(no subject)
ARGComFest, second bit (I realised my notes on scraps of paper are a bit out of order so I've already done a lot of the Sunday. Less to type!)
ARG 2
John Kearns: lower-key than his last year's show- musings about life and comedy, with an interlude of talking about sitting next to an old couple at a pub where he put a wig on an audience member. Not as silly as his own wig though.
Josie Long: Smashing- pretty trad stand-up, mostly about love and sadness, but excellent.
ACMS at ARG:
It was good to get confirmation that ACMS can work in an hour, considering that I'm going to a couple of their shows in Edinburgh. Yep, just as preposterous as the full-length ones. (And this is where my notes get a bit dreamlike, as usual at ACMS.)
It was compered by John-Luke Roberts and Jonny and the Baptists, because Thom Tuck was playing cricket. Jonny hadn't had all the rules explained- "Is this a club or a rally?" He was being deliberately bad at working with someone- kept interrupting J-L and also failing at audience interaction. "So, um, tell me something about where you come from, maybe?" J-L: "No, it's a status thing, you need more concise questions designed to get a one or two word answer that you can use to destroy them and all they stand for." Jonny: "OK. Um, do you like my shirt?"
Then Thom turned up halfway through (tied match, both sides all out for 81.) And joined them on stage. "We are not a traditional double act." "Well, no, there's four of us now." (J-L: "We're more of a sketch group." T: "Oh, no, not again." J-L: "Pretend you're in a shop." T: "… 'Hello. Why does this shop only sell bear traps?'… You never said what kind of shop." J-L: "OK, we've done a sketch." Jonny and Paddy did a brief impression of Luke and Thom at one point. And Thom did a song with them, in Spanish.)
Some of the acts: Josie Long did a few minutes, Lou Sanders talked through some of the months on her fruit-and-veg calendar and also an erotic short story ("They exchanged the usual compliments. 'Great vagina.' 'Thank you, your genitals were also excellent.'") Richard Sandling read some Soviet-era jokes (not in Russian), Grainne Mcguire had a very nice bit about being asked if women are funny, and Nick Doody was excellent, with a bit about buying a hammer (needing a bag so you aren't walking down the street with a hammer) and a very funny beginning where the mike got stuck on the wrong languages. ("I don't even speak Greek!")
Full-length Alternative Comedy Memorial Society at the Soho Theatre. Themes: Japanese wishing festival! Python quotes! Buttplug!
ACMS
So there genuinely was a Japanese wishing festival theme ("We needed a discount code for the website.") The audience had to write wishes, and then they taped them to bamboo sticks. ("Someone put 'I wish I wasn't here'. That is a wish you can make come true!") And Thom told bits of the story, and sang a song in Japanese (in the most annoying way possible.) And John-Luke had been to Python live, ("It was actually all right") so somehow all the permitted heckles morphed into obscure Python quotes (<3 comedians being comedy geeks <3). (Except "Thom, stop being a twat" happened for some reason.) They insisted the bunch of balloons weighted by a buttplug that was backstage was for *some other show* but somehow it ended up chasing John-Luke across the stage anyway.
Steve Pretty was v hungover and had been given half-an-hour to come up with some Japanese trumpet motifs, so we got free jazz instead.
Some of the acts:
Madam Magenta, a scurrilous singing medium. Matt Kirshen- has moved to the US- did some gags that he didn't think would work on a UK audience (diff btwn rep. + monarchy- false sense of possibility vs fatalism) and some suggestions from a mother for gags to do at her kid's high school graduation. Laurence Owen with a song about career options for Disney animated heroines. Henry Paker- his childhood and his brothers convincing him they'd murdered an imaginary fourth sibling, and his lego town; and being a bad influence uncle. Patrick Turpin: some v nice one-liners taking apart cliches and sayings. and stuff vs things. (Stuff: shin pads. Thing: Vase of twigs.) Grainne Mcguire on the Mail- "'selfish career women in their thirties, realising what fools they were to put off children'- because in our twenties we're surrounded by men begging us to commit and start a family, and we selfishly scorn them all…" Colonel Dave- a nine-year-old. The Storybeast, with scary mask, alternately firing a waterpistol at the audience and throwing sweets, telling us the list of future kings and queens. James Acaster, with hand-drawn diagrams showing how the google doodle meets the golden mean and box-closing methods. Lazy Susan, playing feuding elderly sisters.
