Category Archives: Comedy

2023➤ Kemp Bros keep tongues firmly in their cheeks

Posted on 24 Feb 2023 | Leave a comment

Gary Kemp, Martin Kemp, comedy, documentary, pop music, television, biopic, Spandau Ballet,

Who Do They Think They Are? Their spoof TV doc traces the Kemp Brothers’ origins back to the inventor of the clothes peg

❚ THREE YEARS AGO the critics divided over a TV “mockumentary” about Spandau Ballet’s Kemp brothers, which Martin summed up as “French and Saunders do Gary and Martin Kemp”. Gary added: “Our traits, but highlighted”. The unexpectedly oddball hour is being repeated on BBC2 tonight.

Their contemporary, Eighties musician Andy Polaris, declared himself a bit of a fan in his own review:

“ The Kemps All True is a surprisingly deft spoof documentary based on the Spandau Ballet stars’ ill-fated revamp revolving solely around the two charismatic brothers. Chock-full of well-known British cameos (Christopher Eccleston, Daniel Mays, Anna Maxwell Martin), it follows their attempted relaunch including a guest star covers album where ‘Sia’ and the gruff-voiced ‘Rag and Bone Guy’ both murder True, a song they had reserved for a popular girl band.

Exclusive preview of new album cover (BBC)

“ Interwoven are real clips from the band’s history leading up to the current 40th anniversary where they are rudderless and searching for new streams of income including an unappealing-sounding meat replacement vegan product called Wonge and a charitable retirement project. The hour whizzes by due to a cavalcade of witty observations about vintage pop stars (ie, playing private parties for oligarchs for considerable financial rewards and celebrity endorsements for dodgy products), piercing their Photoshop vanity and pretentious public images… ” ➢ Continued at Apolarisview.com

Shapersofthe80s published another candid appreciation of the Kemps’ venture into comic territory, which was conceived by its director and writer Rhys Thomas, here:
➢ Previously at Shapersofthe80s: Knife-edge TV doc shows Kemp tongues firmly in their cheeks

Followed up almost inevitably by Spandau’s former vocalist Tony Hadley telling The Sun: “I wasn’t approached and would not have anything to do with it. I’m done. They want me back for good but it ain’t going to happen. I’d rather be happy on my own than be in that band again.”
➢ Previously at Shapersofthe80s: Vocalist Hadley hammers final nail into the coffin of Spandau Ballet

Martin Kemp, Gary Kemp, Rhys Thomas, BBC2, documentary,

Preview of Gary Kemp’s latest work as a portrait painter (BBC)

➢ Click for the quite funny Kemp Bros trailer

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Posted in biopic, comeback, Comedy, documentary, Pop music, Reviews, TV

Tagged Anna Maxwell Martin, Christopher Eccleston, Daniel Mays, Gary Kemp, Martin Kemp, Rhys Thomas, Spandau Ballet

2023 ➤ Spitting Image puppeteers steal the live stage show in Birmingham

Posted on 18 Feb 2023 | Leave a comment

Idiots Assemble, Spitting Image, Birmingham Rep, puppets, theatre,

Spitting Image Saves The World at Birmingham Rep:
Suella Braverman and Rishi Sunak given life by puppeteers wearing grey. (Photo PA)

❚ THE MAJOR MIRACLE about Birmingham Rep’s new show Spitting Image Saves The World is that the move from satirical television to live theatre stage succeeds brilliantly. And hilariously. Not only are the puppeteers visible (though clad in grey from head to foot) while animating their giant plastic caricature heads and arms and indeed lending them “legs” – from superstars to cabinet ministers to royalty. They also execute physical illusions and perform exacting song-and-dance routines that fill the stage. And for the hundred or so celebs depicted, most are voiced by equally superb impressionists. Seldom before have we witnessed a stage show as ambitious as this involving complex scene changes.

As with the Central TV series that created Spitting Image in the Eighties, satire fuels the comedy, while two hours on-stage require a storyline. The mission improbable is quickly identified as rescuing the dicey state of the nation – or more whimsically, “the fabric of society”, epitomised by King Charles III waving a pair of soiled underpants aloft.

➢ Update: Spitting Image the Musical [new title]
opens at London’s Phoenix Theatre 24 May

The puppet heroes recruited to meet the challenge run from a tiny Tom Cruise to Ru Paul, Stormzy, Idris Elba, Greta Thunberg, Angela Rayner and a robotic Elon Musk. An adversarial establishment is led by Rishi Sunak in school uniform, Rees-Mogg as a very tall stick insect, a dancing Gove, Javid, Truss, Raab, Patel, Carrie and Boris Johnson and Suella Braverman as a haunted child from The Exorcist. All are mercilessly sent up along with Harry and Meghan, Wills and Kate, Edward, Ant & Dec, Kier Starmer, Nicola Sturgeon, Presidents Xi Jinping, Zelenskiy and Putin. Sir Ian McKellen opens the show as Narrator, while HM QE2 closes it on electric guitar, riffing on Queen’s We Will Rock You.

