The Comedy Store @ Pyramid Arts Centre, Warrington – 3rd October 2009

It’s my second Comedy Store @ Warrington in a row, and, compared to last month the night felt completely different, and not in a good way.  The MC for the evening was Silky, which is his name and not how he felt (although I didn’t touch him, so maybe he does feel silky, and that’s how he got the name).  He kicked off the evening while seemingly half the audience hadn’t taken their seats and, although he was funny, a large section of the audience didn’t seem to realise that they were at a comedy gig.  The gig was apparently sold out, but there didn’t seem to be much of an atmosphere in the room.  It’s hard to get much of an atmosphere when large chunks of the audience didn’t seem to be paying attention.  It was really quite odd.

The first act on was Toby Hadoke who, because of his laid back style, struggled a bit with the crowd, and you couldn’t really blame him.  There was an unbelievable stream of latecomers pouring in throughout his set and and an even more unbelievable number of people were deciding to pop in and out of the venue willy nilly.  The portion of the audience that had originally not twigged that they were at a comedy gig still seemed to be in the dark.  Things were being disrupted so much that perhaps the theatre staff should just close the doors at a certain point and stop people coming in and out.  It wouldn’t be right for me to pass any kind of judgement on Hadoke under the circumstances, and I’d be intrigued to see him in a setting where he could actually get in to his flow.

Luckily, the next act on was Steve Royle whose high energy, slapstick delivery was just what was needed to beat the audience in to submission.   His set was quite wacky and fairly mainstream for a Comedy Store act, but he was very funny and delivered some big laughs.  He even did some juggling, which sounds really naff, but it really got the crowd in to it.

After the interval, Silky came back out to try and perform a couple of musical numbers, which were actually very good.  It kind of spoilt it though that most of the front three rows of were conspicuous by their absence and it took them a good 10 minutes to drift back in.  What was everybody doing out there?

The headline act for the evening was Carey Marx, who had a nice line in offensive comedy that certainly held the attention.  I’m not easily shocked, by any means, but there were a few moments where I thought he perhaps crossed the line.  There’s a real balancing act between being ‘ironically offensive’ and just being old-fashioned offensive to get cheap laughs.  That said, I did enjoy his routine about the use of the word ‘cunt’ and there was a girl a few rows in front of me that was really squirming every time he said it.  He was definitely a funny guy and I’d like to see him again.

Despite the disruption, it ended up being another entertaining night.  It’s not really for me to dictate how people spend their nights out, but I’m curious why you’d go to a comedy gig if you weren’t really interesting in watching the comedy.