We do Neath Comedy Festival every year, pretty well, and The Old Duke is our regular venue for previews. The biggest challenge is not hitting your head on the low-lying beam above the stage (I avoided it this time). The second biggest challenge is making sure you entertain an audience who might not have seen you before (it was about 50/50 when we asked them) and definitely need you to keep up the laugh quotient. Not necessarily a tough crowd, but closer to a comedy club audience than a Socks-fan-filled theatre show.
Unlike our last preview in Grassington, Neath were harder work, but when we got them on board they were great. We were wrong-footed at the start (always a bad thing) by technical hiccups. Tony the owner, and acting technician, had a great lighting set up for us. Then, as soon as Noel James took the stage to introduce us, flicked from full white lights to red, for no obvious reason. So the Socks had to get him to put the lights right in our opening moments, which is hard to do when you’re trying to make a funny impact and give them confidence in you.
Then the sound balance was bad, which meant me adjusting the volume on my iPod during the first number (to be honest, I’m not sure Tony’s hearing is what it was back in the day when he was DJ-ing at The Marquee and rivalling Emperor Rosko for biggest touring rig in the country. Yes, we had a great chat at the start of the show, I like Tony.)
Once we’d got over that stumbling start, we started winning them round with the opening gags and what they could hear of I’m A Sock. The rest of the show’s running order was the same as Grassington with these notes:
Annie The Elephant - dropped this, it’ll stay dropped
Audience suggestions - Fire eating was excellent. Sadly their first choice was juggling so we did Juggling Dr Who. This is always going to look less great when it happens, just cos it’s not spontaneous, but we’ll have to live with it.
Australian Accents Song - getting better, still needs a stanza cutting
Nicole & Clown - after a good first half, which peaks with the Magic Routine, we’re still suffering a trucker’s gear-change when the second half is more sitcom than sketch show. Good laughs, but not the same as first half.
Pagliacci - struggles when the room’s not totally swept up in the show. Not bad, but a harder room makes you want to make every bit funnier
Grand Finale - intro (two scripts) really needs to be clearer, but lots of good laughs from this whole routine, right up to the punchline.
Ended with Sweary Poppins. Again a cop out, but a damn good ending for a club-type venue (we were the first half of a double bill, with Noel James doing his hour afterwards.)
So, lots of stuff to work on. The next day (Friday) I sat out in the sun in the garden with a biro and did some solid rewriting. Let’s see how much of the new material, including rough things called Cold Dead Hands, Susan Calman gag, Accents Challenge, Stealers Wheel gag, Stalker subplot, Out Of Your League routine, and Fair Dinkum, make it into the next preview on July 4th in Maesteg.
UPDATE: July 4th Maesteg. The above script amends, written in the back garden while I got my back sunburned and performed a week later as the skin peeled, went in and they worked. Maesteg were a smaller crowd (another hottest day of the year) but more warmed-up than Neath and the show was tighter, with no false starts.
Audience suggestion was firing from a cannon. The second time we've tried it, and fresh as ever, v good. Accents challenge worked well. The new Greggs prop with longer stick worked, and is now choreographed properly. New Clown gags worked, Fair Dinkum worked, Stealers Wheel got very good laughs. New Nicole Kidman outfit debuted (Hev sewed this week, so the two match) and almost worked, except I lost the prop just before its final appearance, one of the small performance cock-ups I have to avoid. Most reassuringly good laughs are for the Finale which is now very tight. The punchline of the whole show is still anticlimactic and, as always, we ended with Sweary Poppins. I fear we may have to make that our official closing number. (Goes off to Google if we've ever actually ended the Edinburgh show with it).
UPDATE: July 4th Maesteg. The above script amends, written in the back garden while I got my back sunburned and performed a week later as the skin peeled, went in and they worked. Maesteg were a smaller crowd (another hottest day of the year) but more warmed-up than Neath and the show was tighter, with no false starts.
Audience suggestion was firing from a cannon. The second time we've tried it, and fresh as ever, v good. Accents challenge worked well. The new Greggs prop with longer stick worked, and is now choreographed properly. New Clown gags worked, Fair Dinkum worked, Stealers Wheel got very good laughs. New Nicole Kidman outfit debuted (Hev sewed this week, so the two match) and almost worked, except I lost the prop just before its final appearance, one of the small performance cock-ups I have to avoid. Most reassuringly good laughs are for the Finale which is now very tight. The punchline of the whole show is still anticlimactic and, as always, we ended with Sweary Poppins. I fear we may have to make that our official closing number. (Goes off to Google if we've ever actually ended the Edinburgh show with it).
UPDATE: July 8th Barnes. At the OSO Theatre we gave them that same basic script again. Once more the biggest problems are the fluffs. I have to get the props on cleanly, and have smooth material flowing to cover the costume changes, otherwise it really makes the show stutter.
Greggs prop - hand came off in middle of routine, that's not good. Fix it. Also it's messy in the finale when they are all wearing each others costumes but could be clearer. Need to open the show with confidence when we're acting as our own warm-up act, so try and avoid ad-libbing before the audience have 'got' the characters and you've delivered good funny lines. Audience suggestion was lion taming, which got a shout of 'fix' when I produced the lion prop, but still went well.
UPDATE: July 12th Manchester, Kings Arms Salford. A small crowd in a hot room, and a good test of the material. Really need to make the opening section stronger, it's still a bit bitty. And I want to move the Pagliacci routine to earlier in the show, it holds the flow up being where it is. Everything else was good, but I want to make it better still. Lots of lovely audience Sock-selfies at the end, which is a real feelgood factor.
June 27 - Neath Comedy Festival
July 4 - Maesteg Town Hall
July 8 - Barnes Fringe
July 12 - Kings Arms Salford, GM Fringe
July 20 - Bedford Fringe
July 28 - Derby Bar One
July 31st - August 25th, The Scottish Falsetto Socks ROLL UP! at the Gilded Balloon Patter Hoose 9.30pm, every night of the Edinburgh Fringe 2019. Sexy new venue, sexy new timeslot. Book now!
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