Some of the compering moments:
A woman goes out and her friend says she's just gone to the loo- J-L says he knows, he can see the loo doors from the stage- then realises that sounds creepy- T says something v inappropriate- J-L: "I don't have to worry about sounding creepy when I'm standing next to Thom, he'll always say the next thing." T: V. accurate (and creepy) impression of Gilliam as Patsy.
T is untangling a mike cord from a stand. J-L: "You look like a gorilla that's been taught a trick.". T: "Where's my fruit, then?" J-L: Points at T's pint of beer. T: "Grain crop, also acceptable." J-L: "We decided to give the gorilla a reward that would make him more likely to fail in future." T: "'Wild? I was livid.'" (This leads to quoting a bunch of other sketches. T. has a very accurate accent for "Blandest thing on the menu." J-L: "John-Luke And Thom Remember Sketches- we should do that on the free fringe, we'd coin it in.")
Someone folded them a crane- T. points out that this is not a permitted heckle, and scrumples it up.
T. picks up the Storybeast's water pistol and pretends to shoot himself, then licks the end thoughtfully. "... What? It *might* be gin."
"Some white male."
Equality as a pendulum, and needing to swing the other way… but surely it'll just swing back to its original point again… not if you build a wall across the middle.
T's late back from an interval, because he went to buy some cigs. J-L: "Where from, Calais?" T: "I don't know where that is. Is it like Belgium?" J-L: "It's sort of like Belgium. Um, it's where Dover goes to." T: "Goes to? How does a town go somewhere? What happens to the white cliffs?" "J-L: I suppose they become La Cliffes. Les Cliffes? {pause} cliffhanger." T: "Cliffes Richard?"
OK, so typing this out mayyyyyy have made me decide to go to ACMS an extra time in Edinburgh, necessitating dashing from the Pleasance to the Stand's yurt in St Andrew Sq in half an hour. IT'LL BE FINE. It's not like the bridge will be crowded or anything.
This entry was originally posted at http://shark-hat.dreamwidth.org/193544.html. Comment here or there.
ARG 2
John Kearns: lower-key than his last year's show- musings about life and comedy, with an interlude of talking about sitting next to an old couple at a pub where he put a wig on an audience member. Not as silly as his own wig though.
Josie Long: Smashing- pretty trad stand-up, mostly about love and sadness, but excellent.
ACMS at ARG:
It was good to get confirmation that ACMS can work in an hour, considering that I'm going to a couple of their shows in Edinburgh. Yep, just as preposterous as the full-length ones. (And this is where my notes get a bit dreamlike, as usual at ACMS.)
It was compered by John-Luke Roberts and Jonny and the Baptists, because Thom Tuck was playing cricket. Jonny hadn't had all the rules explained- "Is this a club or a rally?" He was being deliberately bad at working with someone- kept interrupting J-L and also failing at audience interaction. "So, um, tell me something about where you come from, maybe?" J-L: "No, it's a status thing, you need more concise questions designed to get a one or two word answer that you can use to destroy them and all they stand for." Jonny: "OK. Um, do you like my shirt?"
Then Thom turned up halfway through (tied match, both sides all out for 81.) And joined them on stage. "We are not a traditional double act." "Well, no, there's four of us now." (J-L: "We're more of a sketch group." T: "Oh, no, not again." J-L: "Pretend you're in a shop." T: "… 'Hello. Why does this shop only sell bear traps?'… You never said what kind of shop." J-L: "OK, we've done a sketch." Jonny and Paddy did a brief impression of Luke and Thom at one point. And Thom did a song with them, in Spanish.)
Some of the acts: Josie Long did a few minutes, Lou Sanders talked through some of the months on her fruit-and-veg calendar and also an erotic short story ("They exchanged the usual compliments. 'Great vagina.' 'Thank you, your genitals were also excellent.'") Richard Sandling read some Soviet-era jokes (not in Russian), Grainne Mcguire had a very nice bit about being asked if women are funny, and Nick Doody was excellent, with a bit about buying a hammer (needing a bag so you aren't walking down the street with a hammer) and a very funny beginning where the mike got stuck on the wrong languages. ("I don't even speak Greek!")
