he starts singing, and Aunt Eller is washing shirts rather than churning butter, but I guess that’s progress.

Then there is the subject matter. Forget your Irving Berlin and Cole Porter fripperies of the 1920s and 30s, here we have a tale of survival, of ruthlessness, of potential violence. In its exploration of adolescent love there’s an element of Spring Awakening; in the character of Jud Fry you have a brutal sex pest, the cause of which may be due to his mental deficiencies; with his murder at the hands of Curly, you have the heroic young male lead killing off his rival in love. There were certainly elements of the story with which Mrs Chrisparkle wasn’t comfortable. There’s a scene where Curly shows Jud how easy it would be to hang himself, using a rope tied round a conveniently protruding beam end. The song Pore Jud is Daid is a fantasy about how, after he has died, everyone realises what a great bloke he was (he wasn’t) and how much they will miss him and weep for him (they won’t). Where else would it be acceptable to laugh at a scene where a young man tries to convince his mentally challenged rival to top himself? It’s definitely the stuff of Orton or Bond – hardly what you would expect from a jolly Rodgers and Hammerstein musical from the 1940s. But that is the power of the musical – it can explore such difficult material whilst retaining the veneer of light entertainment.

So it’s great to welcome this new production of Oklahoma! to the Royal and Derngate before it embarks on its national tour. The performance we saw last night was its first preview before opening on Monday and you could almost taste the excitement from the stage as the cast gave it all they had and seemed to have a great time in the process. Francis O’Connor’s set slowly opens out in the first few moments as the back flies up to reveal a hint of the bright golden haze on the medder; Aunt Eller’s front porch looks poor but hospitable; the ever revolving windmill sail keeps on turning and it’s easy to imagine yourself taken back to the Indian Territory of 1906 before it is assimilated as the 46th state of the USA as Oklahoma. Stephen Ridley’s ten-piece band plays the amazing score like a dream (there isn’t a duff song in the show, although occasionally some of them end a little more suddenly than you expect), and the volume amplification is set to just perfect (something that’s so easy to get wrong nowadays).

The choreography is by Drew McOnie, who basically seems to have choreographed every show we’ve seen recently, and is a joy to watch. You can see that a lot of it is inspired by the action of getting on or off your horse, with a sense of cowboy machismo running through it like a stick of rock. Typical of these early-mid twentieth century musicals you’ve also got a dream ballet sequence to contend with. As an audience member, if you’re not attuned to the choreographer’s style than these can be anywhere on a scale from dull to excruciating. But Mr McOnie has created an exciting, dynamic piece of modern dance, including aspects from other numbers and routines elsewhere in the show, and really bringing to life the tangibility of Laurey’s dream, with its sensual delights and terrifying horrors in equal measure. No dull dream ballet this, but a riveting dance drama, fantastically performed. Oh, and there’s dancing with bales of hay. Where else would you find that?

The show is blessed with a talented and likeable cast who give some tremendous performances. At its heart is the on-off love interest between Curly and Laurey and you really need to believe the relationship between these two for the show to work – and they express that relationship magnificently. Early in the show Charlotte Wakefield’s Laurey is to be found moping on Aunt Eller’s porch, sending off hostile vibes to Curly; but she has a glint in her eye from the start and really captures that sense of a young girl being swept away by her emotions. She is a brilliant singer, and brought a massive amount of warmth and affection to the role. She was perfectly matched by Ashley Day as Curly (who we last saw as one of those nice Ugandan missionaries in The Book of Mormon) at first feigning cocky confidence over his wanting to take Laurey to the box social that night, but soon unable to conceal his true feelings for her. I can imagine there’s a considerable sense of responsibility in delivering the iconic Oh What a Beautiful Mornin’ by yourself, right at the beginning of the show, but Mr Day carried it off with ease. Vocally the two blend stunningly. I really enjoyed the whole Surrey with the Fringe on Top routine, and they did more than justice to People Will Say We’re In Love, a song I learned in my infancy, it being one of the Dowager Mrs Chrisparkle’s favourites. These are two young actors to watch – they’re definitely on course for a great career in musical theatre.

There are also a couple of actors who are already at the peak of their fantastic careers, and these performances will do no harm to their CVs either. Aunt Eller is played by Belinda Lang with amazing conviction. She’s on stage a lot of the time, even if she’s just washing shirts or observing conversations. We both loved how she expressed the kindliness of the role with very little sentimentality. It was a harsh world in those days, and you can see it in Miss Lang’s eyes. She also turns on the comedy with a great deftness, particularly in the Act Two opener, The Farmer and the Cowman, wielding a rifle that’s almost bigger than she is. And of course there is everyone’s favourite song and dance man, Gary Wilmot, as the Persian peddler Ali Hakim, with a comic performance that’s part pantomime, part music hall, whilst never going over the top or losing sight of the genuine concerns of his character. We’ve seen Mr Wilmot a few times recently – in the Menier’s Invisible Man, the Birmingham Hippodrome’s Snow White and in Radio Times at the Royal, and if ever there was a born entertainer, it’s him.

