The Roffle Club

The Roffle Club

27 April, 2010
by: Evolmike

There's a hot new sketch night in town. Mike Stephenson heads down to the Proud Camden stables to check it out.

Proud Camden is an odd venue. Take a stable house, rip out the insides and board up the windows and what you get is actually more like a club than most clubs. Baking hot for a start, with huge rooms, no corridors and meshes of roof truss in the ceiling. You're not sure if you should have a barn dance or a medieval feast. Or an orgy, in a medieval barn.

But it doesn't stop there. We're in the heart of Camden market, a fantasy island of loud colours, incomprehensible shapes and spritely young upstarts with their manageable hair. So let's play some dressup at the Roffle Club. Doing more than the lion's share of the work are our hosts Max and Ivan. A confident and versatile pair, they always seem to have one more idea than you think (not all of which entirely make sense, but the unmiked sound quality of the stone wall venue isn't helping.) With an undeniable stage charisma, a harmonious pair of singing voices nothing short of beautiful, and an intimate if not always error-free relationship with their various soundtracks, I literally lost count of the epic amount of sketches they reeled off between each act. I never even saw them break sweat, and trust me this place is a furnace.

In fact they rather remind me of a younger, shorter Toulson and Harvey, who also grace us tonight with their striking eyes and their insanely loud voices. So volatile were their vibrations that parts of the scenery started falling haphazardly from the walls. Those guys are rock. And that's the second time I've seen Steve Harvey snog a random front-rower. I can't wait to see what happens when he picks the wrong guy.

With a brief and rather forgettable set from Tony Izzet, the highlights come in the form of our two troupes. Firstly, WitTank, who masterfully walk the line of well-spoken and a bit posh yet brash, a little bit wacky and brimming with bravado. Sexual harassment, eight consecutive spit-takes and a Randy Admiral Nelson whose relentless self-milking reduced both of his cohorts to an unrehearsed utterance of “f***sake” on two separate occasions. Which is always good to see.

And lastly of course, is the Penny Dreadfuls, or at least 66% of them. Alas, only two showed up tonight but by no means did they disappoint. The've made quite a name for themselves. In a world of grit and doughy minimalism, the Dreadfuls are bringing back a plot-based sketch format, a lush clarity of dialogue and a reserved yet fiercely primed sense of theatricality that has been largely absent in comedy since the days of Blackadder. They conjure surreal worlds and fill them with booming voices and grotesque yet unfazably stoic expressions. It's like seeing Fry and Laurie back together.

An awesome show but rather an experimental venue, what with the steel chairs and the tropical humidity and the falling scenery and what not. Though apparently they're changing venue next month, so keep an eye on Spoonfed for the details.

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Evolmike