Full-length Alternative Comedy Memorial Society at the Soho Theatre. Themes: Japanese wishing festival! Python quotes! Buttplug!
ACMS
So there genuinely was a Japanese wishing festival theme ("We needed a discount code for the website.") The audience had to write wishes, and then they taped them to bamboo sticks. ("Someone put 'I wish I wasn't here'. That is a wish you can make come true!") And Thom told bits of the story, and sang a song in Japanese (in the most annoying way possible.) And John-Luke had been to Python live, ("It was actually all right") so somehow all the permitted heckles morphed into obscure Python quotes (<3 comedians being comedy geeks <3). (Except "Thom, stop being a twat" happened for some reason.) They insisted the bunch of balloons weighted by a buttplug that was backstage was for *some other show* but somehow it ended up chasing John-Luke across the stage anyway.
Steve Pretty was v hungover and had been given half-an-hour to come up with some Japanese trumpet motifs, so we got free jazz instead.
Some of the acts:
Madam Magenta, a scurrilous singing medium. Matt Kirshen- has moved to the US- did some gags that he didn't think would work on a UK audience (diff btwn rep. + monarchy- false sense of possibility vs fatalism) and some suggestions from a mother for gags to do at her kid's high school graduation. Laurence Owen with a song about career options for Disney animated heroines. Henry Paker- his childhood and his brothers convincing him they'd murdered an imaginary fourth sibling, and his lego town; and being a bad influence uncle. Patrick Turpin: some v nice one-liners taking apart cliches and sayings. and stuff vs things. (Stuff: shin pads. Thing: Vase of twigs.) Grainne Mcguire on the Mail- "'selfish career women in their thirties, realising what fools they were to put off children'- because in our twenties we're surrounded by men begging us to commit and start a family, and we selfishly scorn them all…" Colonel Dave- a nine-year-old. The Storybeast, with scary mask, alternately firing a waterpistol at the audience and throwing sweets, telling us the list of future kings and queens. James Acaster, with hand-drawn diagrams showing how the google doodle meets the golden mean and box-closing methods. Lazy Susan, playing feuding elderly sisters.
Some of the compering moments:
A woman goes out and her friend says she's just gone to the loo- J-L says he knows, he can see the loo doors from the stage- then realises that sounds creepy- T says something v inappropriate- J-L: "I don't have to worry about sounding creepy when I'm standing next to Thom, he'll always say the next thing." T: V. accurate (and creepy) impression of Gilliam as Patsy.
T is untangling a mike cord from a stand. J-L: "You look like a gorilla that's been taught a trick.". T: "Where's my fruit, then?" J-L: Points at T's pint of beer. T: "Grain crop, also acceptable." J-L: "We decided to give the gorilla a reward that would make him more likely to fail in future." T: "'Wild? I was livid.'" (This leads to quoting a bunch of other sketches. T. has a very accurate accent for "Blandest thing on the menu." J-L: "John-Luke And Thom Remember Sketches- we should do that on the free fringe, we'd coin it in.")
Someone folded them a crane- T. points out that this is not a permitted heckle, and scrumples it up.
T. picks up the Storybeast's water pistol and pretends to shoot himself, then licks the end thoughtfully. "... What? It *might* be gin."
"Some white male."
Equality as a pendulum, and needing to swing the other way… but surely it'll just swing back to its original point again… not if you build a wall across the middle.
T's late back from an interval, because he went to buy some cigs. J-L: "Where from, Calais?" T: "I don't know where that is. Is it like Belgium?" J-L: "It's sort of like Belgium. Um, it's where Dover goes to." T: "Goes to? How does a town go somewhere? What happens to the white cliffs?" "J-L: I suppose they become La Cliffes. Les Cliffes? {pause} cliffhanger." T: "Cliffes Richard?"
OK, so typing this out mayyyyyy have made me decide to go to ACMS an extra time in Edinburgh, necessitating dashing from the Pleasance to the Stand's yurt in St Andrew Sq in half an hour. IT'LL BE FINE. It's not like the bridge will be crowded or anything.
This entry was originally posted at http://shark-hat.dreamwidth.org/193544.html. Comment here or there.