LIVE: Just the Tonic – Leicester Square Theatre, London

The words “Comedy”, “London” and “Saturday Nights” have been associated with each other for many years. From the Satirical 60s to the Anarchic 80s to the less historically memorable but still just as funny Noughties, people have flocked to London to drink, laugh, heckle, get mocked in front of a big crowd and then laugh some more at stand up comedy. With a cornucopia of clubs available across London on Saturday nights, is there room for one more to come in and make a big impression? Apparently so.

Situated just a stone’s throw from both Comedy Stores (the original and the more commonly known new one), Just the Tonic has left its previous residency in Tufnell Park (as glamorous as it sounds) and set up shop in the stylish Leicester Square Theatre, located on Leicester Place in Leicester Square (How do they come up with the names of these theatres in London!).

Originally from Nottingham, where it built itself into a formable comedy night force, the two hour show features a host of well established and up and coming comedy stars, eager to pass on their comedic delights to you, the paying audience.

(It’s at this point that we should highlight, that, of course, each person’s visit to a comedy club is a unique experience to them and depends on who is playing and personal comedy tastes. Writing a review about the night we turned up to this club would therefore be silly. This, regrettably leaves us in with no option but to take the “Lonely Planet” approach to reviewing for the next paragraph. We apologise profusely in advance for this.)

Venue wise, the theatre is a hidden gem in London. Unlike most comedy clubs which seem to take place in back rooms in pubs or in makeshift theatres with exhibition stand based seating and a overriding smell of either damp or week old cabbage, the Leicester Square theatre is clean, comfortable, and most importantly, you can see the stage clearly from anywhere in the room. A variety of drinks are available from the two bars located very close to the seating and are very reasonably priced for a theatre in London.

With a DJ playing classic tracks (on vinyl no less!) well into the midsts of Sunday morning, the £12.50 entrance fee seems a bargain to rival even the best vouchers the internet has to offer. With a host of well known celebrities set to play the venue shortly (Dave Gorman, Tim Vine and Noel Fielding to name but a few) tickets for this comedy night are sure to quickly become one of the most sought after on a Saturday night.

Just the Tonic runs every Saturday as part of Live from Leicester Square, a series of late night shows from the Leicester Square Theatre. For tickets and details of who will be spreading their wares, click here.

DVD: Futurama – Into The Wild Green Yonder

And so the final DVD of the new series of Futurama is here. Of course, its not really been a series, more a quadrillogy of films, released on DVD, which have then been edited into 22 minute episodes for broadcast on TV. Still, anything from the hands of Matt Groening surely should be a guarenteed laugh out loud shuttleride of mirth straight to the Planet Laughatron 9. Well, kinda.

Having been already scrapped once, these new episodes of Futurama have been a blessing to all that have followed the tales of Fry, Leela, Bender and the other array of aliens and robo-sapiens that litter the Futurama Universe. Into The Wild Green Yonder sees Leela join a group of female environmental activists, Bender date a Mafia don’s girlfriend, Fry discovering the history of all of time and Professor Farnsworth getting naked. It’s an enjoyable episode to watch, with the story archs blended together so that while you known that there are just four episodes just simply bolted together, it is only on repeat viewing that begin to you spot where the joins are.

While this is a strong episode, with a possibility of being awarded the best one from the one batch, the annoying thing is that the cast and crew have already made what could be seen as the perfect ending to Futurama before, with the previous final episode “The Devils Hands are Idle Playthings”. That episode tided up enough loose ends whilst not making a big deal about it being the final episode that it was, and still is, a genuine joy to watch. Where Benders Big Score made references to the show being cancelled, Into the Wild Green Yonder has references to “how they may not be back” and “is this the end as we know it” which detract from the enjoyment of the episode.

In fairness, these new episodes/films have mainly suffered critism at the hands of the fanbase and reviewers because, like all sitcoms converted to movie length, the format doesn’t stretch that long. Sitcoms traditionally have a rapid fire gag rate to keep people entertained for the half hour they watch them for. A movie needs to have detailed plot build up and time to the story to develop, and one of them has to be sacrifieced when turning a sitcom into a feature length.

Hopefully, the sales of these DVDs and the subsequent sales to TV channels around the world will be enough to let Matt Groening and the crew get back to making what the do best. 22 minute comedy masterpieces with a splash of geeky humour and robotic profanity. Fingers crossed.

Futurama: Into The Wild Green Yonder is available to buy on DVD and Bluray by clicking your pointy clicky thing here. While your clicking away, why not brighten up your desktop with some ace Futurama images courtesy of Fox Entertainment.

