Thanks to Tommy Neilsen for this shot of the Socks in concert in Kjellerup on the penultimate night of our 9 night tour. Yes, I thought the light was a bit purpley. Regardless, it was the best night yet.
And thanks indeed to Tommy for organising this whole tour. I don’t think anyone’s organised such a successful tour run for us before. Nine consecutive nights, five nights in different small towns giving them our specially written Brexit show, and four nights in Aarhus giving them our Superheroes show. And every night has been excellent (at time of writing we still have to play Uldum, so there’s still scope for it going tits up at the end, but fingers crossed).
The Brexit shows have EU funding because of their partly educational component, and as a result are all done for a flat fee, plus my travel and accommodation is covered. The four Superheroes shows are being done for a small guarantee and a door split which, having had one sellout, and two shows at 75% full (in a 50 seater, the smallest crowd being fifteen), we’ll have done alright on those too.
The Brexit shows - in the library in Silkeborg, a pub theatre in Svendborg, a community arts centre in Ebeltoft, a converted cinema in Kjellerup and (to come) a high school in Uldum - have been free to the public, so we had no idea how many would be there until it kicked off. Surprisingly, for 8pm on a weekday night, we’ve had great turnouts of around 30 per show, with our final night having a guaranteed sitting-duck crowd of maybe 100. Tommy has introduced us each time - entirely in Danish, so I’ve no idea what he said and, on the first night, didn’t even realise it was time for us to start cos he hadn’t ended by saying our name (I just thought it was a really long pause) - and three of the shows have been rounded off by a talk from the local candidate from the Labour Party.
So what have I given them, in my brand new hour long specially-written Brexit show? Well, before you start thinking I can turn out a brand new hour of comedy gold on any theme at short notice, I’m sorry to disappoint, but the show actually comprises a lot of stuff from other shows, wrapped around the new themed stuff. The running order is:
Intro gags and I’m A Sock song
The Killing - done in Denmark in 2012
Doublets & Ruffs - from 2016’s Shakespeare (with Danish additions, eg CBBC has become Ramashang. This & Forbrydelsen are the only Danish references which get a laugh)
Brexit Word Association - NEW
Travel gags - from 2010’s On The Telly
Walk On Wild Side - from 2008’s Return
Magic - from Telly
UKIP Song - from 2014’s And So Am I
Nigel Farage routine - NEW
An Actor Prepares - from Shakespeare
Insults - from Shakespeare
F Up Some Shakespeare - from Shakespeare
Farage on Immigration - NEW
Stereotypes - from And So Am I
Eurovision Routine - NEW
Gary Barlow Eurovision Song - NEW (done on Youtube 2017)
Farage persuades public - NEW
Richard III (first part) - from Shakespeare
Break up & All By Myself song - from Return, as redone for 2018’s Superheroes
Theresa May - NEW
Sweary Poppins - from Return
So there you have it. A show with routines which help tell the story, but are also tried and tested, and with a lot of incidental Shakespeare in. But, as you’ll know if you’ve seen those routines, the point of them is not their Shakespearian content but the conflict between the two Socks, so they worked very well. The audiences have loved it. The whole show got a rewrite after the first night, inevitably, with the order changing, and some new material coming in. But after night two we stuck with the same structure, and the adlibs built around the lines, as they always do as a show beds in.
After three nights of Brexit, we then had a four night run at Teater Katapult in Aarhus, giving them our hour long Superheroes show, as performed at Edinburgh. In fact we gave them a 75 minute show, because that’s what it said in the programme (something I’d clearly agreed to on the phone, not a problem). The simple insertion of Michael Jackson’s Earth Song in the middle, and the addition of Sweary Poppins at the end, and suddenly the show is 75 minutes long.
To begin with I didn’t remove or translate any gags, deciding to run them past the Danish audience and get humour from what worked and what didn’t. Jokes that had to go or change included:
Bob Kane - Bobbing up and down doesn’t mean anything in Danish
Motion Capture - Jobby had to be translated to Hoondepude, which then got the laugh every time
Dinner dinner dinner dinner Batman - This reference didn’t mean anything because, although they’d seen the 1960s Batman series, they don’t call dinner dinner. Got laughs discovering and commenting on this.
Degrasse Tyson - The kneel / Neil pun didn’t register
Scottish Superheroes - For the record Oor Wullie is even less well known in Denmark than in England, and Guardians Of The Deep Fried Galaxy Bar was two cultural references too far
Irn Bru Man - Irn Bru took a lot of explaining, which was luckily fun
Thanos - We had to keep in a pun about Thanos sounding like “Tha knows” in a Yorkshire accent. This also took a lot of explanation, giving us an excuse to go on about Danish pronunciation, which went very well.
Harley and Ivy - manure became fertiliser, DEFRA had to go
… and the rest of the show worked well, with me realising just how many good visual gags we had, and how universal Marvel & DC superheroes are. The Brother came across well purely as a visual and a relationship, with his Cockney Rhyming Slang, which was lost on everyone, working on its rhythm more than its actual content.
The Superheroes show got better every night, ending on a high with Sunday’s show. We also sold 5 copies of the Superheroes comic (having only brought 10, that was not bad).
I’ve also managed to make great use of my daytime by pencilling and inking the 23 page Joseph strip I’m doing for Bible Society. You can see a record of my progress in this blog here. So all in all a jam packed, and slightly knackering, ten days away from home.
If anyone wants to book the Socks for international dates, we’ve got the skills to fit the bill. We’re getting good at tweaking our wordplay to appeal to foreigners with English as a second language. And if anyone wants a themed show, we seem to do quite well in cherry-picking from our ten previous shows and sticking it all together to a coherent end.
Thanks again Tommy, this has been fun. Come on Uldum, let’s go out with a bang.
PS: Update, Uldum went well too.
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