Click any pic to launch slideshow

Just before the late Queen’s finale, the storyline had run out of steam. The previous three scenes had nothing to add, yet each closed with a red-curtain flourish as if each was the last. They could be cut completely. So too could the many four-letter expletives used frequently throughout the script. These were not laugh-lines, but mainly casual exclamations. Birmingham Rep is proving as foul-mouthed as London’s National Theatre, where its production of Phaedra is lubricated by unnecessary hard-core expletives. Do these theatres really believe swearing somehow ticks the trendy “diversity” box?

One further source of irritation was that of the dozen voices providing vocals during Spitting Image, half of their microphones sounded so fuzzy as to be useless. Words and lyrics were seriously less audible than the other half dozen. Ruinous when wordplay is key. (Coincidentally, the same went for last August’s musical Counting & Cracking which suggests a technical fault might lie with Birmingham Rep as the House, not the individual company performing.)

That said, this Spitting Image show is highly original and is directed by Sean Foley with great imagination (congratulations to Alice Power for those costumes it would be a spoiler to describe). Along with plenty of other show-stopping highlights, Putin’s tap-dance routine deserves a rollicking long future. As do the 12 grey-clad puppeteers. When they stepped down-stage together to take their curtain call – their names arguably unknown to most of the audience – it came as a sudden epiphany to accept that their skills had created every one of the characters and driven the entire performance.

❏ THE PUPPETEERS were Kate Bradley, Paula Brett, Kaidan Dawkins, Bertie Harris, Jojo Lin, Pena Iiyambo, Chand Martinez, Will Palmer, Helen Parke, Rayo Patel, Tom Quinn, Faye Weerasinghe.

Spitting Image Saves The World at Birmingham Rep: Stormzy and Tom Cruise given life by puppeteers. (Photo: PA)

➢ Idiots Assemble – Spitting Image Saves The World
is live on stage at the Birmingham Rep until 11 March.

Spitting Image Saves The World at Birmingham Rep: celebrity cast headed by Tom Cruise, as puppets

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Posted in Comedy, musicals, Reviews, theatre

Tagged Al Murray, Birmingham Rep, Ian McKellen, Idiots Assemble, Matt Forde, puppets, Rishi Sunak, Sean Foley, Spitting Image Saves The World, Stormzy, Suella Braverman, Tom Cruise

2021 ➢ Famous last words from Frau Blücher and Nurse Diesel

Posted on 29 Jan 2021 | Leave a comment

Cloris Leachman, Mel Brooks, Nurse Diesel, Young Frankenstein, comedy, films,

Cloris Leachman as Young Frankenstein’s housekeeper: Frau Blücher’s name itself struck a note of terror

❚ EVERY MEL BROOKS FAN knows the face of Cloris Leachman from her outrageous characters, the Transylvanian housekeeper Frau Blücher and dominatrix nurse Charlotte Diesel, so vividly associated with the director’s wild film parodies Young Frankenstein and High Anxiety in the mid-Seventies. Mere mention of stern Frau Blücher’s name caused whinnying horses to rear in fear, and only slowly does Dr “Fronkensteen” Junior work out who she is. “So you and Victor were. . . ?” he asks. “Yes, yes,” she replies. “He vas my… boyfriend.” Later in the Hitchcockian spoof set in an Institute for the Very, Very Nervous, the demented psycho who pronounced her name “Nursh Deezhel” did finally admit: “Perhaps I’ve been a bit too harsh.”

“Cloris’s genius is that she never plays comedy for laughs. She’s deadly serious” – director Mel Brooks

Leachman the actress died this week aged 94 and her dazzling career also embraced an Oscar-winning supporting role in Peter Bogdanovich’s The Last Picture Show, numerous TV residencies from Lassie and The Mary Tyler Moore Show and its spin-off Phyllis to The Beverly Hillbillies, plus cameos in so many TV hits that between 1972 and 2011 she was nominated for 22 Primetime Emmys and won eight. Her twilight years saw her portraying off-beat grandmothers in television and film and competing with celebrities less than half her age on Dancing With the Stars.

Cloris Leachman, Mel Brooks, Nurse Diesel, High Anxiety, comedy, films,

Cloris Leachman as the very strict Nurse Diesel in High Anxiety: viewed with Hitchcockian inspiration from beneath a glass coffee table

➢ The Last Picture Show made Leachman a star – Robert Berkvist in the New York Times: “But she may be best remembered for drawing laughs on Mary Tyler Moore, Phyllis and Malcolm in the Middle.”