LIVE: Mark Thomas – It’s the Economy, Stupid!

During these ever increasingly fun days of global financial crisis and economic turmoil, nothing seems to be more on comedians’ setlists than a few gags at the expense of the banking industry, Alastair Darling and the general decline of the economy. But with most people not knowing anything about the situation, other than Woolworths going bust, is it possible to do a whole comedy show about it? Mark Thomas seems to think so.

Mark Thomas is a bit of an oddity when it comes to live comedy. A carefully mixed blend of comedian, satirist and political activist, his shows often aim to highlight grave injustices in the world around us while at the same time joking at the ridiculous nature of the whole thing by demonstrating it with a humourous and often surreal example. Having previously taken on the Ilisu Dam in Africa, Coca-Cola, and arms dealers in India, Mark turns his attention to the economy. Mixing stand-up and interviews with a selection of intelligent people (MPs, bankers, commentators and even journalists) Mark sets out to try and discover just what is it that has happened to make the pound go from being a strong currency to being worth about the same as the amount of meat in a Big Mac.

Like his previous shows, Mark’s comedic style of poking fun at politics and digging beneath the surface carries the show forward. While the guests invited offer detailed analysis, Mark chips in where possible to provide light relief and comparison to try and talk the jargon down to a level the audience can understand.

While it is still fuelled with the same passion that Mark attacks all his targets with, this new show (which should probably be viewed as a work in progress if anything) does lack one thing – an ending. Whereas previous shows have been structured around particular personal campaigns by Mark with a beginning, a middle and an end, this show is still missing that key final chapter where we find out whether our ‘protagonist’  has been able to do anything to save the day and if not what we can do to keep the fight going. Of course, one of the problems with it being a ‘work in progress’ is that while everyone has an idea of how we can solve this crisis, not everyone will be right and it will take time for Mark to seize on one idea and take it forward to its resolution. However, as the show develops, and it no doubt will, that inevitable ending that it seeks will surely be found.

Of course, by then, we could all be bankrupt…

Mark Thomas – It’s the Economy, Stupid! is on at the Etcetera Theatre in London. Click here for more info on that man Mark.

COMPETITION: Comedy Survival Kit

Whether you can’t wait to get the family together for Christmas or are dreading the invasion it’s good to be stocked-up on laughs for all to give yourself a break! We’ve teamed-up with Fremantle Home Entertainment to offer a lucky reader a chance to win a host of their great comedy DVDs. Included is the Bafta award-winning That Mitchell And Webb Look – Series 2, the wonderfully naughty Carry On Christmas, the fabulous Dawn French in Murder Most Horrid, comedy behemoth Simon Pegg in Hippies, the wonderfully witty Armando Iannucci Shows and then finally a complete boxset of Men Behaving Badly!

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To win, just answer this really easy question:

Mitchell and Webb star in which Channel 4 sitcom?

Send your answers to competitions@the-void.co.uk by the end of January.

CD: On The Hour – Series One and Two

And here now, the news. Sixteen years after it was last broadcast, On The Hour, the Radio 4 progenitor to the critically-acclaimed BBC2 zeitgasm that was The Day Today, is finally released on two CD boxsets comprising the first and second series. Although there were news spoofs that came before, most notably Saturday Night Live’s Weekend Update, it was On The Hour that refined the format and made the material razor-sharp at a time when 24 hour rolling news was fast emerging and rapidly taking itself more and more seriously.

Written by a small ensemble that included Chris Morris, Armando Iannucci, Richard Herring and Stewart Lee, a band of players emerged who would follow Morris and Iannucci through their projects for the best part of a decade such as Doon Mackichan; Rebecca Front and David Schneider. Perhaps the most famous export was Steve Coogan, whose Alan Partridge can be found in his first appearance here on Sportsdesk.

Like the very best comedies, On The Hour has scarcely dated thanks to the blanket coverage offered by the myriad of channels clogging up the airwaves. As prophetic as The Day Today seemed, it was this radio show which got in there first, adopting the same arrogant attitude to the provision of news that Fox, CNN et al now demonstrate so brazenly with their smug voiceovers and increasingly outlandish graphics (in their recent US election coverage, Sky – who once proclaimed themselves “News People” – offered up a swimming pool painted with voting statistics, a self-styled ‘Pool of Polls’). Reality was never divorced so little from fiction.

The emphasis throughout is very much on the surreal, the presenters playing it straight in the face of lunacy, a blistering comment not just on the media’s manipulation of current events but of the unjustified pomp and pageantry of news channels and the ever-increasing amount of nonsense that would be required to fill an empty twenty-four hours. And in an age when fact seems to be an afterthought or a bonus, there is Patrick Marber’s Peter O’Hanrahan-hanrahan, surely the most inept journalist to ever cross a studio anchor. On The Hour remains as essential as ever. This is the NEWS.

