The Penny Dreadfuls Interview

The Penny Dreadfuls Interview

02 March, 2009
by: Emma

2008 was a particularly good year for sketch trio The Penny Dreadfuls after their debut play, Aeneas Faversham Forever, was a sell-out success and received glowing five star reviews across the board. The group, made up of Humphrey Ker, Thom Tuck and David Reed, won 'Best Comedy Show' at the Brighton Fringe in May and had to move to a bigger venue at the Edinburgh Festival due to high ticket demand. Having completed a second BBC7 radio series towards the end of last year, they are now holding a series of 'scratch' shows in the Battersea Arts Centre to test out their latest material on audiences. We managed to catch up with them last week to find out what they're planning...

EM: So how do scratch shows work, do you just go into them with a few ideas and if the crowd reacts well to them you build them up from there?

DR: We go into them with as many ideas as we have but by ideas we mean finished sketches. The plan is to have microphones and just stand rather than act them out so we can concentrate on the script. 

HK: We're going to record the whole thing. Then we can play it back to ourselves and say: 'By God I can't believe I sound like that - what a jerk!'

DR: The audience is our director really and if it works it works.

HK: This year we want to book heaps and heaps of previews because over the course of Edinburgh last year we changed the show a bunch and the version we did up until a few weeks ago was pretty different to the fringe version because you learn so much – we did 26 performances in a row.

DK: A niggling line can become such an annoyance when you're doing a week straight.  It's like a scab – you keep picking it until it becomes so wrong, it's oozing and it would probably have been fine if you left it to start with.

EM: Nice analogy! And is this all in preparation for the Fringe?

HK: Yes - Edinburgh 2009.

EM:  You performed Aeneas Faversham Forever for the last time in February - were you really thrilled with how well it was received?

DR: Yeah because it was the first time we'd done narrative on stage.

HK: I think it's by far and away the best show we've done and everyone was really positive about it.  It must be a horrible feeling when people start saying this isn't as good as the thing they did before which every artist, writer and actor must experience at some point in their career.

EM: You guys met performing improv at Edinburgh University, did you start off thinking 'this is a just bit of fun' or did you always think 'I want a career in comedy and this is my way in'?

HK: We were really lucky we already lived in Edinburgh and had the opportunity to go to the festival free of problems.  So far it's gone well or we'd have moved onto something else.

DR: There was very little obligation financially apart from the venue hire and there was no loneliness issues because we had all our friends around us.

TT: I only did about six shows in the end.  I think I still want to be an actor!

HK: Thom has aspirations beyond his status.

DR: We agree with him.

HK: We wish he was an actor as well.

DK: I've done one drama actually – I played Peter Cook in a biopic about Frankie Howard.

EM: Wasn't that with David Walliams?  What was he like?

DR: A lovely guy – enormous hands.  That's how he swum the channel - they were like paddles. 

EM: So you've been performing for a few years now as The Penny Dreadfuls, which is a great  name - did you spend hours scanning 19th century history books to find it?

HK: When we first started out we weren't sure we were going to do the Victorian thing so we went to the Monster Mash Café in Edinburgh and spent a long time thinking up names like Andorra Nuclear Threat and The Kissy Fun Commandoes.

TT: The Kissy Fun Commandoes are lore now because we once said this in an interview years ago and then some fans turned up with badges saying 'Kissy Fun Commandoes'

HK: They had T-shirts with our faces printed on the front.

EM: Really?!

HK: Oh yeah.  But they always come and watch us – they're great.

EM: So have you got loads of fans now?

HK: We've got a Facebook fan page and a website so we can tell through that that a few people seem to like us and a few accost us every now and then.  Dave got accosted the other day by a small girl.

DR: Turns out she was 16.

HK: Luckily Dave didn't accost her back.

DR: She got me to sign something and then just hugged me out of the blue.

EM: Ah the pitfalls of fame – random huggers!

DR: It got slightly frightening when I went online to see that I had a message from her and then she popped up in the chat thing instantly and had a status update about me as well. She's calmed down now though... we're friends.  It wasn't creepy.

