Nina Conti, "The Dating Show", Theatre Royal, Glasgow. Sunday 30th January, 2022

 

The blurb: "British Comedy Award winner Nina is pioneering a new dating show. She’ll be like Cilla Black with masks. Derailed. Not so much a Blind Date as a re-voiced one. There is no promise that true love will be found but a firm guarantee that big laughs will be had in the reign of this quick-thinking queen of ventriloquism."

It is a brave person who's willing to improvise an entire show. Braver still to do so as a ventriloquist. Add in audience participation, multiple accents, mask operation and improvised songs and you've got to be pretty special to pull it off. Nina does so with aplomb (and a hand up a Monkey's arse).

She and Monkey, her painfully funny glove puppet dummy, introduce us to the concept of the show then bring up two volunteers from the front row to demonstrate what is going to happen. She puts mouth/chin masks on them and the fun begins.

Mark and Julie (real names) met on Plenty of Fish (true) and had their first date in Frankie & Bennies (also true) then made a sex tape (unconfirmed but likely improvised - the comedy, not the sex tape). Nina makes up all the dialogue for both partners reading their body language and hand expressions.

Then Marcella, a single PhD student in Civil Engineering, is looking for love. She sang a song about her true love running over the hills from Kirkcaldy. For this part, Nina brought on a guitarist to play the tune. All in, thirty minutes of hilarity before the interval.

The speed dating section opened the second half, with willing audience participants asked to line up. Once a queue of around a dozen people had formed, Nina came on stage dressed as a full-size Monkey. The first man up got a massive surprise when he wasn't given a mask and realised he had to make small talk himself with the Monkey.

After a series of speed dates, Nina was pulled from her costume by the final pair and the remaining queue sent away. These two then agreed to put on the masks and Nina engineered another scenario, with the mother seeking a suitor for her daughter. The first lad was no good so Nina brought back the male dancer who hadn't had the chance to speak to her on a speed date. The interaction between the three especially the sitting down mum was hysterical.

Then the cleaning company man was brought up on stage so she find him a date, getting him to show off his broom skills. He knew his way around a broom handle we discovered.

In the finale, she brought back Monkey and showed off her ventriloquism skills by switching voices with Monkey then having both of them talk at the same time. Quite a talent.

And then it was over. 

A quick night, starting at 7.30 and finishing at 9.15, but packed with improvising gold.   

Ticket Price: £28.90 each, plus £2.85 transaction fee and £2.90 VAT 

 

  

Mark Thomas, "50 Things About Us", Macrobert Arts Centre, University of Stirling. Saturday 29th January, 2022

The official blurb describes this show as "Mark picks through the myths, facts and figures of our national identities to ask who do we think we are?" This it did but tonight it seemed to be about a whole lot more.

There were quite a few gaps in the audience, more so than the seating-plan ticket availability would have suggested. That could have been down to the bad weather or the pandemic or maybe just Ticketmaster fucking up (more of which below).

 

Mark kicked off by mentioning his recent deafness (hence his hearing aid), then moved onto other subjects: his diabetes (Type 2, earned, not inherited, like a proper working man's disease); sharps bins (which drew a factual heckle in response to his line "When you've filled it, they've GOT to take it back"); his Steptoe-like mum with whom he spent lockdown (she's "unbelievable" in her wickedness); his love of music hall songs (not a tradition I've followed as closely as him); and the ineptitude and negligence of each of the Tory MPs at Westminster, especially the liar-in-chief Boris Johnston. This was just the first half and didn't seem to connect with the subject of the show, which he himself realised, eliciting the apology, "I appear to have forgotten to do the show I was originally booked to perform". He was enjoying himself though, having not gigged in a while, bending over and giggling at his own off-the-cuff material.

He was much more on topic in the second half, where he was much outraged by the idea of Tory peers suggesting Britain was full up. He then produced all the facts and figures to explain why this was not the case. National identity and colonialism featured too. He's written a book to accompany the show, available on his website, £10 for a signed copy or £1000 for a rare, unsigned one, the cheeky squire.

Overall, this show was sweary as fuck especially when it came to the bits about the politicians but I enjoyed it greatly. His asides about the loss of Barry Cryer were endearing and heartfelt.

We were both lucky to make the gig: him because Storm Malick had decimated the West Coast rail line service; and me because Ticketmaster had logged the show in my account as a Past Event, believing the much-rescheduled event had taken place in September 2020. Many emails later over a period of five months, they finally confirmed I still had tickets. Then they said they were posting them out. These new ones never arrived so I complained again most urgently. So they cancelled the originals, telling me their records showed they'd been sent out shortly after I bought them - in September 2019. I shake my head in disbelief. Fortunately, new ones were made available to collect from the venue on the night. So it all ended well. 

As did the gig, finishing with a clever clogs punchline about his shirt.

Ticket Price £16 each

Service charge £1.95 each

Delivery Charge £3.25