The ensemble boys and girls all sing and dance with great verve and enthusiasm and brighten up the stage whenever they are on. But there are also some great performances from other members of the cast. I was very pleased to see that one of my favourite performers was in this show, James O’Connell as Will Parker, the not-overly intelligent suitor to Miss Ado Annie Carnes, who has been told to save $50 before her father will agree to their marriage; and who every time he amasses $50, he spends it. We saw Mr O’Connell in Chichester’s Barnum a couple of years ago and he’s a great combination of character actor and dancer. What I particularly admire about him is how nifty he can be on his feet without being one of the more svelte members of the cast. I’m sure he’s also going to have a great career. Lucy May Barker was Ado Annie, and gave us a brilliantly funny I Cain’t Say No. It’s a great fun role, being hopelessly attracted to every man she meets, and Miss Barker does it with great aplomb. There was also excellent support from Kara Lane as the horrendous Gertie Cummings, laughing hideously as she gets more and more attached to the unfortunate Ali, and Paul Grunert as Ado Annie’s inflexibly stern and protective father Andrew – who also allows Curly to get off scot-free at the end.

And that nicely brings us to Nic Greenshields as Jud, which has to be one of the most serious roles in all musical comedy – and maybe thankless too, as the audience doesn’t like the character even though you’re not a typical stage villain. Mr Greenshields has a fantastically imposing stage presence, and he creates the most expressive and moving performances of the songs Pore Jud is Daid and Lonely Room. There is a fine line to be trod with the character of Jud – part thug, part bumpkin; the kind of guy who will line the walls of his living room with the equivalent of Page 3 Girls, and fantasise about gadgets that will kill a man without his having a clue he’s in danger; but who on the other hand is simply desperately lonely and in need of some female company. Mr Greenshields treads that line perfectly – I thought it was a tremendous performance.

Oklahoma! is scheduled for a national tour from now until the middle of August. Whilst it may be a little old fashioned for some people’s taste, nevertheless when you have a score as rich and entertaining as this, as well as an excellent cast, great singing and dancing and plenty to think about on the way home, I unhesitatingly recommend it as a terrific revival of one of the most significant shows in American musical theatre. Oklahoma, OK!

Review – Aftermath, IMMERSE Company and Actors’ Company, Royal and Derngate, Northampton, 13th February 2015

Posted on by

The centenary of the outbreak of the First World War has sparked a great deal of worldwide interest over the past few months. Not only the moving ceremonies held in France that we all watched on television, but also there have been many local exhibitions, services, and other commemorations up and down the country, bringing back the reality of the horror of that war to today’s generations. Last year the Royal and Derngate added to this remembrance with the excellent new adaptation of Pat Barker’s Regeneration. Daniel Bye had also explored some aspects of the effects of war in his Story Hunt that we enjoyed last year; and now he is back in Northampton with a new project, assembling a play from the both the knowledge and indeed the understandable ignorance of war from the performers, drawn from workshops with both the Royal and Derngate’s Actors’ Company and their Youth group.

There’s hardly anyone left alive who experienced first-hand the 1914-18 War. There aren’t many whose parents did. Therefore it’s not surprising that the day to day details of what life was like during that period are becoming progressively sketchier. Of course we still have literature and film to remind us, original news coverage and a wealth of history books, but there’s nothing like actually listening to someone who was there to have the utmost authority on the subject. So our understanding of what happened in the war is inevitably going to decrease in the future, and it’s constructive and educational – as well as dramatic – to have plays like Aftermath being created to fill that gap. By participating in such plays both as performers and audience, we remember the sacrifice made by those who died in that war; and we try our hardest to create a world where such a war no longer exists – sadly, not always successfully.

The youth company and the adult company dovetail together perfectly to bring together a deliberately stagey experience. Whilst the older members of the cast sit silently on their chairs at the beginning of the play, groups of young people scattered around the auditorium start having a conversation about what the First World War means to them – and to what extent they were confused by the names, dates and facts about both World Wars. It was a brilliant theatrical device! When the initial conversation started in one of the boxes I was really taken in at first – if it hadn’t been for the fact that they were being subtly illuminated I really would have thought it was a question of young people not knowing how to behave in the theatre! My bad. I think there were a couple of audience members who hadn’t twigged and got shirty at the youngsters, so well done for conning them so convincingly!

This led into the opening scene, a vaudevillian music hall act hosted by Frank and Maisie, with a lot of I Say, I Say, I Say about it – think The Good Old Days meets Passchendaele. Juxtaposing old fashioned comedy with the general tragedy of war shows that, often, humour is the only way you can get through the really bad times. It also allows a continuation of the already established blurred relationship between what’s the play and who’s the audience, as our two Music Hall stars are very much doing it for the crowd, like any comedians. It also became the main structure holding the whole play together.

It turns out that the two kids who first start talking are the grandchildren of an older man and his lady friend – the kids don’t seem to recognise her – who have gone back to France to try to piece together the final days of his own grandfather who died somewhere on the front and to find his grave. There they are greeted by the locals as wartime heroes themselves, so grateful are they for the sacrifices made by their liberators. As they go off on their quest, Dave the grandfather finds the grave and, in his imagination at least, is reunited with his own dying grandfather, and can himself come to terms with what happened as a result. The young people too can witness for themselves the personal aspect of what otherwise might just be a dusty history lesson.

