Skip to main content

Mostly Done and Dusted.


Tonight saw the last Hitchin Mostly Comedy of 2016, which all in all, was a good way to round things off.

Me, tonight.
We’ve come to the end of our first year at the Sun Hotel, and I now think it’s safe to say our move to the venue has been a success. While the Market Theatre was a lovely space to play and certainly enabled the club to grow, the move to The Sun was the best thing that could happen for us. It enabled us to increase capacity by just enough to make a real difference to how the event runs financially, giving us more of a budget to book bigger acts. The move also relinquished us from the responsibility of having to staff the entire theatre for the night - including the two bars and Front of House - which was a drain on both our finances and our time. Now, we can just concentrate on our tech and door staff, which is of more direct benefit to us - particularly when the theatre wasn't always that accommodating in the first place.

Sean Hughes, tonight.
Despite the fact tonight’s show was good, neither of us were particularly in the mood for the gig when we met in this afternoon to set up. It was probably that ‘end of the year' feeling more than anything, plus we’ve had so little time together to be able to work up anything new.

When it came to it, we needn’t have worried. Our material went well, and Luke Benson and Sean Hughes were well-received. I tried out a tiny bit of new solo material as well that has legs (not literally), as well as recycling a piece from my first show ‘…and Ephgrave’ that I hadn’t touched since last summer, which still has potential. I’m glad I went ahead with my solo set, as I wasn’t sure if I was going to put myself through it, having not had much time to really think it through, but as ever, it’s best to try something in the open than spending too long over-thinking it. If nothing else, I’ve broken the seal on writing a new show; there’s something pleasing psychologically about having done this before the year’s up; if I can just come up with another fifty-five minutes worth, I should be all right.
Labels:

Popular posts from this blog

Shakerpuppetmaker.

Have Parker from Thunderbirds and Noel Gallagher ever been seen in the same room? The resemblance is uncanny. So much so, I think something’s afoot. If my suspicions are correct, I've stumbled across a secret that will blow the music and puppet industry wide apart. In the mid-60s / mid-90s at least. It doesn’t take long to see the signposts. There’s the similarity between the name of Oasis’ first single, Supersonic, and Supermarianation, Gerry Anderson’s puppetry technique. The Gallagher brothers would often wear Parkas . Live Forever was clearly a reference to Captain Scarlet and Standing on the Shoulder of Giants to the size difference between Noel and his bandmates. The more you think about it, the more brazen it gets. It’s fishier than Area 51, Paul is Dead and JFK's assassination put together. The only glitch to the theory is scale . According to Wikipedia, Anderson’s marionettes were 1’10” and Gallagher is 5’8”. How does he maintain an illusion of avera...
Read more

'...I'm Gonna Look at You 'til My Eyes Go Blind."

Over the past week or two, I’ve been on a bit of a Sheryl Crow kick, largely thanks to rediscovering her cover of one of my most-liked Bob Dylan songs. She has one of my favourite female voices, yet despite this, I only own one CD and that’s just a single (her '97 release ‘Hard to Make a Stand’); on that basis, you can only imagine how much of her back catalogue I’d own if I hated her (it would fall into minus-figures). Dylan, conversely, takes up more of my collection than anyone else, save The Beatles and Paul McCartney’s solo work. He’s one of those artists who, when you get him, you really get him - and once I’d tuned into his style as a student, I'd time and again be blown away by his lyrics; he’ll have more jaw-dropping imagery in one track than other people fit in a whole career. These days, I mostly listen to music in the morning when getting ready, and more often than not, this will consist of a suggested YouTube playlist when I’m in the bath, r...
Read more

"Speaking Words of Wisdom, Let it Shine."

Tonight saw the second instalment of BBC1’s latest advertise-a-musical-for-months-and-then-cast-it-with-performers-too-inexperienced-to-do-it-a-thon ‘Let it S̶h̶i̶t̶e̶ Shine’ (or as I call it: ‘REAL AUDITIONS ARE NOTHING LIKE THIS’). I didn’t watch it (clearly), but being reminded of how angry seeing just five minutes of it made me last week caused me to mull over what I would call a musical based on the band’s songbook, if I was responsible for it. Here are a my suggestions: IDEAS FOR TITLE OF A TAKE THAT MUSICAL: Barlow! Dirty Fat-Dancing Orange! A Million Love-changes-everything Songs Owen! Howard's End Pray Misérables Mamma Marka! Babe (with a pig as the lead) …BUT MY FAVOURITE HAS TO BE: Jason & His Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat. "It was Orange, Orange, Orange, Orange..." (TAKE) THAT’S ENOUGH OF (TAKE) THAT.
Read more