Russell Kane Chorley Little Theatre 20 May 2012

Russell Kane packed more into a sixty minute set at Chorley Little Theatre than most stand ups manage in two hours but, as he said himself, he does talk at twice the speed of most comics.  He was off to Blackpool for a charity gig after his Chorley appearance and the rate at which he delivers his act was like being on a seaside rollercoaster.


Barely pausing for breath during his Manscaping set he leapt about the stage in an athletic performance.  He mimicked everything from Olympic mum door knocking, which featured audience members Amanda from Chorley against a woman from North Carolina, to Lancastrians being poisoned by drinking Yorkshire Tea.  He also collapsed to the floor as he imagined Northern women crawling gratefully out of the bedroom and into the garden to hug a warm rock because their men won’t.


In truth, it wasn’t just Northern men who were the subject of his material but men in general.  He talked about his relationship with his father, how women deal with relationship crises better and mothers’ relationships with their sons.  He painted telling portraits of men getting grumpier as they get older, which for some reason led my partner to prod me quite hard, and how they find his material less funny as the evening wears on and their bladders get fuller.


Going to the loo during a Russell Kane set is a risky business, as you are likely to be teased as you leave the room and talked about when you're not in it.  When one woman admitted that the man next to her was her brother but that she didn't know him, Kane wondered if they'd been brought up at different foster homes.  Even the intelligent looking chap who tried to make himself inconspicuous by ducking down as he left the auditorium was not immune, with Kane imitating him wondering 'is he going to do anything with prime numbers?'  On learning that a teenage audience member he was talking to was called Cavan, Kane wondered if he'd been found in a cave and went off on a riff about how Lancashire children are discovered near the cliffs: 'And this is our daughter Igneous Bed.'


He finished with a story about the snobbery that he encountered on a first class train journey to Cambridge with a final twist that, although slightly predictable, was still funny.


Whilst there was plenty afterwards, there wasn't a lot of applause during Russell Kane's set - he just doesn't give his audience time to stop and reflect before firing off the next gag.


Trains also featured in the set of Kane's support, Iain Stirling, or more particularly getting locked in the toilet of one with a fellow passenger.  The story had the person next to me crying with laughter. Edinburgh born Stirling also neatly wove together stories about his Auntie Pam, a drunken punter at a Newcastle gig and his mate's posh girlfriend.  Stand ups at Chorley don’t always feature a support act, but Stirling was well worth his twenty five minute slot.


Together, Kane and Stirling were a winning combination and the best night's comedy at Chorley Little Theatre for a while.

Shappi Khorsandi, Chorley Little Theatre, 18 May 2012

Comedian Shappi Khorsandi was nearing the end of her act at a packed Chorley Little Theatre when a group of men trooped in from the bar carrying drinks. Her gentle chiding of their decision to put lager ahead of laughter – ‘you’re like characters from Viz’ - won her sympathetic applause from the audience, most of whom were enjoying the show. Chorley Little Theatre plays host to a lot of comedy, but a comedy club where the punters can wander freely to and from the bar while the stand up is in mid flow it is not.

In truth this was another coup for Chorley Little Theatre and a full house had turned out to see Ms Khorsandi, who wanted to know who’d heard her on Radio 4, seen her on Michael McIntyre or ‘just been dragged along?'

She hadn’t heard of Chorley - ‘I thought it was somewhere near London’ – and engaged with members of the audience throughout the auditorium to find out who was there with friends. When one woman explained that she’d met her friends through Rainbows which were 'little brownies' Khorsandi replied: 'I thought we'd got past all that.'

It was her first foray into tackling the casual racism she has encountered since arriving in the UK from Iran in the 1970s with her parents. As a child her brother responded to taunts of 'Oi, Gandhi! with 'Oi, Churchill!' and she recently criticised a national newspaper for allowing its dating site members to choose the skin colour of potential partners. When the man handling her complaint suggested a date she wrote back declining his offer: 'Too brown.'