On The Hour is available to buy now by directing your thoughttubes to here. For more news-based mirth and such like, clicky here-io.

LINK: London Film Festival Blog

Far be it for us to blow our own trumpet, but we are currently offering some fantastic coverage on the London Film Festival.

Click here each day to read what our crack team of bad-ass film journos are saying about the country’s biggest and best film fest.

INTERVIEW: Mark Watson, Alex Horne and Tim Key

The Edinburgh Fringe has always been a place where groups of comedians have made comedy alliances over heroic quantities of alcohol and shared comedic tastes. Over the years this has produced a veritable smorgasbord of shows which have come to define the Fringe – from Phil Nichol’s various offerings through the Comedian’s Theatre Company, to Kitson, Zaltzman, Cochrane and O’Docherty’s inspired japery at the Honourable Men of Art.

One of the newer comedy collectives consists of core members Mark Watson, Alex Horne and Tim Key. The three friends have been working together on projects since 2001 and last year premiered the Fringe’s first interactive quiz show – We Need Answers. The Void met up with the trio to chat about how they were enjoying Fringe 2008 and how the late-night game show came about.

Mark Watson

We Need Answers pitches comedians into a quiz battle like no other. Each night there is a head-to-head where only the brainiest will march onto the next round. The winner (last year Paul Sinha beat Josie Long in a tense battle) is crowned quiz champion of the Fringe. This year’s entrants include Fringe legends like Rich Hall, Richard Herring and Dan Antopolski.

Alex explains how the show came about: “My wife met a guy from AQA63336 [a text service which promises to answer any question for a quid] a couple of years ago who said he would like to work with us on something and Mark said he would like to do it. We all genuinely use AQA63336 all the time – it’s really funny – so we said we would be interested in doing something with them.

Alex Horne

“Basically they supply us with all the questions which are sent in by people at the Fringe and we pick the best ones. For example, last year we had a question which was ‘how do you make an egg bouncy’. The answer is to soak it in vinegar for 48 hours.”

While the trio clearly work well together they are not afraid of letting comedians out of their circle of friends onto the show. Mark says: “We felt we should have an enjoyable mix of styles or there would be a danger of the whole thing becoming one big in-joke.” Tim adds: “It also adds an element of danger. When Brendon Burns arrived on the scene last year it got pretty interesting because we’re all basically quite scared of him.

“During one of Mark’s long shows me and Burnsy just screamed at him constantly and I ended up pretty much having a physical stand-off with him. This year we have Jim Jeffries appearing so we’ve just substituted one sociopathic Aussie for another.”

The show consists of various rounds with Mark hosting, Tim the question-master and Alex dealing with the technical side of things. It tends to end up being a fantastically chaotic hour and is the perfect late-night gig in that you never really know what direction it will take next.

Meanwhile, the three amigos are all continuing their day jobs with their own shows at the Fringe. Mark is playing the Pleasance Grand for the first time this year – one of the largest venues at the Fringe. Alex is performing a full run of his new show, Wordwatching, a follow-up, of sorts, to last year’s Birdwatching. Finally, Tim is taking it relatively easy this year performing a week-long run of comic play Freeze! which he co-wrote and stars in with Tom Basden.

Tim Key

So what is it about Edinburgh that keeps them coming back year after year? Mark explains: “It is only in Edinburgh that you can get this type of audience and it is the best place to get a large audience. I keep on thinking ‘next year I’ll stay at home’ but I’ve been here every year since 2000.

“I’m enjoying playing the Pleasance Grand this year. For the first couple of nights I was finding it hard to adjust to the size of the venue but since then it’s gone well.”

Alex chips in: “I started working on Wordwatching three years ago in 2005 and I am already working on a show for 2010 about golf. Next year I think I might have a year off though. I always plan well ahead with my shows because they tend to take a lot of work.”

Despite the talk of staying away, no doubt partly due to the torrid weather suffered by Edinburgh this August, hopefully all three will be back next year for We Need Answers 2009. The quiz show is fast becoming a Fringe tradition and has already spawning copycats such as Comedy Countdown.
As Tim puts it: “It really is an exceptionally drunken show and the most unpretentious show on the Fringe. I really like the questions we get to ask and it’s a really good chance to see Mark drunk on stage.”