I’d never really contemplated before the local-ness (for want of a better word) of the groups of men who went out to fight. Of course, I’ve understood the concept of regiments, and I know the stories and scenarios of the recruiting officers hiring their cannon fodder on a local basis, but it wasn’t really until I saw this play, with the scenes of friends and relatives all signing up together in the pub, mainly from Northampton, teasing each other about the uselessness of their local football team (some things never change), that I really got a sense of the camaraderie that must have been in place when whole groups of families and friends signed up together, fought together, died together, came home together. That was a very effective aspect of this play.

It’s probably the use of nearby locations that drives that local connection home all the more. There’s a scene where all the women left behind are working in the boot factory, making the boots for the soldiers on the front (that’s how Northampton made its international mark, as I’m sure you know). There’s plenty of scope for rivalry and friendship to rub along together in that factory setting. 16 year old Eddie meets 23 year old Elizabeth at the Racecourse just before he goes off to fight (they were meant to be at least 19, but a mixture of self-sacrificial heroism and official blind-eyes meant that age was really no barrier). They swap details and agree to write to each other. You see Eddie go off to war and get injured, whilst still optimistically writing to Elizabeth (although not to his mother, apparently!) Whether or not he were to survive the war, there would be no future for them – she looked on it as no more than some kind of civic duty, whereas he held the promise of a future together as being a driving force to cling on to. These scenes were performed with great sensitivity and were very moving.

Meanwhile, back at the front, there’s a field hospital run by a no-nonsense Matron and new girl Elsie has arrived to start working as a nurse, with woefully little experience but lots of keenness. It’s not long before Elsie is an old-hand at dispensing care. We see Eddie, trying to maintain his good humour, the poor man with the appalling gas gangrene who’s not going to hang on much longer, and Dmitri, the communist, applying political theory and logic to a desperate humanitarian situation where you can’t make sense of anything. And we meet George. There were a number of personal sagas that we caught a glimpse of during Aftermath – but maybe none more acute than the story of George, wounded at war with a complete loss of memory, so that he could not identify himself to the medical team caring for him. Back home his wife grieves at his presumed death, but George’s cousin Enoch steps in, looks after her and their children, and they slowly become romantically attached. There’s a beautiful scene where she glories in the fact that Enoch has bought her an engagement ring and they are blissfully happy together. Then George reappears, his memory having finally returned, to discover his wife is now with his cousin. Do they revert to the original relationships, or do they stick with Plan B?

There were no programmes available so I can’t identify any particular performers with their roles – although I did recognise a few faces from previous productions, and I’m sure the grandfather was played by Mr Church from the old independent china shop on St Giles’, sadly no longer in operation. Members of both companies gave excellent performances and Mrs Chrisparkle and I were both particularly impressed at the standard of the singing – there’s a lot of musical harking back to those old wartime numbers. There were just three performances of Aftermath, but the memory of some of those personal stories will linger for a long time. A very moving and rewarding production.

Review – Ross Noble, Tangentleman, Derngate, Northampton, 11th February 2015

Posted on by

I’ve only ever seen Ross Noble on the panel of Have I Got News For You on TV, so we thought it was about time we got to see him do his stuff live. On HIGNFY he always seems to be hovering somewhere between complete fantasy and being totally grounded – quite an odd mix. So I wasn’t at all sure what we were about to receive, or, indeed, if we would be truly grateful.

Undercover use of mobile phones in theatres is really annoying, isn’t it? Even if you have it switched to silent, if you check it during the show, the glow emanates in all directions, even when you try to hide it. Ross Noble must have got right royally fed up with this practice, because I’ve never seen such an extended and to be fair very funny warning at the beginning of the show to turn the things off. But it did the trick – after that warning, no one dared keep their phone on. When the stage is finally revealed, it’s a most unusual sight that greets our eyes. At first I thought we were at the bottom of the sea, with resting octopuses drifting over into the front stalls and clinging to the walls like enormous limpets. Then I realised that we were in the deep recesses of a brain, with giant synapses and neurons and all sorts of brainwave interconnections trailing all over the place.

For this is Ross Noble’s Tangentleman show – a gentleman who goes off at a TANgent, presumably, sometimes returning to where he started, sometimes not. Trigonometrically speaking, he could have called himself COSignor maybe, or, at Christmas, SINta Claus. OK, not funny, but it’s the kind of mental fluidity you explore in two and a half hours in Mr Noble’s company. Fortunately, when Mr Noble does it, he is funny. So much so that the time absolutely flies by, and you realise that you’ve spent the entire evening appreciating absolutely nothing but candy floss, spun immaculately and tantalisingly by a master of language.

