The 2011 Foster's Edinburgh Comedy Award winner chats to Emma McAlpine about aggressive audiences, buggering it up royally over the years and Jurassic Park...
“I’ve never wanted to tour, do big arenas or DVDs. It’s not the path I wanted to go down. I stopped doing gigs a few years ago because it felt like I was just doing it because everyone else was doing it. I wanted to make sure that whatever performance I did, when the audience saw it, they would know I was there because I really wanted to be there.”
I’m in the Soho Theatre bar with Adam Riches discussing how, after winning the main Edinburgh award last year, he has chosen to perform his most successful show to date here for five weeks, instead of touring it across the country. “I could easily tour and earn lots of money but if it was about the money I would never have done as many shows as I did to empty rooms, costing me thousands of pounds. I’d much rather play a smaller room and be the ticket no one can get than the ticket everyone can get.”
Indeed, it’s hard to imagine how Riches’ anarchic, interactive brand of comedy would work in massive venues. There’s something very intimate about it that requires a closely-knit room, where the hysteria builds to an almost overwhelming crescendo and everyone feels included in the surreal mayhem. If you haven’t attended one of his gigs before, he tends to play cartoonish alpha male characters, in sketches that incorporate the audience, “celebrating, rather than ridiculing them.” An expert crowd handler, it's a rare occasion that sees him lose his grip on the situation, and it’s only ever happened once, when he was forced to stay in character.
“I was playing Victor. I was with a guy on stage, really pushing him in the stunt. I had my eyes closed and I suddenly felt a pair of hands on my throat. His drunk mate had got on stage, saying: “We’ve seen enough, everything you’re doing here is really gay,” and of course that was a red rag! It wasn’t funny by any means. You had a guy wearing a muscle suit covered in yoghurt having a go at another guy. I was encouraging him to fight which was risky; it’s very hard to get the room back on side after that.”
Abandoning the confrontational Victor last year – using more welcoming and encouraging characters – meant the audience interaction always worked to his advantage: “I got this enthusiastic American kid up on stage. He did all of the stunts but then his mother came up as I was doing the last one, grabbed him by the wrist and marched him out. It was a great moment, the kid was giggling and the room felt as culpable as me because they’d been egging him on. We all felt like naughty children. That’s when a reaction really helps a show.”
Riches’ acute sense of comic timing and ability to think on his feet has ensured him a reputation as one of the best character comedians around. Having cut his acting teeth in fringe theatre during his twenties, he decided to give his career a kick-start by moving over to the comedy circuit. His first Edinburgh show in 2003 – a spoof two-hander about lounge musicians – did little to help. “One review said it was the worst show they’d ever seen and gave it one triangle of one star. I wanted to print it on the flyers, because while I wouldn’t see a crap show in Edinburgh, I would go and see the worst show in Edinburgh.”
Swallowing his pride, he carried on writing and returned in 2007 with a new solo show called Victor. Based on a macho surveillance officer working for the Federation Against Copyright Theft, it was a hit with the critics and marked the beginning of a run of successful Edinburgh shows for Riches (even during the unfourtunate year he broke his leg on stage). 2011’s Bring me the Head of Adam Riches he admits, felt different right from the start:
“The last three or four shows have done well but at some point the buzz peters out. Last year, it worked immediately and the good reviews were very early. It’s like a check list of things in your brain: you want the shows to work, you want the reviews to be good, you want the audiences to respond to the reviews and then you don’t want to break your leg. As each thing happens, it starts to feel ridiculous – like Edinburgh Fantasy Football League!”
He's keen to point out that learning from past mistakes has been a crucial part of his success: “I’ve really buggered it up royally over the years and for the better. I’ve got a thick skin so it doesn’t bother me but there are a lot of young comics that give up which is a shame. You need to go through the experience. You’re a better boyfriend when you’ve been dumped by 15 girls.”
Riches with fellow comic Nick Helm (also being interviewed in the bar)
When I last interviewed Riches in 2010, he told me his ultimate goal was to make sitcoms and films. I ask him whether winning the Edinburgh award has opened any doors for him there. “It’s opened doors to talk about it yeah, not to get it made, because the type of stuff I want to do is riskier and more expensive than stand-up.”
An avid watcher of Saturday Night Live, he’s keen to see more live, sketch-based comedy on British TV, but getting producers to commission anything that adventurous is proving difficult. “The ‘safety first’ thinking is hard to understand. Some of the best British sitcoms come from a period in TV where people were left to do what they wanted. The Young Ones was a mess but it was a glorious mess. There is so much creativity exploding in Edinburgh for a month which costs nothing, and there isn’t one show on TV that replicates that. It drives me mad when you hear people saying there’s nothing good on TV – they’re not letting us! The process seems flawed and it doesn’t cause us to thrive, it causes us to retreat, or get sold in the wrong kind of show.”
Does he think there may be a more promising future in online comedy? “Online stuff can be great but people use it sporadically and quickly and you’ve got to think long and hard about whether you want that attitude to your material. There’s a brilliant line in Jurassic Park, where Jeff Goldblum says ‘You were so preoccupied with whether or not you could do it, that you didn't stop to think whether you should do it.’ I’ve got that attitude to online comedy. There’s some brilliant sketches out there but there’s also a lot more dross.”
I could talk to Riches for hours (and indeed we have). As you would expect from someone so skilled at interacting with strangers, he’s a charming interviewee, whose passion for comedy is palpable. Having taken seven shows to the Edinburgh Fringe, all written, directed and performed by himself, many without a promoter, he is very astute about the industry and the role he wants in it: “You can earn stacks of money and a high profile in this business, but it’s not about that. You’ve got to be protective and careful of your product.”
He pauses, his thoughtful expression breaking into a grin: “That’s about as political as I get.”
Bring Me The Head of Adam Riches
Soho Theatre
Monday 13th February-Saturday 17th March, 7:30pm
Photo credit: Alex Brenner
Return to the London Comedy homepage
Add an event
Scoping Out London’s Coolest Historic Bingo Halls
London’s bingo halls were once a bustling part of many of the city’s communities, but as...