➢ Star of film and TV who relished the roles of grandmas and grotesques – Ronald Bergan in The Guardian: “She played Mary Tyler Moore’s manipulative landlady Phyllis Lindstrom for which she was best known.”

➢ Winning the Oscar seemed to liberate Cloris Leachman – Obituary in The Times: “I’m at a point where I’m free to go out and have a little fun with my career,” she said in her acceptance speech.

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Posted in actors, cinema, Comedy, drama, obituaries, TV

Tagged Cloris Leachman, Frau Blucher, High Anxiety, Mary Tyler Moore Show, Mel Brooks, Nurse Diesel, Phyllis, Young Frankenstein

2019 ➤ The Boulevard rises from the ashes of the Raymond Revuebar

Posted on 24 Nov 2019 | Leave a comment

Architecture, theatre, cabaret, live music, comedy, Boulevard Theatre, Soho, Fawn James, Raymond Revuebar,

Contemporary new Boulevard Theatre and function space, photographed by Jack Hobhouse

comedy, Boulevard Theatre, Soho, Fawn James, Raymond Revuebar, Kiri Pritchard-McLean, Rhys James,

Friday’s Late Night Scene: Kiri Pritchard-McLean and Rhys James

◼ AN INTIMATE NEW 170-SEAT THEATRE and function space has opened in Soho on the site of Paul Raymond’s original striptease Revuebar from 1958 to 2004. It is named after the Boulevard Theatre which reinvented itself there in 1980 from its racy predecessor by showcasing The Comic Strip team who went on to rewrite the rules of British comedy. The stage proved the springboard to success for Alexei Sayle, Ade Edmondson and Rik Mayall, Nigel Planer and Peter Richardson and Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders.

After a £40m redevelopment of the site in Walker’s Court under the shrewd business eye of Raymond’s grand-daughter Fawn James, there’s now an active programme of theatre and weekly late events for live music, cabaret and comedy. This weekend’s unruly Friday comedy set from 10.30pm was fronted by the wry Kiri Pritchard-McLean. Stand-ups included Olga Koch, whose name struck a risqué note from the start, plus an Edinburgh Award winner who sadly didn’t quite click. However, topping the bill at machine-gun speed was TV face Rhys James and he alone was worth the £15 ticket price.

The in-house theatre production playing daily is Ghost Quartet, the 2014 “song cycle about love, death and whiskey” by American Dave Malloy, directed by Bill Buckhurst. In January comes The Sunset Limited, from the American novelist Cormac McCarthy, his 2006 exploration of free will dubbed “a novel in dramatic form” and directed by Terry Johnson, the multi-award-winning British dramatist.

The Boulevard’s rebirth is down to Fawn James as a director of Soho Estates, who says she intends to honour her grandfather’s legacy as an impresario and property investor by helping to promote Soho as an arts and entertainment district. The Boulevard’s artistic director is Rachel Edwards who founded the award-winning Tooting Arts Club.

The glorious Revuebar neon sign from Raymond’s era has been faithfully reconstructed to shine out as a Brewer Street landmark though, true to neon tradition, several letters have already blacked out! The four-storey building houses an adaptable, state-of-the-art auditorium, restaurant, bar, lounge and rehearsal room. Versatility is at the core of the venue, with every space fully customisable for a range of functions embracing weddings and conferences. The Boulevard has been actively recruiting to fill a variety of jobs.

Click any pic below to enlarge

Boulevard Theatre’s new facade and bridge by Soda Studio

Boulevard Theatre, Soho, Raymond Revuebar, The Comic Strip, neon, signage,

➢ Revolving auditorium is showpiece of Boulevard Theatre by Soda – Amy Frearson reporting at Dezeen magazine, 28 October 2019:

“ The Boulevard Theatre features stalls and a balcony that both revolve independently, along with a stage that moves up and down, making a wide variety of different configurations possible. The entire project is designed by Soda, a London-based studio that works across architecture, interiors and graphic design. It forms part of a new development in the heart of Soho.

The bar and restaurant is an art-deco-inspired space featuring pink panelled walls, marble surfaces, brass lighting, and leather and velvet upholstery. There are also subtle references here to the Boulevard logo, while the glass bridge features an inlay of lace, in reference to a brothel previously located on this street.

Soda worked with theatre specialist Charcoalblue to make the auditorium as functional as possible. The transformations all take less than 10 minutes, so the space can easily host three or four different types of performance in one day.

Developer Fawn James said: “One of the things that I really wanted was that element of surprise, because when you’re in Soho you don’t necessarily know what you’re getting. Sometimes you could come to a show in the round, go downstairs, grab a bite to eat, then come back up for the next show and feel like you’re in a completely different room…” / Continued at Dezeen online

Photography is by Jack Hobhouse unless otherwise stated