I confess it’s a really difficult show to write about, because there is so little of real substance in his material. You can try to commit a sequence of his humour to memory but it’s all incredibly hard to recall. It has an ethereal capacity – try to catch it and it’s barely there, a little bit like those wispy pieces of gauze that draped over naked ladies in 18th century pictures as recollected by Peter Cook and Dudley Moore in the 60s. The other fascinating aspect of the show is trying to work out how much of it is completely off the top of his head, and how much is pre-prepared. Without seeing the show a second time you can’t know for sure; but my guess is that he probably has a number of comedy modules in his head that can be trapped and used as a response to things that go on in the theatre. For certain, Mr Noble strikes up an amazing rapport with the audience, with at least 95% of what he says being reactions to what the audience throw at him (not merely heckles but general responses, even the level of sneezing). So surely each show will be very different – won’t it? We just both got the sense that it was – somehow – in parts – more structured and scripted than it seemed.

One of Mr Noble’s games he likes to play during the course of the evening is to offer good suggestions for internet passwords, witty nuggets of phraseology that come to mind that would work a dream securing your online identity. However, it is typical of the show that I can’t actually bring any to mind, but they grew out of an imaginary bingo sequence that knew no bounds. Other scenarios that came to light last night included John Craven spread-eagled against a Dry Stone Wall, clutching hold of the lichen whilst a farmer gave him continued rectal examinations (all of which would be relayed in sign language on See Hear); one of the most holy figures in world religions being stationed off stage and accidentally getting urinated on by Mr Noble in full flow (so to speak); a whale acting as an interpreter for his assistant Shaun mistranslating his words in order to satisfy his insatiable desire for lots of krill; and a strangely erotic sequence where Mr Noble gets to know an owl just a little too well.

He did also do a number of very funny observations about our dearly beloved hometown, including taking the rise out of our Cultural Quarter (nothing but artists and poets littering the streets), our beautiful Market Square fountain (with LEDs to light up the chavs) and the predominance of senior citizens being propelled willy-nilly on motorised bikes. It does sometimes take an outsider to reveal the truth about one’s own hometown. He finished with a brief Question and Answer session, but to be honest the audience were too knocked out with Mr Noble’s fantasy world to come up with much that was based in reality. Wisely someone asked him to finish a joke he’d started about 45 minutes previously, which was definitely worth the wait.

You need an acute sense of the ridiculous to really appreciate Ross Noble’s humour, and I must say I enjoyed his act very much. He’s touring the UK for the rest of February and then is touring Australia in March and April. If you like observational humour where a comic examines a situation, exposes its absurdities and reveals a universal truth which can inform all mankind, then Mr Noble probably isn’t for you. If you can interpret an owl’s hoot as provocative and sensual, you’ll have a great time.

Review – Ceri Dupree, Fit For A Queen, Royal and Derngate, Northampton, 7th February 2015

Posted on by

For the first time in many years, last Christmas we missed out on seeing the Royal and Derngate’s panto – Peter Pan, starring Joe Pasquale. Shame, because I love a good panto, but there were other shows out there that we wanted to see more – and, sadly, you can’t see everything. The dame for that production was played by Ceri Dupree, and, from what I’d read, he was brilliant. So I was very pleased to see he was bringing his one-man show to Northampton, so we could see first-hand what we’d missed.

I had no particular expectation of what the show would be about. I knew Mr Dupree was a female impersonator – I’d seen comparisons made with Danny La Rue – but I also thought there might be a touch of the Ennio Marchetto about him. Mrs Chrisparkle and I saw Mr Marchetto in Oxford a few years back and his rapid impersonations of a series of women in one show was just sensational. But it was very short! All over in about 50 minutes, which, when you sit in the centre of the front stalls at the Oxford Playhouse, is the equivalent of the time it takes to get to your seat and to get out again at the end.

Well there’s hardly any similarity between them. Mr Marchetto does about a hundred women in considerably less than an hour and never says a word, miming to original recordings. Mr Dupree does 14 (I think) in three hours, and extends many of them into hilarious monologues – or indeed dialogues with the audience. His skill as a vocal impersonator is equally as strong as the way he captures each of these ladies’ appearances. One word of warning though; you may have taken your kids to see him in panto, and they probably loved him, so you might feel there would be plenty for children to enjoy in this show. As far as costumes and glamour are concerned, that might well be the case! However, Mr Dupree’s act is decidedly on the blue side, and I expect there were some very interesting next-day conversations to be had in the households of several families who took their youngsters to see Fit For A Queen. As a rule of thumb, I’d say, if they need a booster seat to see the stage, it’s a bad idea.

Saturday night’s divatastic smorgasbord in the delightfully intimate setting of the old Royal theatre fell into two halves. Before the interval, some international superstars graced our stage, from the elegantly divine to the downright weird. After the interval, we celebrated Cool Britannia, with homegrown talent both meek and magnificent, plus a couple of dashes of royalty. I’ll get into the details shortly, but first, a couple of observations about the structure of the show.

