April 11, 2006
LIVE NEWS
LANDOR AUTO-REVIEW
I unveiled my new character General Tony, the furious alien the other night at Sit Down Sundays, the monthly evening of sketch and character comedy that Dave Skinner organises at the Landor Theatre/Pub, Clapham North. I had spent several days preparing for this although to be honest, most of those days were spent making the costume. I think you have to agree, it’s a peach!
There are three ways I could look at the evening:
THE INSANELY POSITIVE WAY
It was a success! With no warm up or introduction I took the stage at the very beginning of the night so the audience were completely cold. Despite that they laughed quite a bit and certainly seemed intrigued by the character. I remembered all the stuff I’d prepared and managed to make it through the whole of the song at the end (an insane, very fast, shouted version of Five Years by David Bowie) without screwing up. For a very first performance of a new character it deserved some kind of award!
THE SENSIBLY POSITIVE WAY
It was OK. The audience were pretty frosty and there were a few long silences where I had hoped for laughs. That made me nervous and I ended up shouting too much to compensate. I guess I had imagined that the costume and the funny voice (basically the same voice I used to use for the Evil Emperor on our Star Wars toy films in The Adam & Joe Show) would buy me some grace but I may have over-estimated their appeal. Mainly the exercise was completely in the spirit of the night, ie. a proving ground for new material and it was very valuable. Lessons learned: Don’t shout so much. Write some proper jokes. Ditch the song.
THE UNHELPFULLY NEGATIVE WAY
As I was in the corridor packing up my stuff while the rest of the evening was still underway, two young blokes emerged from the theatre having just snuck out. They limited their exchange to giggles as they passed me but when they were at the bottom of the stairs I heard them explode, “Christ! That was SHIT!†‘Fair enough’ I thought. I was all over the place!
What the fuck was I thinking? An angry alien?! And instead of putting any kind of new twist on the old ‘everyday life from a different angle’ shtick, I just did a load of jokes about how “we have been monitoring your Earth broadcasts and have found the 3rd series of Little Britain to be a little too needlessly gross in places†etc.! Jesus H Macy!! And the shouting! It must have been intolerable, just being shouted for at 10 minutes by a nimrod dressed as a rubbish version of one of the properly funny aliens from Mars Attacks! Why can’t I get it into my head that as soon as you’re dealing with an elaborate costume and props for a bit of stand up, loud alarms should be sounding and if they’re not, you’re coasting for a roasting.
I can’t believe I went ahead with the song too. Towards the end of the act I was thinking ‘well, this is going badly, why don’t I just drop the song and cut my losses?’ but of course I ignored my sensible voice and ploughed on with something that had made me laugh once when I was on my own in my studio one afternoon. Needless to say the audience looked baffled. Even Gareth Tunley who was sat in the front row smiling supportively throughout, folded his arms and looked down at that point. I was shouting the words over my bad guitar playing so fast that it just turned into a non-stop stream of tramp-like bollocks from a kind of Oliver Reed in fast forward.
The best thing you could say about this kind of performance is that it may have inspired a young comic to go out and destroy everything I represent (which isn’t much) and start up an important new comedy revolution, like the punks who saw Peter Gabriel dressed as a sunflower and thought ‘fuck this, it’s time to take an exciting shit on the music scene!’
The truth is probably a combination of The Sensibly Positive Way and a bit of The Unhelpfully Negative Way. I still think it’s a funny costume though and I may try to do something else with the character, after some re-tooling. I’m actually not down with people who hate costumes and props anyway. I thought Peter Gabriel looked excellent dressed as a flower. It’s ebb and flow innit? You just have to keep doing your stupid shit and if it’s any good at all, its moment will come. Although that moment may be a while off for General Tony.