Review: 'Stewart Francis Live at the Grand Opera House'

By Tom Clarke

With opening acts, it is often hard to grab the audience’s attention, especially as they haven’t paid to see a support. It generally requires a thicker skin than for most other comedy shows. This support act was Matt Rudge, a young comedian from the West Country. One of his main strengths was interacting with the audience, which showed his brash yet charming confidence and warmed him to most of the audience. He was a storytelling comedian who liked to play along with the audience in each joke and, for the most part, this worked very well. Occasionally, however, his stories would become a little bit too long and the punch line not funny enough to sustain the amount of time dedicated to it. Nevertheless, the last thing I took away from this was one of his last jokes, which was a one liner and didn’t sink that well with the audience – His response to this was “you better get used to those as you’ve got a full hour in front of you!” This led to one of his first rounds of applause and set us up nicely for Stewart Francis.

Francis is a Canadian born comedian who has established himself in both the US and UK. He is frequently on comedy panel shows such as QI, Mock the Week and 8 Out of 10 Cats and has written for famous American shows like ‘Tonight With Jay Leno.’ This year at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival he was awarded the best joke award for his one liner “You know who gives kids a bad name? Posh and Becks.” He is one of the most successful one liner comedians in the World. My first worry when coming to see him was if his material would remain fresh throughout the hour-long runtime. One line comedy is very hard to maintain for 60 minutes and audiences can easily get tired of the same routine. This was not the case with Stuart Francis as he came out firing with some great surrealist stories.

His first few jokes settled the audience in for a night of thinking, and of course, huge amounts of laughter. He started to use a variety of props, voice-overs and great story arcs to give his act a sense of vitality. I was not subject to the same style for more than five minutes, with his satirical impression of observational comedy to his mocking time wasting tactic of playing ping-pong offstage. The two jokes that really stood out for me came at points during the night where his one liners were starting to get fewer and fewer laughs. “I’m not a plagiarist! – His words not mine!” After about two seconds of silence, the theatre erupted with laughter, which was a usual occurrence with the challenging wordplay which Stuart Francis uses. The next was rather more inappropriate yet got the audience laughing as well as groaning. “My uncle ejaculated on me the other day! I’m glad I got that off my chest!” His jokes are simple but his deadpan delivery gives them the edge they need to make you roar with laughter.

Overall I thought the whole experience was well worth the money (even though I didn’t pay for my ticket) and I would definitely go and see him again. Highly recommendable - 5 Stars!!

You can listen to Tom's review this Sunday on Yorworld by visiting the URY website.

Review: 'Birdsong'

By Alex Boyall

This week's Drama Barn production is an adaption of Sebastian Faulk's novel Birdsong, by Rachel Wagstaff. It essentially centres on the short lives of two young men, infantry Lieutenant Stephen Wraysford (Jason Ryall), and Royal Engineer Sapper Jack Firebrace (Iain Campbell), and their lives in the trenches of France and Belgium during WWI. Interspersed with the storyline during the war in 1916 is the earlier story of the same Lieutenant in 1910, whilst working for a French textile factory owner, René Azaire (Toby King). During this time, he falls in love with René's wife, Isabelle (Zoe Biles) and they begin an affair. The first act ends with Wraysford and his men going over the top to attack the Germans. The second act is set two years later with Wraysford and Firebrace still in the trenches, and concludes very poignantly with the entire cast walking slowly on, carrying makeshift wooden crosses, and looking towards a war memorial, illuminated by a single spotlight. The acting in this impressive production is spot on, wonderful direction from Connor Abbott - Ryall switches between embittered Officer and smitten young man with ease; whilst Campbell portrays a down-to-earth former miner, trying his best to keep his morale, and that of those around him, high, despite the hopelessness and desperation of the trenches they are stuck in.

King is positively frightening as the malevolent, controlling husband, with Biles at his side as all that is sweet and good in life, despite the situation she finds herself in. Notable performances too, from Andy Bewley as Jack's best friend Arthur Shaw, and Joseph D'angelo, the provider of many a laugh as Monsieur Bérard, a friend of the Azaires.

