Silently laughing

The other night I finally got to see a show that I’ve been wanting to see for years, but kept missing it – Paul Merton’s Silent Clowns.

 Settling down for some good comedy, the rather sparse, but appreciative audience welcomed both Paul Merton and pianist Neil Brand to the stage. Paul introduced the evening, most of which would consist him him telling us about the clips and films he was showing us that evening. You could tell he was enthusiastic about the subject and keen to share these delights with all who were interested, and his love for the films and performers certainly came across.

He began with a couple of scenes from a Snub Pollard film, It’s a Gift, where he plays an inventor who has all of these Wallace and Gromit style gadgets to help prepare his breakfast and get him dressed, as well as a car powered by magnetic force. All very clever stuff.  Then there were a couple of very short French films, one which had a bloke playing the cello and another called Artheme Swallows his Clarinet. For both of these  Neil Brand explained what he was playing through the films to help us understand the demands of improvising the piano accompaniment.  He is amazing in his ability to play music and sound effects as well as help convey the story. We also saw a scene from Chaplin’s The Pawn Shop, and the house-front falling down bit from Keaton’s Steamboat Bill Jr, which was famously copied by The Goodies in their episode The Movies. 

We were shown two full films - Laurel and Hardy’s Liberty and Buster Keaton’s Seven Chances. I thought the Laurel and Hardy was great – I’ve never really seen much of their silent films, so it was good to be able to broaden my film experiences there. Although I will have to say it was both funny and terrifying and at times I was almost having to watch through my fingers because the stunts of them being at the top of a high building were far too realistic and scary. Interestingly Paul Merton was talking to some people at the stage door after the show and saying how Laurel and Hardy were really quite high up when they filmed it, not as high as it looks, but still dangerous if they fell.

I liked Seven Chances, which took up most of the second half. I’ve seen a clip of the bit where he’s on the hillside being chased by ever increasing amounts of before, so I was looking forward to seeing the rest of it. The story is partly taken from a stage play, and at times it does seem rather slow paced. But over all it was still very enjoyable.

After the show it was round to the stage door, as is usual for these things, to get the book signed and have a quick photo. Although I had lots of questions and comments in my head, I didn’t manage to formulate them into sentences to talk to either Paul or Neil, but I did listen to what they were saying to other people and I agree that it’s so much better to appreciate these films by seeing them on a big screen with live music. I want to see some more now!

Dead Again

Doctor Who – Planet of the Dead

[USUAL SPOILER WARNING]

I was looking forward to this the first of the four specials, but as there is such a small amount of new Who being broadcast this year I had made an extra special effort to avoid as many spoilers as I could. So I didn’t watch the trailers, read listings magazines, newspapers and restricted where I read and posted on various forums. So by the time the epsiode was broadcast I knew that it was set in the desert, having been filmed in Dubai, there was a bus which had been damaged on the way there and Michelle Ryan was guest starring. So there was lots I was going to discover.

The story began with Lady Christina de Souza stealing the cup of Athelstan from the international museum, supposedly in London (yes I did get excited at the mention of proper historical people, especially as they are slightly obscure). To escape the police she jumps on a red London bus, which just so happens to also have the Doctor on board. So obviously the bus gets sucked through a wormhole in space whilst being chased down a tunnel (which I recognised as I’ve driven it a few times!). The bus ends up on another planet, having been wrecked by the wormhole – a very clever bit of writing in the damage that was done to the bus in Dubai.

All the adventures set on the planet looked fabulous. The team had done a really good job finding the location in Dubai and dressing it to look very other worldly. You really couldn’t have done as well in Wales! And the creatures were fantastically realised and very scary.

The remainder story revolved around trying to get the bus back to Earth. The Doctor called his old friends at UNIT, who do their usual thing of shoot first, ask questions later (the Brigadier would be proud!) and this also introduced their new scientific adviser, played by Lee Evans. I had forgotten that I had read he was going to be in one of the specials, so it was a surprise when he appeared. But I thought he played the part of Malcolm well, with just the right amount of comedy and seriousness. And he had one of the best lines – naming a measurement ‘Bernard’ after Quatermass. I did enjoy the whole episode and Michelle Ryan’s character would have been good to keep as a longer term companion. But as a single, stand alone episode it worked that she came and went. I do miss the tension, cliffhangers and the build-up in these single specials as opposed to the series, but I suppose there is an arc to them which hasn’t perhaps hooked me enough yet.

And so at the end of the story the bus does return and the wormhole closed, and so the Earth is saved for another day. But not before a fellow bus passenger gives the Doctor a warning about the future …

But we’ll have to wait for the next special to find out what it all means.

Unbelievably Late!

It’s been over a week and I’ve just realised I haven’t written about the final recording of The Unbelievable Truth! Sorry about that – other stuff got in the way, but I’m here now to make amends.

I arrived early (but not so early as some of the others), and was glad to see we were allowed to wait inside this week, as it was spitting with rain outside. The other change to the waiting was one of those velvety ropes to keep the crowd away from the door to the auditorium so that people can use it easily to go in and out. Now we know from being there so often that the door is used a lot before we’re all let in, so will try and keep some space there. But there’s always so many people waiting in such a tiny space by the time we can go in that it’s easy for people to get in the way.

Anyway, as we were waiting we spotted three of the panel arriving – Jeremy Hardy, Fred Macaulay and Will Self, who walked past me and I thought ‘he’s very tall’, but it took C and me a while to remember his name. The missing panellist who had snuck in without us noticing was Jack Dee, which made a pleasant surprise when he was announced on stage. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

While we were waiting I was amused by some of the other girls who have also been to every recording discussing Jon’s introductory spiel and being able to recite several bits of it (see, it’s not just me!), and we were all laughing and joking about being able to do the audience participation exercise without prompting! So we were all in a good mood by the time we were finally let in to the auditorium and took our final front row seats of the series.

And so the show began with the usual introduction and (shock!) a new joke, which was apparently Jeremy Hardy’s, to which he pointed out a slightly better way of telling it once he’d been announced on stage with the rest of the panel.

The two shows that were recorded were good (although not as good as the previous one recorded on Sunday). I did find Will Self was dominating the recording with his long and meandering interruptions, but I’m sure that will be different in the edited broadcast. You’ll have to listen and see.

Overall, from the recordings, it’s going to be a good series. The highlight episode for me is definitely the Sean Lock, Arthur Smith, Miranda Hart, Sue Perkins combination – they seemed to gel better as a group than any of the other panels and really bounced the comedy off one another. The other’s were good and had some lovely moments of genuinely fall-off-the-chair hilarity, but just didn’t have that magic something that this episode had.

I’m still looking forward to listening to them all on Radio 4 at 6.30pm for the next few Mondays though.

And maybe another series next year … ?