Complete History of Comedy at The Lowry Review
Complete History of Comedy
The Lowry, Manchester
9 February 2015
Reviewed by Cathy Porteus
The Reduced Shakespeare Company are known for their frantic attempts to show all of the great bard’s work in just one evening, now they are applying the same treatment to comedy in its entirety.
The story was that the three actors had found a Complete History of Comedy book in a dusty corner of a specialist library. The book had twelve chapters plus a missing 13th chapter, of which more we would hear later. It was supposedly written by an oriental mystic Ah Choo.
The comedy ran the full gamut from “Why did the chicken cross the road?” to mime, physical mishaps, stereotyping and bodily functions. Some bits were funny and apt: a stream of characters emerged and were placed in geographic location based on what they said, e.g. “Can I borrow 300 million Euros please?” Greece, and then “Did you just see someone looking to borrow 300 million Euros?” Germany. This was both amusing in itself and also pointing fun at the practise of stereotyping. Other pieces were a bit dull or confusing: the opening caveman giving birth sketch didn’t make sense to us and a stand up piece by Abraham Lincoln.
I’m afraid I found this production rather disappointing. The structure of 12 chapters plus the undiscovered 13th seemed like a good idea but then wasn’t really followed. The comedic history was mixed in with jokes and left us wondering which bits were true and which bits were meant to be funny. The audience did laugh at points but many people seemed to be left unmoved by the jokes.
For Shakespeare, it’s clearly a complete oeuvre that many audience members will know well. However comedy, in my opinion, doesn’t really benefit from the same treatment, partly because of the different comedic histories for different audiences, both by age group and location. The cast all sounded American and some of their significant comedy quotes were from people I hadn’t heard of. They did include a number of Anglicised pieces but when both Margaret Thatcher and John Major are included in separate sections, I did wonder which decade we were in.
My favourite part of the show was the lost 13th chapter, when the audience was invited to join in an improvised sketch. This really showed the talents of the three performers, who carried us through an improvisation with panache. They seemed more relaxed and it made me feel like they should ditch the script and just improvise for the whole show. Then they returned to the mythical book and it froze up again, not helped by the appearance of a clown called Ramboso, I never really worked out who he was and didn’t feel this was a great way to end the show. I thought the actors worked hard to cover so much in a short time but were let down by a patchy script and odd choices of comedy to highlight.
Rating: 2.5/5
The Reduced Shakespeare Company is current on tour, more more information and tour dates visit www.reducedshakespeare.com.
For other show at The Lowry visit www.thelowry.com.
The Lowry, Pier 8, Salford Quays, Manchester, M50 3AZ | 0843 208 6000
