Socks Do Shakespeare Tour Dates

The Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre Do Shakespeare. Having enjoyed a fabulous hit run at the Edinburgh Fringe 2016, this hilarious show of new songs and sketches on the theme of Shakespeare is on tour nationwide (and internationally). Dates and details will appear and be updated on this page. If anyone would like the Socks to come to their venue or event, please email socks@sitcomtrials.co.uk

Video clips from the show are in the Socks Do Shakespeare Playlist here.

2017 TOUR
Feb 15 - Buxton Pavilion Arts Centre Studio 
Feb 17 & 18 6.50pm - Kayal, Leicester Comedy Fest
March 9 - Aberystwyth Arts Centre
March 15 & 16 - Dram! Glasgow Com Fest
March 23 - The Bill Murray, London
Apr 1 - Rotherham Comedy Festival
Apr 6 - Victoria Theatre Halifax
Apr 8 - Rondo Bath
Apr 13 - Hexham Queen's Hall
Apr 22 - Swindon Arts
Apr 27 - Stroud Subscription Rooms
Apr 28 - Merlin Theatre Frome
Apr 29 - Perth Concert Hall
May 1 - Chiddingstone Castle Kent
May 5 - Artrix Bromsgrove
May 6 - Stafford Gatehouse
May 13 (4.30pm) & May 14 (5.30pm) Komedia Brighton
May 19 - Carriageworks Leeds
May 26 - Aberdeen May Fest
June 2 - Eden Ct Inverness
June 15 - Crescent Arts, Belfast
June 17 - Dalkey Festival, Dublin
June 20 - Grassington Festival, Yorks
June 23 - Hertford Comedy Festival
June 24 - Ludlow Fringe
August 15 - 17 Camden Fringe

Many more dates to be added and confirmed. Follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

The Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre do Shakespeare on Tour through Spring 2017.

★★★★★ "Accessible, contemporary and ridiculous" - Brighton Argus May 2016

★★★★½ "Make you glad to be alive" - Liverpool Sound & Vision August 2016

★★★★ "Howling with laughter from the opening moments to the finale" - one4review Aug '16

★★★★ "Eat your heart out, Olivier" - What's On May 2016 
★★★★ "Comedy genius at work" - Theatre Bath April 2016 

Voldemort Wears Pants On Monday - first comics of term

A new school year begins and, after a long break over the summer, I return to the chalkface to deliver the first Comic Art Masterclasses of term. As always the pupils go away with an A5 photocopied comic containing a strip by every one of them and an individual caricature by me. Here you can see I've added a wee bit of colour to the front covers. These are from Bournville Juniors in Birmingham.

And these, from Christchurch school in Wiltshire, demonstrate that some things won't be changing in a hurry. Firstly Donald Trump is as popular a figure of fun with Year 6s as ever. And secondly, whenever we're choosing the title for the group comic and a title comes up (written on little bits of paper, one from every pupil) that is clearly mis-spelled or, as in this instance, totally unintelligible, it will be the one that wins. Sometimes there's nothing funnier than the unpredictable. Except, maybe, Donald Trump.

Casting my mind way back, these were the last comics of the previous term, indeed the only comics produced in August. I'd decided not to run classes in libraries while up in Edinburgh, as I'd found it was detrimental to my main show in the evening, wearing my voice out, so these three days with one group at Balerno summer school were all we produced. There was a theme, for some reason.

To the right you see one of my many flipcharts. If I arrive early enough, I like to start the day by filling the flipchart with drawings, to show the kids how easy it can be. You can normally tell the ones I'm drawing in a hurry while talking to the kids (the Spider-Man and Iron Man for example).

To show that some other things also don't change, when asked to name a celebrity for my "Treads On A Worm" demonstration strip, all three classes at Bournville chose Simon Cowell. The other classes chose James Corden, Donald Trump and Selena Gomez.





