Phil Jupitus at The Lowry Review
Phil Jupitus
You're Probably Wondering Why I've Asked You Here…
The Lowry, Manchester
Reviewed by Ella Richardson
One word GUT's, Phil Jupitus has absolute guts to stand up on that stage for two hours and improvise an act that he has to make live up to his extremely funny TV career and my gosh does he live up to it. The concept is based on Phil standing on stage becoming 2 fictional characters (I won't give them away) for three parts and using audience participation for interaction and to create magnificent, wonderful and hilarious situations that have happened in the past. The audience are asked to ask these fictional characters any question that may pop into their heads, and there were some obscure, funny and saucy questions that went on and Phil seemed fazed by none of them, always answering with a very detailed and funny account of these so called situations his character had been a part of. I was amazed at how quickly he could answer the audiences questions, as I'm sure very few questions are ever the same and he was thinking purely on the spot. Not once did he fail at his attempts and by all means his audience was a tough, quite personal audience with quite of a small crowd of 100ish people. The lovely factor that he also pointed out at the end was he giggled all of the way through as it was the first time he had ever heard almost all of these stories, which is fabulous as it means you could go to the same show in different venues and any one show isn't the same it is all new material even though the concept is the same. For me this deserves a standing ovation because he could of just chosen to rehearse and churn out a revised script of funny material but he stuck his neck out to produce this genius concept.
I found the last third the funniest as Phil became himself and the audience were allowed to ask the future Phil Jupitus questions of what happens in the future. There were a wide variety of questions such as 'are kettle chips still posh in 2052' and of course 'what are this week’s lottery numbers'. He seemed much more confident in answering these questions and therefore this part was the funniest I found, maybe because he was playing himself rather than having to know the lingo and accent from the other characters. I was laughing all of the way through though and had a thoroughly enjoyable evening and the Lowry theatre is a lovely theatre, I have never seen a building so spectacular and the parking was convenient and plenty of spaces. I will definitely going back there to see something else and I might also go and see this show again to hear a whole new series of funny situations his characters get themselves into.
Rating: 4/5