Credit has to go to Emma Henderson, the movement director and lighting designer, for the opening scene - a war dance by the soldiers, set to original techno/industrial sound design by Marco Baratelli. The fantastic lighting didn't end there though, with full use of the well-spaced lights in the Barn creating entirely different moods in moments - intimate love scene, or brutal war.

The set too, constructed by Nick Dandakis, was simple (as the limits of the barn dictate), but effective - a wooden framed cuboid covered in opaque fabric, backlit, provides the tunnel which Sapper Jack spends a lot of his time digging in, and two hessian-covered flats, with sandbags at their bases, complete the trench feel. Unfortunately, some of the French accents slipped from time to time but it is always difficult holding an accent, whilst remembering lines and acting, and it didn't detract too much from the acting. The timeline kept jumping between the trenches in 1916 and the textile factory in 1910, sometimes with a character remaining in the background from the previous scene. Whilst I understand that it was to keep the pace flowing between scenes, I personally found it a little confusing at times. It was also a shame this production was not over remembrance weekend - but I thought it was nice to be reminded of the men and women who lost their lives in WWI and II a month after remembrance weekend. Indeed, remembrance shouldn't just be confined to November.

The play is a long one, at two hours and 15 minutes (with an interval), but a lot happens, and it's worth the money for the length alone. The cast also presumably needed a lot of time to learn the dialogue, and they did - flawlessly. I recommend you watch it, before it finishes on Sunday evening.

And you can listen to the review this Sunday on Yorworld by visiting the URY website.

Review: The Office Party

By James Metcalf

The Office Party by the York Settlement Community Players, and showing at Friargate Theatre, was, unfortunately, somewhat of a disappointment. With themes apparently surrounding the ‘sexual politics’ involved with any regular business office at Christmas time, its poorly scripted dialogue, hammy over-acting, and clumsy, falsely intimate setting simply negated any positive impact from characters that were never more than two-dimensional clichés of office workers at their worst.

The characterisation of Andy (played by Matt Simpson) as an almost-middle-aged man with depressive tendencies as a result of the poor relationship with his wife due to his long hours at work,
and the subsequent attraction towards his co-worker Jo (played by Clancy McMullan) is a hackneyed plot driver if ever there was one, and the use of a fifty-something older office worker (Bob, played by Ian Giles) as the ‘clown’ and sexually explicit, though actually inactive, pest was a poor attempt at a more introspective depiction of an unlikeable character that came all too late. Similarly, the wooden, pursed-lipped character of Patty (played by Rachel Alexander-Hill), and the disturbing attempt at provocation in the character of Pippa (played by Katy Devine) did very little for the play as a whole,and served to compound the already irritating performances of the central cast members.

The setting was equally unappealing. Without a stage, and consequently any semblance of withdrawal backstage, the convincing office set was unfortunately subjected to a distinct lack of the mystery one expects from a visit to the theatre, and caused the addition of props by the stage-hands to look unprofessional and clumsy. However, the staging was distinctly office-like, with cheap desks and wheelie chairs, dell computers and ancient cord telephones, though perhaps the sheer mass of at least thirty empty bottles of alcohol was a tad excessive.

The Office Party was clearly intended to be a comedy; failing in its aim, the characters had not nearly enough depth to be convincing, human portrayals and so the play degenerated into scene after scene of innuendo and stilted one-liners, and the occasional occurrence of a serious subject matter was handled so badly that the production became a painful experience. That said, the use of lighting to hide scene changes and of music to build tension and create a partly dynamic performance from time to time was fairly well done; still, this was not enough to hide the crude and poorly drawn characters, the amateurish acting by a cast clearly fixated not on the interaction between their characters, but on the remembrance of their own lines, and a set was too close to be professional and too miserable to be intimate. Sadly not one to be watched, or perhaps acted, again.