Despite
a number of appearances on Radio 4 and Channel 4, stand up comedian
Dan Antapolski is not a household name. This was reflected in the
number of seats sold for his performance at Chorley Little Theatre,
which was only one third full. But Antapolski didn’t let the rows
of empty seats faze him, and turned the intimate nature of the gig to
his advantage.
Resplendent
in beard and multi coloured jumper, he began by making conversation
with an Austrian lady on the front row: “Viennese architecture not
good enough for you so you thought you’d come to Chorley, eh?”
He
performed for 90 minutes in total, with a slow paced opening hour.
His humour might best be described as surreal and it took the
audience a few minutes to tune into his understated delivery.
Pondering whether to describe a female audience member as having
black hair or black hairs won them over, but amongst the good one
liners (“I’ve just been reading the prequel to Shakespeare’s
Hamlet – it’s called Piglet”) there were periods where the
tempo dropped.
The
punchier 30 minute post interval set worked better. Antapolski
returned to the stage wrestling a pantomime spider he’d found in
his dressing room and with a gag deconstructing the meaning of Bob
Marley’s ‘No Woman No Cry.’ (“Does he mean he doesn’t have
a woman? Or that she shouldn’t cry? What was he on about?”)
Linguistic analysis seemed to be his strength, as he then imagined
his 6 year old daughter querying why the Jack and Jill of nursery
rhyme fame didn’t drill a well at the bottom of the hill to avoid
falling down the hill later.
Apart
from a brief foray into political comedy (“The BNP get seen off at
the General Election. And they get their revenge with that oil leak
in the Gulf of Mexico”) his young daughters were the source for
much of his material.
His
show finished with what proved to be the highlight of his set, an
energetic “Laser Rap” about the joys of owning a laser tape
measure with dry ice giving the full Top Of The Pops studio effect
and beams of red light bouncing off various audience members.
Billy
Connolly started out as a singer whose in between chat expanded until
it became his act. With Dan Antopolski, a few more songs might be
the key to his career taking off.
