Review – Screaming Blue Murder, Underground at the Derngate, Northampton, 24th February 2023

Posted on February 27, 2023 by therealchrisparkle

Another massive night of comedy with yet another full house at the Screaming Blue Murder club at the Royal and Derngate, with daredevil host Dan Evans on top form coping with another unlikely bunch of customers. Every other person in the two front rows appeared to be a police officer, which made for a curious dynamic. Or, if they weren’t police, they were charity workers. Fortunately they all had good senses of humour!

Our first act – and the only one we’d seen before – was Otiz Cannelloni, whose act has a rather old-fashioned music hall/variety feel to it, but it’s none the worse for that – in fact, there’s probably too little of that around nowadays. He has a cunning blend of comedy and magic – and a charming rabbit to assist him with some of his tricks – and lots of silly comic throwaway lines. He’s a great example of if ain’t broke, don’t fix it, as his act was pretty much the same as before, but the material works really well, so why not?

Next up was Kat Geborys – who, probably quite wisely, shortens it to Kat to make it simpler for the rest of us. I was going to call her Proudly Polish, but in fact she doesn’t seem to have much complimentary to say about her native country – perhaps doing the slightly xenophobic material so that we don’t have to think it for ourselves; Poland is a country that she maintains (allegedly) can’t distinguish between being gay from being a paedophile, for instance. A lot of her act centres on her being – shall we say – sexually frank and direct, and there’s a lot of good material there. She has excellent timing, a fun stage presence and went down well with the audience.

Our headliner was Adam Bloom, a comic who’s been around for some time and it’s criminal that we haven’t seen him before – and we’ve missed a lot. Cleverly self-deprecating about his appearance, he delivers his excellent material with sure fire confidence; a mixture of traditional kids/marriage/divorce type observations and some more daring stuff – I really enjoyed his sequence about virtual reality sex. Great use of callbacks, and he ends his act with a very successful round of you give me a subject and I’ll give you a joke about it. A great end to a terrific evening.

Next Screaming Blue Murder is on 24^th March and – guess what – it’s sold out again!

Review – Screaming Blue Murder, Underground at the Derngate, Northampton, 26th May 2017

Posted on May 30, 2017 by therealchrisparkle

I’ve seen a full house for a Screaming Blue Murder before but this was as full as the legendary pack of sardines! Extra rows and not a spare seat to be had for love nor money. This was the last of this season’s Screaming Blues so everyone obviously needed to be supercharged with comedy to keep us healthy for the dry months ahead.

Our host was Dan Evans, as usual, who had a job keeping certain members of the audience in hand, including the rather posh sounding Charlotte and her husband Richard who came in with some killer blow punchlines that even Dan had to admire. I think as it was the last show of the season, Dan decided to abandon all suggestion of new material and spoil us all with his Greatest Hits – I even got an apology for his doing so! Rest assured, they worked perfectly on the night.

We’d seen all three acts before but that wasn’t a problem with a line-up of this calibre. First up was Otiz Cannelloni; I’m surprised he doesn’t say he’s full of beans, so I’ll say it for him. (Or is that cannellini?) He’s a naturally hilarious guy – starting with nonsensical one-liners to get you going, then moving into interactions with the audience: “I don’t believe in first impressions… you sir, you might not be a twat”. He’s great at dishing out the general wisecracks, never going too deep into an observation because he’s funniest at the shallow end, if you get my swimming pool analogy. And I loved the idea of milfos. This is all blended in with some cunning magic; Simon, the front row lifeguard, had to choose a card and, although he came too soon with the fact that it was the Queen of Hearts, Mr Cannelloni had already secreted it separately about his person. A brilliant way to start the show.

Next was Amy Howerska, whom we’d seen here a year ago but who also co-hosted Spank! in Edinburgh the first time we went. She’s a brilliant blend of Polish, Irish and Jewish, with a mission to make everyone laugh – she finally cracked the miserable guy on the front row in the last few minutes. She’s happy to get down and dirty – with her material at least – and I enjoyed her advice on Brazilians, her impersonation of her Auntie Babs and what it’s like to be an Irish sperm. Great attack, constantly spinning off the audience – which she does so well, and she went down a storm.

