Which made perfect
sense because the key to Tate’s humour is not the freshness of her act, but
rather the familiarity of it, and the ability of her audience to recognise and
identify with the disfunction - or outright ridiculousness - of those
characters.
From Bernie the
horny and incompetent Irish nurse, who opened proceedings, right on through to
a prolonged celebration of everyone’s favourite foul-mouthed gran, Nan Taylor,
who closed the show, we got a procession of characters and the full range of
Tate’s comedic talents. Aided by a cast of three additional performers who
played the supporting, more peripheral, roles throughout.
There were several
skits involving Kate, the irritating office worker (“go on, have a guess, it’ll
be fun”) before we got the payoff the third time around, but sadly just one
each for a couple of my own favourites, Derek (“gay dear? ... me dear? ... how
very dare you”), and snotty schoolgirl Lauren (“am I bovvered”).
There was even a
brief pre-recorded (screen/interlude) cameo for Billy Connolly, playing the
role of St Peter at the pearly gates. And naturally the night wasn’t going to
pass by without a few - relatively brief - reliably non-PC, audience
participation moments.
The extended Nan
Taylor sequence at the end included a rendition of the variety show classic
‘Enjoy Yourself (it’s later than you think)’ in a forlorn attempt to get the
audience to sing along - something that might work well in the safe environs of
an old blighty pub, but something that is much more difficult to achieve with a
rather more reserved, sober, and seated antipodean audience.
There were a few
moments - particularly during that final sketch - when Tate struggled to remain
fully in character, but none of it really mattered, for the most part she had
the audience eating out of the palm of her hand, and I think it’s fair to say
that all in attendance left the venue feeling “well happy” (as Lauren might
say) with what they’d witnessed from the class act that is Catherine Tate.
No comments:
Post a Comment