Kev F Sutherland, as well as writing and drawing for The Beano, Marvel, Doctor Who et al, runs Comic Art Masterclasses in schools, libraries and art centres - email for details, and follow him on Facebook and Twitter. View the promo video here. 

Alan Moore & Grammar schools, some Facebook chat

Since returning from Edinburgh I've been happily back at my desk, writing the script for the Feeding Of The 5000, laying out the artwork pages for Book oF Esther, doing one day in a school, and starting to book the tour dates for the Socks Do Shakespeare, while editing and uploading a few videos, and lining up school bookings and the rest of the stuff you find yourself getting bogged down with. But, of course, I've found time to waffle on Facebook too. Here are few of the posts I've put up there in the past week.

The grammar school debate continues and I remain torn. Privilege is wrong, and dumping kids into a school that brand them a failure at 11 is wrong. However both those things currently exist, and the biggest wrong is that you can only buy the privilege, not earn it. There is no restriction on the expansion of fee-paying independent schools, so anyone with money can buy their kids a seat at the top table of society (or a much much better chance of achieving it). Meanwhile for many many talented children I work with, in rough schools in tough parts of town, there is no means of escape. They are dragged down by peer pressure and lack of resources - if they're in the West Midlands they even have to wear clip-on ties for god sake, so they're really branded as second class citizens when they get to their first job interview and can't tie a tie. Grammar schools were the chink in the armour, the crack in the glass ceiling, the way that talented kids from working class backgrounds could rise. They could do Latin, get A levels, and go to Oxbridge. I realise, in practice, middle class kids won most in that system, but not always. And I know, in utopia, a fully comprehensive system that treats everyone fairly should be the objective. But this is the country where the government, the TV makers, and more than half the stand up comedians on the telly rose to the top because their parents could buy privilege. Levelling the playing field, perhaps by stopping independent school business having charitable status, would be a start. Obliging independent schools to abide to - or have to campaign against - every diktat and decision that's forced on state schools, from curriculum to salaries, would be another. What else could we do, short of allowing some sort of merit-based selection in schools?

Replies thread here

Would it be dreadful to confess I've not enjoyed anything by Alan Moore since Swamp Thing and Miracleman? I devoured all his 2000AD work and the run on Captain Britain, then was there from the start of Warrior (my Warrior No1 is signed by Alan and Steve Moore), and shared the excitement when the Brits broke America. Then Swamp Thing, then Watchmen, then the Killing Joke, then....
As the 90s dawned, I was one of the many who, having bought issue 1 of Big Numbers, were slow to realise we hadn't seen anything new by Alan Moore for 5 years. And when we did, we weren't that bothered. I was aware of From Hell, but I have to confess I saw the movie before I could get round to finding the book. I got one issue of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, but I found it wasn't my kind of thing any more. Then some time in the early 2000s I started reading Promethea, cos there was a copy in a flat I was staying in, and had to give up. It was no Kavalier and Clay, and seemed over-wordy, unconvincing, difficult to look at, and dare I say boring.
I am lucky to be part of the generation who were there for the ride when Alan Moore revolutionised comic books. It does seem a long time ago now, the 1980s. Finding out he's retiring from comics is a bit like reading the obit of someone you didn't know was still alive.

Replies thread there

Yeah. And nobody chose for straight men to be the dominant force for the last aeon, but it happened. And nobody chose for white Europeans to end up in a position to go conquering and dominating everyone else over the last 1000 years, but it happened. Now nobody's singling you out to experience a tiny fraction of what EVERYBODY ELSE ON THE ENTIRE PLANET has had to go through forever. It's just happening. I'd apologise, if I wasn't also you. (PS: I've spent half a century appreciating the luck of the draw. Try it. What you do is count your blessings.)

Replies thread

As someone who grew up during the age of fanzines, when the only comic book journalism was written by unpaid fans (like Grant Morrison, Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman and the like), I think you'll live kids.

