PREVIEW THEATRE
v COMEDY GREGORY’S
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If comedy is the new rock ’n’ roll. Greg Proops is its Buddy Holly. There, that's two sad and overused cliches out of the way in one go. But still, the preppy glasses-and-quiff trademarks are not unrelated to his brand of wise-cracking, American humour. Proops, who is familiar to British audiences as one of the better Whose Line Is It Anyway? improv regulars, has the manner of the class nerd who relies on wit to win him friends. He has even said as much. though Proops is not an obvious candidate to have sand kicked in his face - unusually. he looks bigger in the flesh than on screen.
Proops’ act is heavy on irony, without ever spilling over into the kind of bellicose cynicism that streams from hardcore American stand-ups like Denis Leary. On Whose Line he chucks out amiable one liners at a prodigious rate but Proops' stage show is a free-ranging affair with more bite. And being American gives him a gimmick that sets him apart from the home- grown stand-ups on the circuit. ‘l have that novelty factor without actually having to put a funny hat on,‘ he agrees.
Now based in London. Proops still makes regular forays home where he’s become ‘that guy from English TV‘. ‘Everybody wants to know about England because foreign countries are a mystery to them.’ he says. ‘1 tell them all about England — like how you order a meal and a week later it comes with a postcard from the waiter!’ (Eddie Gibb) Greg Proops; the Music Box, Edinburgh, Thurs 17 Mar.
Waft repeated
If Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer take to the stage looking a bit tubbier than usual, it’s because they’ve got Marvin Gaye and Otis Bedding concealed inside their suits. Taking all our favourite characters out on the road has required the kind of Imaginative approach to costume changes usually associated with a Prince concert. But will it be as funny? if you liked The Smell of Reeves and Mortimer on television, you’ll almost certainly like the stage version.
‘We’re leaving out some of the bits of the TV show that were least successful,’ explains Mortimer. ‘The film tomfoolery and trickery didn’t really work and I don’t suppose people will be disappointed that it’s not ln.’
The Channel 4 series Vic Reeves’ Big flight Cut was honed as a cabaret show in south london clubs, so touring it round the country wasn’t a problem. ‘Smell’ was a more complicated series devised for televison so the stage version required more careful planning. There are no fall-safe catchphrases to rely on, though the first glimpse of Uncle Peter (Charlie Chuck) should whip up the audience before he’s so much as picked up a cream bun in anger.
After Big Night Out, Reeves and Mortimer, faced the ‘difficult’ follow- up syndrome familiar to bands that have a hit with their first album. They opted for a high risk strategy, ditching years of material in favour of a new format. Out went the guaranteed laughs of Morrissey the Consumer Monkey, Lister, the Man with the Stick
to make room for some new playmates, including the genius of Slade at home. (it had to be Slade, they contend; Mud or The Sweet lust wouldn’t have worked.) The new show had more characters, fewer catchphrases and longer stretches but still the basic air of two blokes ploughing a comedy furrow of their own devising. ‘Funny flrst’; that’s their motto.
‘We’re not joke writers or observational comics, it’s lust daftness,’ he says. ‘if it mares us laugh, it’s in. I reckon we’d soon disappear if we started drinking about why people laugh or drinking about funny jokes - other people can do that better.’
But when it comes to fart gags, they can’t be trumped. (Eddie Gibb)
The Smell of Reeves and Mortimer, Edinburgh Playhouse on Fri 11 Mar; SECC, Glasgow, Sun 13 Mar.
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Catch a whiff of Reeves and Mortimer
Good wood
Victoria Wood: fond of her padded leotard Victoria Wood is in the rare position of having risen to success late enough not to be associated with the old- guard of non-PC comics, but early enough not to have been saddled with the great-white-hope-of-alternative- comedy tag. ‘I never had that label so I’ve always ploughed my little lonely furrow,’ she says with typical lack of assumption. ‘lt’s done for me and that’s been all right.’
What’s really done for Wood is her quality of ordinariness, something that has helped build a following loyal enough to sell out the Albert Hall for fifteen nights on the trot, enthusiastic enough to vote her Funniest Woman in readership polls in both the Radio and TV Times. But hers is no false slununing-it-with-the-people image, rather a genuine down-to-earth lack of pretention. ‘People say that I’m observant,’ she says. ‘Well, the audience is observant; they obviously have noticed the same things as me, I
just happen to be the one that’s saying it.’
Wood has, of course, conveniently left skill out of this equation, though she does recoil at the thought of producing two hours of comedy that were nothing more than bland. She may live and talk about an ordinary life, but she only talks if she has something to say. ‘If I lived in a great mansion behind doors with Filipino servants, that would be a bit more difficult,’ she admits. ‘l never go round gathering material up, I think that’s a deadly way to do it because you’re not really living, you’re just recording. It’s only if things actually happen to you that you’ve got something to say.’
looking at the world from a socialist perspective but feeling awkward about mixing overtly political material into her act, Wood believes her only responsibility is to entertain. ‘You can’t go out with the idea of entertaining one section, you can only splodge your own life about,’ she says. ‘I don’t do any anti-men stuff and I would hate to exclude any one part of the audience.’
She will, however, be showing off a padded leotard after the one costume- change in her latest all stand-up show and if you don’t catch her this time round, she’s soon to record her own BBC feature film, Pat And Margaret, with Julie Walters. (Mark Fisher) Victoria Wood, Glasgow Royal Concert liall, Mon 21-Tue 22 Mar; Edinburgh Playhouse, Thurs 24 Mar.
Thirty years
war
ALL QUlET
ON THE
WESTERN FRONT
ALAN CRUMLISH
Directoriohn Bett Theatre history treats new ideas like the rest of us treat new consumer durables: first they’re revolutionary. then they become almost reactionary in their persistent presence. Joan Littlewood's Oh What A Lover War, first produced in 1963, started a trend for back- projecting slides onto sheets which is now virtually obligatory in youth theatre shows. But putting on this seminal anti-war play 3i years later. director John Bett has resolved to ‘liberate it from the old hat stuff and give it back to theatre, creating the images with real live human beings.’
The production, a rare outing into previously scripted drama for Wildcat, is very much in their style, mixing as it does song, music. stylised drama and politics — though not the strident kind of politicising which was such a fashion of the 60s.
The political concerns of that decade have survived however. as John Bett explains: ‘Everyone knows war is reprehensible and stupid. but it's still taking place all over the world. Most war is about the acquisition of territory and gain and capitalism, and these concerns are still to the forefront of civilisation today. So this show still has an immediacy. whereas some political theatre has boxed itself into a comer — banging the drum too often and too loud.‘
So gone are the days when one actor dressed in overalls (representing Labour) would harangue another actor, dressed in a suit. (representing Capital) for several hours before the after-show discussion synthesised the dialectic and you could go home. But gone too. unfortunately, is the sort of funding which allowed such theatrical outrages to take place: the original production of Oh What/1 Lovely War had a cast of fifteen and a separate band, whereas the current show has a total of thirteen including the band.
it means, complains Bett. that he hasn‘t even got enough for a full squad. (Stephen Chester) 0h WhatA Lovely War. Citizen's Theatre, Glasgow. 15 Mar—2 Apr. On tour until [4 May.
The List 1 1-24 March I994 47