I’ve sold my soul for comedy. Well, perhaps not my soul but certainly my free time. Producing the sketch show PICK ME UP at the ADC Theatre this week (starts at 11pm folks, get ya tickets! No shameless publicity plug intended) has meant a busy few weeks. But there’s nothing like the satisfaction you get from sitting in a packed out auditorium laughing your little heart out at the opening night, after hours of postering in the freezing cold and a militant Facebook campaign mainly carried out in the early hours. Apologies for the cliché.
The next big thing for comedy?
Now of course I’m biased but PICK ME UP is brilliant. It’s funny, slick and clever in a good way, its everything a sketch show should be and then some. Belfield, Forbes, O’Sullivan, Potts and Shah are fantastic, and we’ve got a great crew on board; the show speaks for itself (not to mention the reviews: take a gander http://www.varsity.co.uk/reviews/4243).
The perennial comparisons have of course been made, as they have for each new crop of Footlights regulars: are these guys the new Pythons? The new Fry and Laurie (plus two others)? They’ve certainly got the charisma and chemistry on stage, and their writing is intelligent: they tick all the boxes. Are they THE NEXT BIG THING for comedy; are they THE new comedy group for – oh how I hate the phrase – ‘our generation’? Is there a difference between the two?
When you think modern comedy, you think Michael McIntyre, you think panels show (Qi, Mock the Week). Today there aren’t equivalents to the Flying Circus of the Seventies, the Blackadder of the Eighties. Modern comedy, unfortunately, seems like a stand up’s game. So does a show like PICK ME UP fit in?
I’d love for PICK ME UP to be the 2012 version of 1981’s The Cellar Tapes. That it launches the careers of its cast like the Footlights Revue of ye olden days launched the careers of Hugh Laurie, Stephen Fry and Emma Thompson.
The Cambridge Footlights Revue: The Cellar Tapes (1981)
The question is: is modern comedy looking for a show like PICK ME UP? Is this the kind of comedy we want to see in 2012? Cambridge is enjoying it, what’s to say the rest of the country wouldn’t too? So are you listening, Mr (or Mrs) BBC Comedy … ?
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