Different top-tier comedians take to the stage each night to deliver five to ten minutes of their material. The night I saw had Paul Sinha, Mark Simmons, the musical duo Flo and Jo, Stephen Bailey and Jack Gleadow perform under Mark Dolan’s skilful compering. Dolan was intelligently self-deprecating on stage, and made his transitions mercifully short, punchy and funny before introducing the next act.
A night of stand up doesn't get much better than this.
There was a nice balance between the mainstream and the esoteric. The more straightforward acts were a delight - Paul Sinha, the headline act, was a hysterical highlight, mixing self-deprecating material about his absurd neck, his status as a Z-list celebrity/professional competitive quiz show player and being a gay comedian who ‘doesn't look’ gay. Stephen Bailey flirted openly with audience members with such shameless lust that I was convinced he was going to take half the crowd home. A strident, witty presence, Bailey twists tales of his sex-life into wonderfully acerbic comedy.
Other acts were happily bizarre. Mark Simmons, like other one-liner comedians, revels in wordplay. However, unlike Milton Jones and co. his jokes operate on a deeper, more surreal level that lends a disturbingly hilarious realism to his strange witticisms. His double-entendres are less ‘jocular uncle’ and more ‘sociopath who can’t read facial expressions’. This is a good thing.
Armed with a scooter and the wardrobe of a 19th century street urchin, Jack Gleadow held fort with a cruelly funny set where he abused not only himself but also audience members, having one reticent participant pointlessly jog back and forth in what I ashamedly found to be one of the funniest joke of the night.
There was also a musical act. Flo and Joan played two witty and mesmerising songs whose harmonies rang out eerily throughout the auditorium. Their sarcastic self-interruptions, combined with their talent for chastising men, sexism and, seemingly, miscellany, added a depth and acidity to a genre that often descends into stale doggerel.
A night of stand up doesn't get much better than this.
