Hello! I did the Treason Show for the first time, and am back in London with some cats. I sometimes find it difficult to sleep after a show, and so after a few aborted attempts at no longer being conscious, I thought I’d write a short post about last week’s Next Level Sketch, which was a very lovely show with some very lovely guest acts.

I wasn’t in many sketches myself for this particular show, as I’d just got back from Berlin and hadn’t been in rehearsals. However the loss of “Mr Paul Creasy” to “The Lurgy” meant some last minute re-jigging, the abandonment of a topical sketch about the 1980s Swedish rock band Europe, and a last minute Swedish police officer replacement. Yeah, most of the disruption was Sweden related, thinking about it.

On first was Mikey, trying out some new material about being a scientist. The audience did NOT GO FOR IT at all, interpreting the stuff-going-wrong and the scientist telling bad jokes as real, rather than artifice, for a troublingly elongated period of time.

This was an unfortunate prelude to our own set, which nevertheless went pretty well. Following an apology for the absence of Paul – I explained that he had scurvy – we did a really fun mix of sketch old and new. Larry The Chimp made a welcome reappearance, there was a very meta and strange sketch about Sting, and I got to be a Frenchman operating the British Citizenship test.

I was happy.

The second half was a whirlwind of three very talented and very different acts: Brunstrom, with his charming take on astronomy and existentialism; Mykaela, in her koala burlesque incarnation, and The Mayor and his Daughter, who went on far longer than I was expecting and were absolutely glorious and nightmarish as always.

I offered some free tickets for Next Level Sketch group members for this one, and it was lovely to see familiar faces in the audience. I got to meet some new writers, and potential future performers, in the bar afterwards, alongside hanging with the guests acts, one of the lovely privileges of running this kind of night.

Mikey and Jamie are always very funny company, and as a bunch of us wandered back to London Bridge, mad future ideas and schemes were dreamed, plotted, pondered, and laughed at. Some will happen; some had their moment in the metaphorical sun just in the telling, and will be forgotten forever. But I’m so glad I get to chat to and feel vaguely the peer to such inspiring, weird, and beautiful people.