Stevie Martin celebrates a flawless (almost) launch of the Arcola's pop-up comedy tent.
“Does anyone in here have a normal job?” MC Elis James asks, to a resounding silence. Welcome to Dalston, for the Arcola Theatre’s newest comedy night in the brand new Arcola Tent, just around the corner. With Peter Serafinowicz headlining and a bill of top class comedians MCed by the coolly talented Elis James, the place is rammed and the energy electric. Arcola Tent’s premier outing couldn’t have been better. Well, almost.
The opening act, Adam Hess, doesn’t raise the roof so much as catapult it to a region somewhere near Sidcup. Shrieking through a set even more manic than usual and firing through one-liners so rapid they’re occasionally difficult to catch, Hess is at his bouncy, jittery best. By the time you’ve realised you missed a gag, he’s already stormed through four more. “Do you like me?” he yells and a positive response is screamed back by a breathless, slightly taken-aback crowd.
The suited, calm and collected Matthew Osborn is not far off Hess’s polar opposite. With a tumbler in one hand – leaving the other free to adjust his horn-rimmed spectacles – Osborn is articulate, strong and unpredictable. Anecdotes are spiked with sudden U-turns and, if you guess the end result, you won’t have banked on his tendency to boost the simplest of jokes with sharp and surprising turns of phrase.
After a quick break, James provides more laughs with choice sections from his Edinburgh show (it’s testament to his material that everything’s just as strong the second time around) before making way for the fresh-faced Adam Belbin. Meta comedy is a well-trodden path, but there is no doubt Belbin is one of the most exciting new stand-ups on the circuit. Exotic fruit and a bizarrely amusing Maddie McCann gag (yes, a Maddie McCann gag) are both highlights, with his eloquence and “lahndan” delivery papering over some slightly more textbook exercises in bad audience interaction and intentionally dodgy jokes.
Perhaps it wasn’t the best idea to put Brian Gittins, with his bad audience interaction and intentionally dodgy jokes, immediately after Belbin; there’s only so much “anti-comedy” one can take. Gittins splutters through his clowning schtick with trademark awkwardness, but it doesn’t help that the audience have just seen a set based around how not to do stand-up, and are now presented with an extreme version clad in ill-fitting jogging bottoms. Despite this, he ups the ante with a spot of brilliantly terrible improv and a bizarre 15 to 1 reference that ensures laughs are by no means thin on the ground. In fact, there’s been no weak link so far – running order aside – although nobody knows quite what to expect as Peter Serafinowicz, all six foot five of him, takes to the stage.
Not much, as it turns out. Reverting to a traditional joke telling format, Serafinowicz ranges from good to groan, reading from notes placed on a music stand. After seeing lesser known comedians perform minus the crib sheets, this appears inexplicably lazy. Things look up when he cracks out the impressions – when a joke falls flat, he retells it in another’s voice. Michael Caine and Darth Vader both get the treatment and, while such impressions are, obviously, spot-on, this doesn’t mask his often quite weak material. He may be a talented writer, actor and voice-over artist, but he is not a natural stand-up comedian.
Despite the disappointing headline act, the Arcola Tent remains a fantastic venue for comedy and, with such a range of strong performances overseen by a blisteringly on-form Elis James, it makes for a great first night. Hugely enjoyable and highly recommended.
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