Socks Do Shakespeare - videos & tour dates (so far)

We've been uploading quite a few clips from Socks Do Shakespeare, with plans to upload a good few more. Click to play, they're all on YouTube, and on their own Socks Do Shakespeare playlist here. Obviously it's best if you see it live, so do please check out the ever-growing list of tour dates below.

The Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre do Shakespeare on Tour through Spring 2017.

★★★★★ "Accessible, contemporary and ridiculous" - Brighton Argus May 2016

★★★★½ "Make you glad to be alive" - Liverpool Sound & Vision August 2016

★★★★ "Howling with laughter from the opening moments to the finale" - one4review Aug '16
★★★★ "Eat your heart out, Olivier" - What's On May 2016 
★★★★ "Comedy genius at work" - Theatre Bath April 2016 

Oct 1st - Spread Eagle Croydon
October 21 - Ropery Hall Barton
November 3rd - Canterbury Festival
Nov 5 - Watford Library
Nov 11 - Notts Comedy Festival, Lord Roberts 

2017
Feb 15 - Buxton Opera House tbc
Feb 17 & 18 6.50pm - Kayal, Leicester Comedy Fest
March Glasgow Com Fest tbc
Apr 8 - Rondo Bath 
Apr 22 - Swindon Arts 
Apr 27 - Stroud Subscription Rooms 
May 5 - Artrix Bromsgrove
May 6 - Stafford Gatehouse
May 19 - Carriageworks Leeds
June 2 - Eden Ct Inverness
May Brighton dates tbc
Walker Theatre Shrewsbury tbc
Barrow In Furness Forum tbc

Star Trek - new online from the Socks

I can't think why it's taken us so long to put this clip online, but here it is at last. The Scottish Falsetto Socks doing Star Trek, from Socks In Space, as performed in Leicester back in 2014. If you're interested, this segues into David Bowies' Cosmic Revelation, for the full experience.

The Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre do Shakespeare on Tour through Spring 2017.

★★★★★ "Accessible, contemporary and ridiculous" - Brighton Argus May 2016

★★★★½ "Make you glad to be alive" - Liverpool Sound & Vision August 2016

★★★★ "Howling with laughter from the opening moments to the finale" - one4review Aug '16
★★★★ "Eat your heart out, Olivier" - What's On May 2016 
★★★★ "Comedy genius at work" - Theatre Bath April 2016 

Oct 1st - Spread Eagle Croydon
October 21 - Ropery Hall Barton
November 3rd - Canterbury Festival
Nov 5 - Watford Library
Nov 11 - Notts Comedy Festival, Lord Roberts 

2017
Feb 15 - Buxton Opera House tbc
Feb 17 & 18 6.50pm - Kayal, Leicester Comedy Fest
March Glasgow Com Fest tbc
Apr 8 - Rondo Bath 
Apr 22 - Swindon Arts 
Apr 27 - Stroud Subscription Rooms 
May 5 - Artrix Bromsgrove
May 6 - Stafford Gatehouse
May 19 - Carriageworks Leeds
June 2 - Eden Ct Inverness
May Brighton dates tbc
Walker Theatre Shrewsbury tbc
Barrow In Furness Forum tbc

Socks Do Shakespeare - the show itself

Thanks to Jim R on Twitter for this view from the front row at the Gilded Balloon 2016.

For the first time ever, I think, the show we performed on the last night of our Edinburgh run (and the show we'll be taking on tour) had the same running order and content as the first night of the run, albeit it had got sharper, slicker, and some funnier gags had grown around it, including some laughs that came just from knowing when to leave a pregnant pause. Here's the retrospective introspective rundown, for the record.

INTRO - DOUBLET & HOSE. It's great to be able to open the show with a routine that demonstrates the Socks' style and characters, without having to fall back on old familiar material. Everyone appreciates a strong opener like this, not the least regular Socks fans, and of course me.