Khorshandi handles the subjects of parenthood and moving to another country with aplomb. Her riff on the topic of siblings, the central theme of the show, started off as an affectionate portrait of her older brother Peyvand, but made some wry observations on the attitudes of parents towards growing numbers of children, and how the third child of the family gets neglected, a comment that resonated with my youngest-of-three-siblings partner.

Going through a divorce, she revelled in explicit details of her adult sex life, including a fling with a rock star, and some audience members will never be able to watch The Good Life on TV in the same light, but her gag about the Edinburgh Festival puppeteer who tried to put his hand up her skirt (‘you’re not at work now’) was the highlight of this section.

Her strongest and most distinctive material revolves around her family and her stories of arriving in England from her time in pre Revolutionary Iran, including watching children’s television: ‘We had the Magic Roundabout but Florence had to wear a hijab’. The Wombles was also different, Orinoco being blown to bits after the family were forced to serve as minesweepers in the Iran-Iraq war. Morph was the first non white person she saw on English television.

Her father was once the subject of an assassination plot and even this gets woven into the act. The 10 year old Khorsandi writes to Ayatollah Khomeini, apologising that she hasn’t written in Farsi but ‘I’m dyslexic in two languages’ and pleading that she loves her dad ‘but I love my brother more.’ He didn't write back. But when she later visits Iran she’s pleased to see that on the signed execution warrant the Ayatollah had underlined that the children should not be harmed.

Other vignettes included her auntie visiting England and, after experiencing ten years of the Iran-Iraq war in a bomb shelter, going out on Bonfire Night and throwing herself to the floor at the first sound of fireworks.

At the conclusion of a ninety minute set, she appeared genuinely pleased at the reception she’d received. ‘You're nice, Chorley,’ she said, and seemed to mean it. A shame those members of the audience who chose to go to the bar couldn't have paid her the same respect.

Elvis Costello - Manchester Apollo - 12 May 2012

Like a fine wine Elvis Costello justs get better with age. That's the only sensible conclusion anyone who witnessed his two and a half hour show at the Manchester Apollo could reach. Bringing his Spectacular Spinning Songbook tour to town after an extended 2011 US tour, Costello (as his alter ego Napoleon Dynamite) arrived with his backing band the Imposters, a big wheel containing a selection of 40 songs or song themes and a go-go dancer in black fishnet stockings and red PVC high heeled boots.  Add to that an encyclopaedic musical knowledge, a full house of Costello fans and a chart history stretching back 35 years, and the audience were in for a treat. From the opening bars of Hope You're Happy Now through to Pump It Up, Costello roamed through his back catalogue via Cilla Black and Charles Aznavour's She, and even managed to throw in a version of the Rolling Stones' Out Of Time.  The big difference between this and most shows you'll pay good money to see is that the set list hadn't been typed out and gaffer taped to the mic stand beforehand. Instead audience members were invited up on stage by Costello's gorgeous female assistant to spin the wheel, with the point at which it stopped determining which songs the band tackled.  "Where it stops nobody knows", said Costello, but the wheel picked out hit after hit from Alison to Oliver's Army. With an ethusiastic and energy that would put entertainers half his age to shame (to call him a mere musician or singer/songwriter would be to understate the role he undertakes each night as emcee cum ringmaster in curating the show), Costello prowls the stage like a cross between Jerry Springer and a black panther, wisecracking as he goes and descending into the audience to sing some of the numbers, even appearing in the balcony. At one point, Costello span the wheel himself and artificially stopped it in order to land on the theme 'Joanna' ("well if you can't cheat in Manchester, where can you?") enabling keyboard impresario Steve Naive to launch into a couple of songs.  A personal highlight was a joyous Talking In The Dark, but in a set of this length there were several high points. Anyone returning to Costello's career after 35 years will be surprised to see the angry young man of My Aim Is True having mellowed into a vaudevillian entertainer who so obviously enjoys entertaining his audience.  But it didn't seem incongruous that he could play Tramp The Dirt Down (which envisages the day that a former prime minister is finally buried) and yet have his audience leave at the end of the evening to Morecambe & Wise's Bring Me Sunshine.  This was rock'n'roll as wholesome family entertainment with something for everyone.  Long may the Spectacular Spinning Songbook continue to revolve.