It started off with what looked to me like a fairly old and ropey video of Mr Dupree not being ready for a show – thirty minutes to curtain up and he’s still in bed. Cue for some Benny Hill-style fast action film that gets him up, gets washed and dressed, and eventually arriving at the theatre on time. Except of course, that it wasn’t the theatre that we were all at, it was somewhere else, filmed a long time ago. I don’t think it contributed anything to the show at all, apart from making it start a bit later than it should have done; and when you’re starting at 8pm and it’s not all over till 11, maybe we could have done without that. Secondly, unlike the aforementioned Mr Marchetto, Mr Dupree is not a quick-change artist. He’s no slowcoach, but it’s not instant transformation either. He needs a few minutes between each character to prepare. In the first half, this time was taken up by videos that were meant to give us a clue as to who his next portrayal would be. To be honest, this was a bit boring, and actually made the time we were waiting for the next act to feel longer than it really was. In the second half, this was replaced by clever lighting behind a screen showing him actually changing from one outfit to the next, in silhouette. This served as a much better entr’acte, as a) it’s more intriguing to observe and b) you can guess much more accurately how much longer you’re going to have to wait.

On to the show then. We kicked off with Zsa Zsa Gabor (who, I discovered, celebrated her 98th birthday the day before the performance), an excuse for a stunning evening dress – and to be honest, there’s no expense spared on the costumes, wigs, accessories etc throughout the show – who told us a little of her Hollywood lifestyle, her sexual appetite and a run-down of her nine husbands. It’s a very funny and pretty damn accurate impersonation, with some knock-out material, very much à la Joan Rivers. You couldn’t get a greater contrast with Zsa Zsa than with our next star, the legendary Nana Mouskouri, all trademark specs, flicky hair and ghastly 70s summer patterned dress. Sitting in the third row of the stalls, we were always likely to be picked on to some extent in this show, but largely got away with it, Miss Mouskouri simply noting that my glasses were a little like hers. Phew, that was a close one. Mr Dupree is devastatingly good at interacting with the audience as the lady a few seats to our right discovered, while he interrogated her on her flicking activities. Another Grande Dame appeared in the shape of Marlene Dietrich, (I can still only think of her in terms of how my dad used to call her Marlene Dirtybitch) Mr Dupree adopting a brilliantly superior and bored expression whilst delivering some more first rate material. I don’t think I’ll ever forget the joke about the stamp collector. The late Denis Quilley did a memorable Dietrich in the original production of Privates on Parade – but Mr Dupree’s version is equally as good. Look! I’ve got a signed programme of Marlene Dietrich’s cabaret show at the Bristol Hippodrome in 1965.

Next was probably the comedy highlight of the evening – Dame Edna. Vocally perfect, Mr Dupree really gets her twisted, condescending smile to a tee – he and Barry Humphries are probably about as quick-witted as each other. It wasn’t long before Dame Edna had engaged many of us in embarrassing conversations, but most notably Patricia, who squirmed as he enquired about her bedroom at great length in order to appreciate the colour co-ordination (burgundy and cream, as it happens), and Audrey, who became the butt of so many jokes about twilight years and carers – she was a real good sport. Typical Dame Edna.

The next three acts were more musical homages than character scenes. A monstrously over-wigged Tina Turner gave us her Private Dancer, a wacky overblown schoolgirl of a Bjork treated us to It’s Oh So Quiet (personally I’ve always preferred Noisy Smurf’s version), and we finished the first half with a very staid and dignified Edith Piaf, regretting rien. We then took to the Merlots, spending the interval still laughing over Dame Edna’s escapades and observing the families desperate to talk to their children about Something Else.

ack for the second half and we were graciously entertained to a Royal audience with Her Majesty the Queen, who had kindly accepted Mr Dupree’s invitation to make a little speech. It was a very affectionate, if not that respectful, impersonation. However, any cap doffing was trumped by our next guest, Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, with thighs like gammons and the glitziest hunting jacket. Given the fact that we don’t often see her interviewed or know that much about her, Mr Dupree has been able to let his imagination run riot here and come up with a genius comic cameo; irreverence personified, completely hilarious.

Whilst his international ladies feature glamorous older ladies like Zsa Zsa Gabor and Marlene Dietrich, his Brits are perhaps not quite so glamorous. Our next blast from the past was Gladys Pugh from Hi-De-Hi. That was the first comedy series from the Jimmy Perry/David Croft stable that didn’t do it for me, so I never followed the escapades of the Yellowcoats, but I could still appreciate Mr Dupree’s version. Our Gladys was required to provide a poetry recital (cue for lots of rude double entendres) and the camp quiz (cue for even more rude double entendres). Then we were back in the more familiar glamorous environment of Shirley Bassey, all grand gestures and fabulous frock, and then someone whom I can barely remember ever seeing on TV, and certainly I’ve never seen anyone imitate them, Dorothy Squires. I seem to remember having a recording of her singing For Once In My Life when I was a kid. Only by doing a little online research do I now realise that Mr Dupree’s performance must have been a parody of her doing Say It With Flowers (a single with Russ Conway, apparently). From memory I think it was a really good visual impersonation – but I can’t help but think that she would mean very little to most people watching, and maybe it’s time to retire her from the act?