EM: So apart from having an eager fanbase when was it when you thought 'this is it – we've really made it?'

TT: Well we hope to get there soon – maybe next May.

HK: I think we realised we weren't completely wasting our time after our second show completely sold out around week three. There are potentially another two years of us trundling around the British comedy circuit but as long as you're not wasting your time and other people's time then that's ok.  We fall into a weird category.... if we were 16 we'd be on BBC3 and if we were 36 we could do a lot more things on say... BBC1.  We're in the middle ground at the moment and certainly don't feel like we've made it yet but we're not blowing it either.

EM: Is television where you hope to be eventually – would you like to see a BBC Aeneas Faversham series?

DK: Absolutely.

TT: The problem is that BBC4 don't have any money and BBC3 would never consider us – their audience is 16-24 year olds.

HK: BBC3 keep putting together these vehicles to try out new comedy stuff like The Wall and it's terrible.  It's a real shame. They have a very patronising idea of what their viewers like. Anyway, we feel that the BBC is our natural home and BBC2 is what we're theoretically pitching to.

EM: Do you think you have had such success because you broke away from a contemporary sketch mould and had the Victorian theme – you weren't doing garden variety skits about Facebook for example?

HK: Yes, well we wanted a distinctive voice and we find the Victorian stuff hilarious - there's a never-ending source of material there.  Lots of people definitely start out thinking what's going to sell best at the moment – but now Facebook is old and Twitter is all anyone is talking about so you have to quickly start writing Twitter sketches.

EM: It seems like there are set character types that you always seem to play, like Humph you play a great baddie and Thom you always seem to get stuck as the girl – is that because you play them the best?!

HK: It's mainly about sex – I give off a dangerous sexiness and Thom's got the biggest knockers.  Someone asked us this the other day and we disagreed but then I realised that by and large I always play high status posh villains.

EM: What would you say your character type was Dave?

DR: I have no idea.

HK: Dave's the journeyman, he's the hero.  To go back to sex – Dave's the one everyone wants to marry.  It's basically shag (points at himself), marry (points at Dave), avoid (points at Thom). 

EM: Do you ever find the character comes before the sketch?

HK: We're always good at stuff we love.  I love baddies and authority wallies so I enjoy playing them.  One of the good aspects about being selfish in the writing process is everyone can give themselves lots of good things to do.  This morning we were plotting the next show and we said "What scene from a film have you always thought you'd like to act out?"

TT: Like: 'I want to run away from a suitcase as it blows up.'

DR: Or: 'I want to be strapped to a wicker chair naked while someone beats my testicles with rope.'

EM: Can't wait to see that one!

TT: We wanted to have a mine-cart chase in one scene like in The Temple of Doom.

DR: But we'd be riding little trikes instead.  We bought the trikes and rode them around a bit but it was too difficult in the end.

TT: My trike was so hard to ride - I had my knees over the handlebars.

DR: They don't make trikes for people our size.

EM: I was on your blog this morning and read a comment which was quite intriguing - a woman said 'I heard of what you got up to at the if.comedy awards, you naughty things!'  Can you tell us what she's talking about?!

TT: Oh that was me – I started a massive water fight! They took away all the free booze so I picked up all the free bottles of water and started handing them out shouting "Water fight, water fight!".  Dan Taylor from Ginger and Black didn't quite get that it was just comedians doing it and walked down the cloakroom queue squirting everybody!  It ended up with a big fight in the street and 44 people attacking Dan.

EM: Do you have to be careful about drinking and behaving yourself until the end of the festival?

DR: Thom's the worst but he doesn't care about putting in a terrible performance.

TT: Don't give that me shit!

DR: Seriously though, sometimes you have to give it a miss because you were drinking the night before and you can't keep doing that for a month. You'd break your liver (points at Thom).You'd be partying till September if you could. I broke mine long ago.

TT: You ended up underneath a piano for 3 days.

DR: Yes - drinking coffee through a straw. 

TT: Rock and Roll!

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Emma