Surprises stress me out. If anyone out there was plotting a surprise birthday for me, with all my friends popping out of various cakes, I would probably look stunned for a few minutes and then leave without a word.
So it was with a degree of trepidation that I agreed to be the special guest star for comedian Nina Semple’s Boast Battle against fellow Highchurches bandmate Martha Casey, at Komedia Brighton last night where the ultimate Boast In Show champion was to be decided.
A few words of explanation for what Boast in Show is, for the uninitiated. In stand up, there is a type of night known as the “roast battle”, aka the very worst type of comedy night, where comedians take it in turns to be horrible to each other, in creative ways, and the comedian who is the most horrible, “wins”, while everyone else – especially the audience – loses.
Boast in Show is the opposite of this. It’s a competition where comedians compete to be nice about each other, with a panel of judges checking for infractions (negging, sarcasm, insincerity, etc) and to keep things ticking over.
It’s a lot harder to be funny while being earnest and heartfelt, rather than mean, but everyone here did a good job of it. It was quite telling, at this, the final of finals, all the contestants were women, just as it is quite telling that roast battle nights are often dominated by the most terrible of straight men.
Nina not only won her battle against Martha, but went on and won the whole bloody thing, and deservedly so. For Nina’s planning and plotting went beyond the nice and dangerously towards the obsessive, but with a genuine enthusiasm and purity of intent that prevented her from, say, being arrested for stalking.
The bit of her idea where I came in was for her to repurpose a Highchurches song with lyrics about how great Martha is, and for me and the rest of the band to surprise Martha by joining Nina on stage to sing it at her.
With Ros on safari in South Africa and Elle unfortunately coming down with something on the eve of showtime, it ended up being just me rather than the whole band, but space and stage wise, it worked quite well, and I’d managed to sneak my ukulele to my seat at the back before Martha saw it, so she was totally oblivious to what was to come.
She almost cried, in fact, when I came in, singing an octave too high, to join Nina in a double-speed version of her song Avalon with the lyrics changed to:
Martha don’t call me a stalker
I just think you’re really awesomeI like your style, your taste in music
Your love of Springsteen is real wholesome.You’ve got ADHD
I wish you had ADH-ME
You’re a Cat-MILF, not a cat mum
And Martha, you’re the one
My one concern was that the fun of the lyrics would be lost in how quick the song was, and I suggested she maybe print them or write them out big enough for the audience to see. This, as you can see, Nina did perfectly.
And tbh the song bit wasn’t the most ludicrous part of her set. The rest of it was about her visit to Martha’s home town of Plymouth, visiting teenage Martha’s favourite spots (the library, the sundial, her actual childhood home) in a manner, again, that would have seemed barely legal if done by a less earnestly wholesome comedian.
Nina went on to win the whole thing, having prepared similarly above-and-beyond stuff to win over the judges, including designing an entire Potemkin “chortle” web page for them.
Overall, the show was a sold-out success, and the move to a bigger room really suits the format.
There are still a few problems with it that need ironing out, though, and I mean this with the best will in the world and very much wanting them to succeed (also, I doubt anyone who organises the night reads my blog, so I can be frank here).
First: the show goes on far, far too long. It’s a show business cliche, but always leave the audience wanting more, not worrying about the last bus. I had hoped that the move to the Komedia would have meant more ruthless timings, but the thing was just as convoluted as before. Doors were at half seven and when I left just before ten we hadn’t even reached the end of the third boast battle, with the final reckoning still to come.
Second, and related to the first: there are far, far too many in-jokes. The Brighton stand-up scene is very tight knit, with everyone knowing each other. A lot of the midweek new material shows at Presuming Ed’s, Caroline of Brunswick and The Caxton Arms are comedians performing to each other and barely any punters. Rambling skits between the main acts were based on lore that made no sense to someone just out for a comedy night, and seemed mainly to exist to keep everyone on the local scene included.
Third, the hosting needs a lot of work, with a lot of the jokes only being appreciated by the other comedians at the back of the room. There was also a general dissonance between the MC’s persona – sort of self-mocking, but with a mean edge, and lots of not very nice audience interaction – and the good natured performers, format, and general ethos of the night. MCing is extremely difficult, as I know from my own varied efforts. The guy in question seems absolutely lovely off-stage, but he might need to think about cutting his bits back to the absolute minimum, being clearer with the audience about how the night actually works, and letting the format and the booked guests do their thing.
Ah well. I don’t want to be too much of a Debbie Downer about it, as so much work went in to making it a special night – the black tie dress code was a particularly nice touch. But my regular concern about improv shows bears repeating for what I saw here: if the people on stage are having more fun than the paying customers, then you need to have a bit of a rethink.
jamesofwalsh 