Keeping with the Welsh theme (Mr Dupree is a Swansea lad), our next artiste was another fairly long-forgotten singer, Mary Hopkin, although I gather she is still active and performing, just not with much big publicity. It’s always a delight to be reminded of Those Were The Days, even if it wasn’t taken entirely seriously. But I must admit I was a little taken aback by his final star – Amy Winehouse. It’s a skilful impersonation, and there was plenty of humour in the performance, but I’m not entirely comfortable with seeing a presentation of this gifted, troubled and now dead young lady, hobbling around the stage clearly stoned. Mrs C didn’t feel it was inappropriate; maybe I’m a bit over-sensitive.

And finally, in the best Mike Yarwood tradition (and indeed as Barry Humphries did at the end of his recent tour), Ceri came out as himself for one final number and a very warm set of thank-yous to the various people who assisted him during the course of the evening, which we felt showed he must have been very nicely brought up. He’s a very talented performer, a great female impersonator, very quick witted with the audience, and all in all it was a very entertaining show. Just don’t bring your little kids or maiden aunts!

Review – Screaming Blue Murder, Underground at the Derngate, Northampton, 6th February 2015

Posted on by

Another full house at the Screaming Blue Murder last Friday, which is great news for everyone. This week Mrs Chrisparkle and I were joined by Lady Duncansby for her first Screaming Blue of the year. Where else can you get three super acts and a fantastic host for just 12 quid? That’s only £3 per performer – and chucking in the two lovely intervals for free! Dan Evans was once again in charge, working his way through the front rows, as only he can, mining for comedy nuggets. We had the return of teacher Rob and his mates from the previous show, but Dan didn’t concentrate on them as they were so last fortnight. Instead we were all curious about a romantic assignation between a probation officer and her client – you couldn’t make it up. Lots of fresh new material from Dan to enjoy as well, which gets the evening off to a terrific start.

In a change to the published programme, our first act was Matt Green. New to us, he had a set full of really funny observations and jokes, much of which was based on his domestic life with his wife. I particularly liked the segment about the fantasy of having sex on a bed covered with money; and also the comparison of people checking the emails on their phones whilst they’re meant to be having a conversation with the equivalent in the old days of their bringing out a stack of letters to sift through. A great opener, he went down very well with the crowd.

Next up was Sofie Hagen, also new to us, a Danish comic who successfully trades on her (dubious) lack of confidence with the English language and who is happy being on the more comely side of a size 14. She comes across as being a really nice girl which gives added oomph to her unexpected twists of verbal coarseness and the apparent ease with which you could invite her to bed. She has a relaxed, unhurried style to accompany her very funny material about not over-exerting oneself. All in all a surprising act, and one that worked very well.

Our final act was Ian Cognito, whom we have seen here before, when he went down a storm but I found him a bit unsubtle. Well this time, to use the common parlance, he smashed it. With incredible self-assurance, using the entire room, paced to perfection, he pitched his faux-aggressive style just right all the way through and he was brilliant. His material tends to be extended one-liners, but his style elongates them into mini-epics, so you don’t feel you’re missing out on depth. Our audiences tend to be quite “right-on” and we get a bit anxious if we fear the comic might stray into bigotry; so it’s a mark of Mr Cognito’s (who knows what his real name is) skill and success that he can end a really funny joke with “and that’s how you tell a rapist gag”. He looked like he was really enjoying it too. An early contender for a Chrisparkle award.

Three weeks until the next session. Get booking!

Review – Omid Djalili, Iranalamadingdong, Derngate, Northampton, 5th February 2015

Posted on by

This was the second time we’d seen Omid Djalili do stand-up. The first was about ten years ago at the Oxford Playhouse, where I remember his material played a lot on the Western World’s insecurities with people from the Middle East and he nicely juxtaposed terrorists with delightfully middle-class north London types. Since then, sadly, terrorism hasn’t exactly gone away; and it no longer plays a central theme in his comedy. He does however still surprise and undermine our preconceptions with his ability to blend Western and Iranian characteristics in one big melting pot and come up with some revealing observations that challenge our suppositions with one huge belly laugh. The tone is set from the start when his introductory music to the stage is his beguiling vocal performance of the Weather Girls’ It’s Raining Men only to realise that he enters the stage to the lyrics Iranian Men.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. We were unable to pre-order an interval Merlot because the first half would only last twenty five minutes or so. That can only mean one thing – a warm up act. And what a top quality warm up it would be in the company of Boothby Graffoe, darling of Radio 4 comedy shows, joke writer extraordinaire, and the only comedian to be named after a Lincolnshire village. He has a very welcoming and unthreatening style, appearing to take his material at a relatively gentle pace, coming across as thoughtful, and enjoyably self-deprecating where it comes to his musical prowess. The mouth organ is used only as a deterrent.

During the course of his short stay with us, he provides his own insight into the mind and working practices of TV medium Derek Acorah, during which he can also find out some interesting snippets about audience members should he be so inclined, delightfully revealing how the whole psychic stage thing is utter nonsense and tosh. He also has a rather anarchic sequence where he becomes a German mother talking to her French child; looking back on it I still can’t quite work out what all that was about but it was amusing anyway. Mr Graffoe is a very entertaining man – not a lot in the way of uncontrollable guffaws but a very wry and intelligent approach that makes you appreciate a lot of subtle humour.