David Hepburn

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We Need Answers is on at the Pleasance Theatre at 00.15 until August 17, 2008 To get an idea as to how the whole thing works, check out the clip below:

FRINGE REVIEW: Brendon Burns

Fuck You I’m Brendon Fucking Burns (Again) Part VI

Brendon Burns takes to the stage dressed as Conan the Barbarian with a scantily-clad dancer on each arm. Why? “Because I fucking can”, he screams. And there’s the whole show in a sentence. After winning the if.comeddies prize last year, he has carte blanche to do whatever he wants in one of the most sought-after venues in Edinburgh. For a comedian of Burns’ stature this should mean an incendiary show filled with jaw-dropping moments. A chance to play to hundreds of people who had never heard of him before last year’s critical acceptance and show them how good he can be.

But he blows it. He’s been touring his stunning 2007 show for the last 12 months and seems to be painfully underprepared for this year’s Fringe. A fact he seems to tacitly admit to in referring to film directors and other former heroes who have had breakthrough success before delivering lazy follow-ups. His material – Arnold Schwarzenegger, the dubious parentage of Prince Harry, paedophiles, the defining characteristics of Aussies and Kiwis – feels like it could be a decade old. His only concession to contemporary topics is riffs on the Fringe box office fiasco and Michael Barrymore – two subjects which will be covered in depth, and probably to better effect, by a large number of stand-ups at this Fringe.

Sure, his delivery is still great and there are lots of laughs but it just seems like lazy humour from a man who, in recent years, has taken agonisingly personal soul-searching comedy to a new level. Two years ago he was telling us how he was dragged to a mental asylum after having an enormous breakdown, this year he’s telling us how amusing Canadians can be. The difference is stark.

Those who have never seen him before will enjoy the hour while wondering how he could receive the ultimate comedy crown last year. Diehard fans will leave feeling depressed that their beloved Burnsy has finally seemingly given in to the corporate world of easy observational comedy.

David Hepburn

Brendon Burns is playing the George Street Assembly Rooms at 8.55pm until August 24.

FRINGE REVIEW: Ivan Brackenbury’s Hospital Radio Christmas Show

Tom Binns, costar of the much-missed legendary late-night sports show ‘Under The Moon’, hit the jackpot last year with his Ivan Brackenbury character – a feckless hospital radio DJ. The basic premise behind the show is simply to dedicate hugely inappropriate songs to patients suffering from different ailments. Some seem obvious (Sit Down, by James, for a man with piles) but others are inspired (A Little Patience, by Take That, for a doctor specialising in dwarfism – gettit?).

This could wear pretty thin over an hour, but Binns’s character is so well-rounded and enjoyable to watch that the time flies by. While the show is similar to last year’s if.comeddies nominated set in structure, the jokes are all new and a number of ‘wacky wind-ups’ are used to vary the pace. A plot, of sorts, involving Brackenbury’s boss is also introduced to add further interest for the audience. The Christmas theme is also welcome, opening up a whole new range of possibilities for the character. There are even free crackers.

For sheer number of laughs-per-minute this show is a real winner, although it’s hard to see where Brackenbury can go next. Perhaps an Alan Partridge-style reinvention awaits us next year? Here’s hoping.

David Hepburn

Ivan Brackenbury will be appearing at the Pleasance Courtyard at 4.45pm until August 25.

FRINGE REVIEW: Nina Conti

Evolution

Nina Conti and her puppet monkey, known simply as Monk, have been regular visitors to the Fringe since 2002, seemingly single-handedly bringing the art of ventriloquism back to centre-stage in Edinburgh. This year their show involves a (very) loose plot where Nina attemps to find out how evolution has created Monk – a talking monkey who she believes could be ‘the missing link’. Monk is having none of it, constantly pointing out to Nina that the entire audience are well aware that he is only given life by the act of Nina putting her hand up his most delicate orifice. The language is utterly filthy with Monk, as ever, saying all the things that Nina herself can only bring herself to think.

The difficulty comes when they stray from the tried-and-tested formula of Nina acting pretty and innocent while Monk makes like a small, furry, Bernard Manning. The weakest segment is when Nina and Monk decide to go their separate ways. The plot follows their individual solo careers but falls flat and loses the audience with too much use of the dreaded powerpoint presentation and prolongued costume changes.

A guest appearance by Tom Conti, Nina’s famous actor father, soon livens things up again and, while slightly confused, it showcases all that is great about Nina’s amazing abilities as a ventriloquist. The finale is wonderful but ultimately lacks the necessary build-up to truly bring the house down. It’s an entertaining enough show but fails to reach the heights of previous years.

David Hepburn

Nina Conti will be appearing at the Pleasance Courtyard at 8.25pm until August 25