I'M A SOCK. As always, this song is the testing ground, during which I can usually tell who's never seen the Socks before (they'll laugh at lines like "on your cock" and at the guitar solo) and who are regulars (they'll only laugh at fresh ad libs)

SHALL I COMPARE THEE. Another strong opening routine, ideal for introducing the Socks' relationship to new viewers. We played this at things like Fast Fringe, and it's as good as a new Halloween.

APART FROM... This got shortened a lot during the previews, the version we did in Brighton in May was nearly twice as long. Works well and, being a poem, occasionally gets a round of applause at the end.

HOW WE MET. The most elaborate prop of the show, and during the previews I was worried it just wasn't funny enough. But a bit of editing, a bit of timing, and crucially the "can I swap seats with you?" adlib, and we had a winner. It grew a coda, the line "a 3 minute conversation with a really disappointing punchline" which would get the closing laugh, if the punchline itself hadn't.

F UP SOME SHAKESPEARE. A good strong song, rounding up the first third of the show beautifully, and working nicely in the overall structure of the show (once I gave it a payback later). Verse two's rhymes aren't as funny as verse one, and I always meant to rewrite them, but never did. It's a song, so it gets applause as well as good laughs.

AN ACTOR PREPARES. Brilliant. And to think I hadn't even remembered this stand-alone Youtube routine when I started doing the previews. It has everything, audience interaction, performability, gag after gag, and a simple but perfect punchline.

SHAKESPEARIAN INSULTS. Follows on beautifully from Actor Prepares, keeps the laughs going, delivers some good Shakespeare lines, and has the best pause of the show (after "you know those Dogs Of War..?". At first we just went straight in with the punchline, but I soon found the longer pause gave us the bigger the laugh, as the gag dawns on more and more people).

GIRLS & BOYS. The gags leading up to this ("Get your Lute" etc) are lovely, then the song itself, despite being the loudest since 2013's Fireball, gets great laughs of recognition, both of Blur and the Shakespeare tropes.

RICHARD III. Our star centrepiece. Probably the best central play we've had in any show. Coming, as it does, in two parts, the brand new "Now" routine came into its own after a few tentative previews, becoming a matter of looks and timing. The second best pause of the show, which only developed in the last week of the run, is when we're anticipating Sock On The Right's opening raspberry, and he pauses, thinks, pulls faces, then finally delivers it. On the Saturday night, this got a minute of laughs from the sellout audience. Then part two "Kingdom For A Horse", which began life in Leicester 3 years ago, got even better as the physicality of the "sorry can you hold this" part (when each Sock tries to talk while holding a reindeer in his mouth) took over. The adlibs about the audience laughing at the hump, and then the armour, came about spontaneously and turned out to work every night.

TITUS ANDRONICUS. Managed to make the start to this seem spontaneous most nights, and got good laughs from what is probably the groaniest of the night's material, by dint of it also having some of the best throwaway Shakespeare.

KNOCK KNOCK EQUIVOCATOR. A good un, that the audience think is going one way, then it goes another, in the classic Socks list format (which I have discovered recently, thanks to reruns on Drama, that I appear to have lifted from The Likely Lads. Give a good home to an old format, say I). Then it segues beautifully into..

OH MR PORTER. Quality song, groany punchlines throughout notwithstanding (and, by the way, the Banquo and Horatio gags are corkers that, I bet, Tim Vine would have loved to have come up with), and I'm very proud of the fact that we do an entire Toby Belch & Andrew Aguecheek routine intact, and get a laugh. This is what the show is all about.

CYMBELINE. Very good, very funny. The only routine that got a significant edit during the run, chopping the last paragraph off it so it ended on the best laugh.

OTHELLO. Also got better through the run as we realised the "layers of costume" were where the actual comedy was, not in the lines. Then the song - IAGO SONG - becomes part of the same physical routine and ends perfectly.

