I wish the Socks had posed with a different costume, this is the same shot we took in Brighton. Sigh.
Thanks to the good people of Grassington Festival in North Yorkshire, the Socks just had their best Roll Up Preview yet. A selllout in advance (80 bums on seats I believe) and the best laughter throughout we've had yet. A lot of that was down to them being a beautifully receptive and supportive audience, and I don't fool myself that the script's strong enough yet for that to happen across the board, but very promising. Here are my notes.
First half of the show - solid and hilarious. Last third needs the most work.
The brand new material tonight was Australian Accents Song which actually didn't get as many laughs as I thought it would but is still good, and is staying. The rest of the show had had a trim, and a re-ordering and now needs smoothing. Here's what they got:
Intro gags / Socks Song / Circus gags
Music Hall Medley - moved to first song since Redhill, perfect
Performance Artist - perfect
Philip Astley - now first half and music only, perfect
Audience suggestions - tonight we did fire eating (1st time) and lion tamer, both good
Annie The Elephant - now in a good position, it can stay
Juggling Dr Who - went well, can stay
Magic Routine - perfect as always, but now it's not the first good thing. By now we're almost at the half hour mark.
Nicole Kidman - good
NEW: Australian Accents Song - not as many laughs as I wanted, but it'll get them. May shorten.
Lady In Pants - good
Ask her out - good
Clown - good
Clown's Song - now moved to earlier in order, very good
Pagliacci Routine - moved, now much better
Greggs Song - moved and shortened by a stanza, very good. I'm worried at this point there have been too many songs clustered together, though they were going down increasingly well.
Nicole Kidman spoken for - good
Eurovision Song - good, but is the drama good enough here and is it too many songs in a row?
Grand Finale intro - messy costume changes, but gets the laugh when it's clear
Little Baby Jesus first scene - good, needs clarity
Mixed costumes - good, but more by accident than design, needs clarity
Final clown scene - good but could have clearer action
Trapeze scene - good, first time that's really worked
Punchline - good, but audience still don't like that's the end of the show.
We closed with Sweary Poppins, (preceded by adlib songs which went well) which then got praised on Facebook as someone's favourite bit, which is a shame cos it's a bit of fallback material and I'd rather close on something new. Up till that point we'd done 57 minutes, which is about right.
So, work needed on the final third, and we need to look at the cluster of songs that are all bunched up in part two.
While I'm thinking about that, I am taking great pleasure from the current state of our advance sales. I know from past experience that this can change on a sixpence, but right now Roll Up's advance sales are beating any previous year ever, as you can on this snapshot of the graph. Minging Detectives (2015) had the best June sales then levelled off to equal the same as its surrounding years, while 2010's On The Telly continued to skyrocket, remaining our biggest final total ever. Let's see whose trajectory we follow from here. Onwards and upwards.
June 27 - Neath Comedy Festival
July 4 - Maesteg Town Hall (NEW DATE)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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