Lee Evans - Live Review

As an early adopter of arena comedy, Lee Evans knows he has to shovel industrial quantities energy and enthusiasm into his every move, performing with a power that will transmit to the back of the vast auditorium.

Yet for all that passion, he often comes across as a bit, well... dull, no matter how much he sweats over his act.

Sure, there are some fine displays of comic business in this new Roadrunner tour – a few great jokes, and that potent physically in face and limbs alike which brings the scenes he describes to life with a real spark – but he spends the best part of his two-and-a-half hour show (three if you count the interval) telling you things you already know, with such predictability that it’s hard to muster the enthusiasm for the one-man sketches which surround them. Without at least some element of surprise, surely a joke is not a joke?

Of two phrases he overuses, ‘Have you ever noticed...’ is the one that’s most often redundant, as if any of the observations he serves up could have passed anyone’s notice. Ikea furniture has weird Swedish names and is difficult to carry, estate agents are awful, and EasyJet’s a nightmare and its stewardesses doused in fake tan...

He doesn’t illuminate, but simply reflects the audience’s life back at them. And it is most definitely the audience’s life, not his own. Evans might not be the most showbizzy of the millionaire comedians, but are we really to believe his frustration with solicitors comes because he’s trying to buy a ‘two up, two down’, as he asserts? It’s all part of the no-nonsense Essex Everyman image he always projects, dining at Nando’s and taking that budget flight so he can holiday in Tenerife.

There’s also a slightly ungracious side to that easily wound-up persona. Simply making a gap in a queue so people can cross it makes him spit bile, so you can imagine how upset he gets at bankers – certainly far too upset to do anything more imaginative than call them muggers, to hearty cheers from the roused rabble.

Though he has a genuinely warm character, in his material he hates pretty much everything, becoming almost fascistic in his intolerance. For instance, he despises people who sneeze too loudly – and people who sneeze too softly.

Which brings us to the second phrase he over-uses: ‘Fuck off’, an expression of frustration that often sits where a joke should be. His angry disapproval strikes a chord with the rest of the arena, and wins him empathy, without needing to extrapolate.

That affinity, of course, is what means he can sell hundreds of thousands of seats the moment his tour’s announced (The man entering Wembley ahead of me apologised for his dog-eared ticket, explaining he’d had it for more than a year). And also why he will never change.

Yet all is not predictable. He has a few thoroughly entertaining stories here that make full use of his talents, such as his description of changing a flat tyre, and acting out the crushing, angry dismay at his own incompetence. The key here, perhaps, is the rage goes inwards, not outwards.

There’s not much that hasn’t already been said about Evans’s deft physicality, and scenes like this really showcase it. At his best, he conjures up a single-frame cartoon in real life form, such as his image of an athlete cheating at the high jump, or an adult ill-advisedly jumping on one at a kids’ playground.

His impression of a digital satellite signal breaking up is hugely impressive, while his performance is so convincing that he can make 10,000 people flinch in disgust when he mimes eating an imaginary bogie.

There’s some fine - but too thinly spread - dexterity in the writing, too, with some splendidly evocative metaphors, and the odd quick set-up-punchline gag you can take home with you. And the routine on immigration is both deft and possibly the only time in the whole evening when he expresses an opinion with which some people might disagree. It’s so much better for him sticking his neck out, even slightly, for something more than complaining grouchily about how loud the music is in HMV these days.

There’s plenty of dull grumbles like this, often with little payoff.. His gag about What Not To Wear, for example, is ‘Gok? Cock more like!’, not only delivered as if it’s a work of comic genius, but received with an actual applause break. Heaven help us.

His closer treads a slightly familiar path for comics of a certain age - having a colonoscopy – but it is an ideal showcase for his physical comedy, combined with a case of scatology that can’t fail. As is now tradition he follows this with a schmaltzy song – this time about the troubadour clown sacrificing his life for the laughs – and the obligatory Bohemian Rhapsody mime. A Lee Evans gig without this would be like a Rolling Stones gig without Satisfaction.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get much satisfaction from the rest of the comedy, despite Evans’s obvious talents, but a hell of a lot of people did.

Michael McIntyre - Live Review

Given his sudden, all-conquering success, it’s no surprise that the backlash against Michael McIntyre has already begun. He’s a smug, unchallenging comedian, his detractors say, who just states the obvious and relies on exaggerated theatrics to falsely emphasise the punchlines. All this is, indeed, true, but fails to take into account one crucial mitigating factor: he’s damn funny – and that counts for more than all the cult fashionability he’ll never have.

Stating the obvious is also much, much harder than it looks. Or at least stating the obvious and making it funny, as the existence of countless unsuccessful observational stand-ups can attest. The smile of recognition when the audience realises that yes, we do behave like that, will only get a comic so far, yet McIntyre keeps the rolls laughing not just for the accuracy of his comments, but for the manipulatively perfect way he expresses them.

He’s a technically faultless craftsman – a drawback, perhaps, for those who seek a little imperfection in their art, but devastatingly effective when it comes to getting an arena full of people roaring with delight. There’s not an ounce of fat on this ruthlessly honed show. From the moment he hits the stage it’s ‘Bang!’ and into the material, none of that ‘Hey, how are you doing?’ shilly-shallying. The first punchline comes before you’ve quite realised the gig has begun.

He strides the stage with the same sense of purpose that he brings to his material, even if he’s going nowhere in particular. You wonder how he’s still quite chubby, as he must yomp a half-marathon every night. That to-and-fro pacing can be distracting up-close, but when you’ve got 12,000 people to entertain, it adds a sense of dynamism that can be seen even from Wembley’s upper tier, row ZZZ.

Every gesture is minutely planned, but massively performed; whether its his trademark skip with which he leaves the stage or the inclusive, open gesture that has his arms stretch wider than seems humanly possible. He wants to draw as many people as possible to him – and given this blockbuster tour, top-rated TV show and soon-to-be bestselling DVD, being recorded here tonight – he’s achieving his aim.

The starting points for his routines are, necessarily broad. Sometimes even he can’t take it beyond restating the shared observation, such as the barber’s pointless back-of-the-head mirror or the over made-up girls on a department store cosmetics counter.

But when he does mine deeper, he frequently finds gold – most often when he’s describing universal behavioural foibles, rather than commenting on external things he’s noticed. Women buying dresses, the ‘bullshit production’ of ordering wine in a restaurant, calling your missing phone to locate it… it sounds an uninspiring list of topics, but McIntyre ekes a lot out of it. Even when repeating a dull conversation, he has the performance techniques to make the tedious zing with life.

Anything that lets him use his bold physically also works well, especially when the inspiration is slightly offbeat. His re-enacting of the jittery pause on old VHS tapes compared to the crisp freeze-frame of Sky+ is especially funny, and kept, like every routine, efficiently lean.

Yes, there’s a certain clinicality to the way everything so meticulously planned – but the very fact that every word, pause and gesticulation has been chosen for good reason ensures this chuckle factory is running at maximum efficiency; and it’s hard to argue with his prodigious laugh rate.