Our final act of the night was Pierre Hollins; if you looked at a police identity parade and were asked which one’s called Pierre, he’d be the last you’d pick; and if you were asked which one was guilty, he’d probably be the first. He has a larger than life blokey personality, full of great comic observations and ending his act with a couple of comedy songs. Had everyone in hysterics from the start to the finish. Always a winner, always one to look forward to again.

Alas, no more Screaming Blue Murders until the autumn! What will we do?

Review – Screaming Blue Murder, Underground at the Derngate, Northampton, 22nd February 2013

Posted on February 25, 2013 by therealchrisparkle

Yet another full house at the Derngate for the Screaming Blue Murder club! Great news that it is tapping so successfully into the area’s communal funnybone. This time our host was Angie McEvoy. We’ve seen her a few times and she always a good laugh. I rather like her MC’ing style. She’s quite relaxed, and wants us to have a good time in an ostensibly caring sort of way. But she’s also deadly skilful at keeping order, and she played off the weird whims of the first few rows to great comic effect.

The first act was Keith Farnan, a long haired whirlwind of comic attack with plenty of genuine Irish blarney. He had lots of great material and he seemed to cover loads of subjects, so his act was always lively and fast moving. Nice tantric references! He was very popular with the crowd and we both rated him very highly.

Next was Otiz Cannelloni, the only act whom we’ve seen before. I remember that we absolutely loved him when we saw him last time, and indeed he achieved a very respectable 2nd place in the 2010 Chrisparkle Awards for SBM Comic of the Year. I think he more or less repeated the identical act but it’s still extremely funny – a great mixture of word play and rapid fire wisecracking, and with a few clever bits of magic chucked in. He also has very nicely understated comic facial expressions, and his material is largely very clean; I’m no prude, but I do admire a comic who can bring the house down with the minimum of swearing.

Finally the headline act was Ian Cognito, a rather splendid stage name (I assume!) He also has great attack and an assured level of self-confidence. He’s a kind of aggravated-bloke-down-the-pub character, and whilst his material was very funny his act lacked a little subtlety for my liking. His delivery is what Mrs Chrisparkle likes to describe as “relentless”, and, I have to admit, I did nod off towards the end. Probably a combination of jetlag and Sauvignon Blanc, I readily admit. He went down very well with the audience though.

Review – Screaming Blue Murder, Derngate Northampton, 11th June, 1st July and 15th July

Posted on July 16, 2010 by therealchrisparkle

Playing catch-up yet again, we’ve been to the comedy club three times in the past few weeks and seen some pretty good acts. On the 11th June the first act was Marlon Davis who gave a very nice routine about living with his dad with some very nice insights. Next was Mary Bourke who had some excellent lines about Jesus’ Facebook statuses, and last was Pierre Hollins, who was also very good. I really should have blogged about this weeks ago as my memory of the night is not great. Two intervals does mean three large glasses of Sauvignon Blanc.

On the 1st July, we started with Kent Valentine, an Australian comic who did an excellent routine on walking an empty pram through Central London. It was sufficiently credible to imagine oneself in that situation, so the comedy of cringe kicked in quite a bit.

Next up was Danielle Ward who also had good observations, but I thought allowed too long a gap between money-moments. Enjoyed her bit about going topless for £50.

At the end we had Paul Sinha who was frankly sensational. Wonderful delivery, constantly funny, brilliant observations, and when he said it was time to finish the reaction of disappointment that it had come to an end was extraordinary – not witnessed that before. Won’t tell you anything about his act as that would spoil it. Can I mark him down as a national-treasure-to-be?

Last night was very interesting. And very funny on the whole. Otiz Cannelloni has quite an old style act but is genuinely funny so gets away with it. We laughed a lot. Plus he also did one really clever card trick. A touch of magic always goes down well. Chris McCausland doesn’t play on his blindness as much as you might expect and is also genuinely funny. It was Tony Law at the end who came a bit of a cropper as his surreal style carried many along but alienated others, with the result that he got heckled but didn’t really handle it well. Maybe he’s not used to being heckled.