From Boothby Graffoe’s quiet and slightly reserved approach, you can’t get much more of a contrast than Omid Djalili’s loud, uninhibited, joyous persona. Here’s a man who celebrates a corny joke by bursting into a mock belly-dance, limbs cavorting in a parody of I Dream of Jeannie, floppy microphone simulating an unrestricted penis rising and falling with the Aladdin rhythms. For a big chap, he’s quite a physical comic, with many a ridiculous sequence of movement that results in his breaking into a not insubstantial sweat. You’d think that he doesn’t really care what he looks like, but actually he’s turned out quite dapper in a smart suit – he really could be the legendary embarrassing dad dancing at a wedding. Above all, he comes across as someone who’s really comfortable as he is. There’s not an ounce of that comedy neurosis that characterises so many other comedians. He is what he is, and you take it or leave it.

Among his very enjoyable observations and sequences, he explains how a happy marriage can always be attained providing you accept that your wife always knows best; why he really enjoys visiting America; why he loathes being called a “Paki” (his word, not mine, I hasten to add); and the informal way in which an Iranian father will sit around the house, even if his new daughter in law is about to visit. It’s all insightful, clever, meaningful and thoroughly revealing; plus it has the benefit of being extremely funny.

His routine ended with a Question and Answer session, the questions having been written on pieces of paper by members of the audience during the interval and then placed into a cardboard box for Mr Djalili’s subsequent consideration. Ever since Mrs Chrisparkle’s brother had been selected by the late Frankie Howard as a plant in the audience to ask one of a number of specially pre-rehearsed questions – his was “Do you ever ad-lib?” – I’ve been suspicious of Q&As with comics. I’m sure that a number of the questions Mr Djalili considered and replied were genuine inquiries from our audience; but I wouldn’t be surprised if a handful were fully scripted either. Does it matter? Probably not.

A very enjoyable night’s comedy from a comic who performs with splendid pace, a love of language and a sense of the ridiculous. Definitely worth catching as he tours the country!

Review – Light, Theatre Ad Infinitum, Royal and Derngate, Northampton, 2nd February 2015

Posted on by

Last summer, Mrs Chrisparkle and I enjoyed our first ever visit to the Edinburgh Fringe, and one of the little gems that we missed was the remarkable mime drama, Light, performed by Theatre Ad Infinitum; so I was very pleased that we could have a second chance at seeing it. Sadly, after booking, Mrs C was called away to New York to have business meetings in -19 degrees temperatures and up to her neck in snow, so she still hasn’t seen it. However, as luck would have it, her returned ticket ended up being resold to my local blogging colleague Mr Small Mind at the Theatre, so we indeed formed something of a critical powerhouse in the middle of Row C.

The show runs for 70 minutes, a difficult time length to be the focus of an evening’s entertainment, unless you’re at the Fringe, in which case it’s the perfect length. But for the most part, if you’re going out for to see a show which starts at 7.30pm, you might feel a bit cheated if it doesn’t carry on a little past 8.40pm. However, Light is such an intense experience, with so much happening on stage in extremes of light and darkness, that it calls for major concentration by its audience; and if it had lasted much longer than 70 minutes I think I might have needed to be rescued from the theatre to be given some amphetamines to liven me up. It’s really exhausting (but worthwhile) viewing!

Timedate – the 21st century. Spacelocation – somewhere in the recesses of a thought police state, where everyone’s a scientist, a law-enforcer, or on the run. Cass has developed an amazing technology that allows thoughts to be transferred from one person to another by means of a coloured blob that you can pluck out of your head and then chuck to someone else, which they then in turn fit inside their brain. It’s like a thought email. But her partner – who is a bigwig in the government – has taken this force for good and corrupted it into a force for evil. And it’s their son Alex, a junior government agent, who is left to face the consequences.

The show was inspired by the revelations of Edward Snowden, and the ongoing debate about the role of an Orwellian Big Brother in our society. The totalitarian regime takes a positive invention and then manipulates it to take control of the people, by monitoring their innermost personal thoughts as well as what they say. What goes on inside our heads is one of the final bastions of privacy – no one can see inside anyone’s brain to examine and dissect their thoughts. They can record what we say – but our mind is a secret. In this 21st century state, anyone who tries to disconnect from the monitoring system automatically becomes a criminal, and is dealt with swiftly and ruthlessly. After all, if you’ve got nothing to hide…. Yes I’ve never believed that tosh either.

Visually, it’s a thrilling show. With both the stage and the auditorium plunged into darkness (hence the heartfelt request to turn off mobile phones because that really would spoil the illusion), you know things are happening on stage but you can’t see them. Suddenly a light appears and illuminates a face, an action, or a stance; then brief darkness again before another strikingly lit tableau where people will have changed position or attitude (or indeed, changed people). In another scene you might discover the bright bulbs along a table edge moving towards you, or upending on its side, serving as the show’s only real prop – apart from the very cleverly presented thought bubbles. The show consists of dozens (maybe even hundreds) of very short scenes like these, some perhaps only a few seconds long. The accumulation of scenes provides a gripping storyline, which, even though I confess I don’t think I understood absolutely, is full of drama, excitement and suspense.