FALLING OUT ROUTINE. Flows from Othello, grew some lovely new adlibs as it went along, then wasted no time getting into...

LOVE STORY. Who knew that banjo (last seen in 2014's Mumford & Sock) would have a second lease on life? And we finally get Taylor Swift into the show (after an aborted attempt to do a version of We Are Never Getting Back Together into Socks In Space in 2013), though it seems nobody recognises the song. Whatever, it's the perfect moment of pathos, including a callback to How We Met, and launching us straight into...

ROMEO AND JULIET. The classic routine, originally performed in our 2007 show, comes back with new costumes and some lovely new laughs. And, crucially, a new ending, thanks to Balthazar and a final bit of "You don't know how it's done and don't pretend you do" physicality.

Best show ever, and I'm looking forward to taking it out on tour.

The Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre do Shakespeare played at the Gilded Balloon at the Edinburgh Fringe August 2016. 

2017 TOUR
Feb 15 - Buxton Pavilion Arts Centre Studio 
Feb 17 & 18 6.50pm - Kayal, Leicester Comedy Fest
March 9 - Aberystwyth Arts Centre
March 15 & 16 - Dram! Glasgow Com Fest
March 23 - The Bill Murray, London
Apr 1 - Rotherham Comedy Festival
Apr 6 - Victoria Theatre Halifax
Apr 8 - Rondo Bath
Apr 13 - Hexham Queen's Hall
Apr 22 - Swindon Arts
Apr 27 - Stroud Subscription Rooms
Apr 28 - Merlin Theatre Frome
Apr 29 - Perth Concert Hall
May 1 - Chiddingstone Castle Kent
May 5 - Artrix Bromsgrove
May 6 - Stafford Gatehouse
May 13 (4.30pm) & May 14 (5.30pm) Komedia Brighton
May 19 - Carriageworks Leeds
May 26 - Aberdeen May Fest
June 2 - Eden Ct Inverness
June 15 - Crescent Arts, Belfast
June 17 - Dalkey Festival, Dublin
June 23 - Hertford Comedy Festival
June 24 - Ludlow Fringe
August 15 - 17 Camden Fringe

★★★★★ "Accessible, contemporary and ridiculous" - Brighton Argus May 2016

★★★★½ "Make you glad to be alive" - Liverpool Sound & Vision August 2016

★★★★ "Howling with laughter from the opening moments to the finale" - one4review Aug '16
★★★★ "Eat your heart out, Olivier" - What's On May 2016 
★★★★ "Comedy genius at work" - Theatre Bath April 2016 
★★★ "Wee gem of a show" - Scotsman August 2016

★★★ "A bit like being initiated into some sort of cult" - Broadway Baby August 2016

Edinburgh round-up - the selfies

I've probably written all I need to write about the Edinburgh Fringe just gone by. On the way I took a lot of selfies whenever I bumped into friends in the street. Here are some that haven't featured in the blog before now.

Marcus Brigstocke

Bethany Black

Vicky Jeffrey

Martin Gray and Steven

Scott Agnew

Nick Steel

Paul Gannon & Amelia (& Hev Tweed)

The Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre do Shakespeare played at the Gilded Balloon at the Edinburgh Fringe August 2016. On Tour through Spring 2017.

★★★★★ "Accessible, contemporary and ridiculous" - Brighton Argus May 2016

★★★★½ "Make you glad to be alive" - Liverpool Sound & Vision August 2016

★★★★ "Howling with laughter from the opening moments to the finale" - one4review Aug '16
★★★★ "Eat your heart out, Olivier" - What's On May 2016 
★★★★ "Comedy genius at work" - Theatre Bath April 2016 
★★★ "Wee gem of a show" - Scotsman August 2016

★★★ "A bit like being initiated into some sort of cult" - Broadway Baby August 2016

Aug 3 - 29 - 10.30pm The Gilded Balloon, Edinburgh Fringe