The individual scenes are sometimes brutal in their depictions of pain or anguish, giving the whole piece a feeling of great savagery. It’s a world you really wouldn’t want to inhabit. The constant changes also give the show a terrific pace as well as intensity. Fast moving, exciting, dynamic; a constant challenge to your eyes to make sense of each developing scene; as well as to your ears, with its unsettling modernistic abstract soundtrack. There’s a sequence when the abstract noises are replaced by Beethoven; I found that a really moving contrast. There are also aspects of the story that are rather funny in a sentimental way – Alex’s parents first date is presented as a touchingly naïve and charming meeting, which only makes the subsequent reality of the technological ogre that is Alex’s father even harsher.

All this, and not a word spoken on stage; although there is a narrative voice over between some of the scenes. The strength of the performances comes across in the deftness of the scene changes, and the physical theatre aspect of how the actors work with their bodies, the way they occupy the stage. When it is revealed at curtain call that there are only five performers, you feel astounded that there weren’t half a dozen more. I don’t know to what extent the lighting plot is managed by a person or a machine; if the lighting sequence went wrong in any way it could really destroy the flow of the show – so whoever is behind that is an electronic genius.

A riveting 70 minutes that held a packed Royal auditorium enthralled – a true adventure in theatre. It’s touring until 16th February – and if you want to see something really different, this is a great opportunity.

You can read more about Theatre Ad Infinitum here.

Review – Richard Herring, Lord of the Dance Settee, Royal and Derngate, Northampton, 19th January 2015

Posted on by

I tend to think of Richard Herring in terms of Lee and Herring, his comedy partnership with Stewart Lee, whom we saw a while back and thought was absolutely ace; but a quick check on Wikipedia (so it must be true) informs me that their comedy duo-ship came to an end in 2000. So much for me keeping up with the times.

Anyway, I suppose this led me subconsciously to expect that Mr Herring’s act would be some kind of Stewart Lee Mark II. I don’t think I’ve actually seen or heard any of his TV and radio shows in the meantime, so booking for his tour was one of those acts of trust and hope. And so often that pays dividends. I can name many more comedians who we booked to see as virgins to their comedy style and who we subsequently really enjoyed, than those who disappointed. However, into every life some rain must fall, and thus it was that, despite Mr Herring’s bright, friendly, young-avuncular nature, and the fact that we were in a good mood ready for some rip-roaring comedy, we didn’t really enjoy his act much.

There are some comics who get a good idea and then touch upon it lightly, before moving on in a scatter-gun approach and who don’t actually mine the optimum amount of comedy out of the idea. Then there are those who develop the idea further, make some clever observations, make you think twice about the world we live in, and make you laugh to a satisfactory degree to boot. Then there are comics like Mr Herring, who get an idea and absolutely batter it to death. No flimsy strand of potential jollity is left unteased out of his comic ideas, so that once he’s finally concluded any particular comedy module, its original idea is left bereft, a lifeless cadaver. His routine, for example, about “Dave Manager” goes on and on, taking what was a modestly amusing idea in the first place and then bludgeoning it to a pulp. He has another sequence of material where he constantly returns to the idea of an International Man’s Day. And again. And again. By the time he’s finished with it, you can’t remember why it was funny in the first place.

And that’s also, sadly, another problem we had – in that we didn’t find much of his material particularly funny to begin with. For me the show started promisingly, as a few subtle one-liners headed our way, him getting the feel of how the night was going to progress, and us getting acquainted with Mr Herring’s stage persona; but after about fifteen minutes I found that my natural smile at being the happy recipient of a comedian’s act had glazed into a fixed position that wouldn’t shift until it received some comic resuscitation. Mrs Chrisparkle laughed out loud a couple of times early on, but then afterwards I could tell from her body posture and generally lifeless reaction to the show that its entertainment value for her had upped sticks and was heading out of town.

It’s only fair to point out that surrounding us were loads of people who were laughing their heads off. They were clearly fans having a terrific evening who found his particular style absolutely suited their comedy needs. So that was great, I was very pleased for them – and for him too. It was interesting to observe anyway, as the louder the audience response you knew the funnier the material was meant to be. The audience reaction became like a barometric guide to the evening, helpful when you don’t naturally find it that funny yourself. Basically, I sat for most of the show mildly entertained when he kept the material brief, but thoroughly irritated by it when he went into too much detail.

Bizarrely, for me one of the best parts of the evening was when he was exhorting us to buy the merchandise. When we saw Manfred Mann a couple of months ago, Paul Jones spent a long time describing each CD and each DVD and it all sounded embarrassingly desperate. Mr Herring described his DVDs with refreshing charm and modesty, and I’m sure the extensive line of fans queuing up afterwards to get him to sign DVDs will have a great time reliving old classics. Mrs C still finds the whole concept of merch promotion by performer a tad infra dig.

So all in all, I think you can sum it up as we just weren’t the right people for the gig. If you think you are the right person, then he’s touring nationally until June.