On Stranger Tides: The Diversification of Comedy

It has never been easier to watch and experience live comedy. Whether it’s TV shows such as Live at the Electric, Live at the Apollo and Live at the Palladium, or live sets on YouTube, or live shows on Netflix, it’s clear that comedy is ‘live’ and ‘somewhere’. It is possible to digest a comedian’s whole creative life over a bag of Doritos and a broadband connection. And while this offers a massive wealth of choice, it’s a strange phenomenon that people experience a ‘live’ feeling without it actually being, you know, live.

Whether it’s a star-studded McIntyre night, or a US export of a latest hour, these are shows that don’t really give an audience a feeling of what’s live. Taking benefit from the cutting room, every joke that makes the edit has landed. Audiences will be filled with the comedian’s fans, because why wouldn’t they be? They’re successful and skilled enough that they’ve sold a whole tour based on their name alone.

The ability to consume such amounts of ‘straight standup’ en masse has lead live audiences to seek out something a little different when choosing their evening out. And many promoters have reacted in kind. ‘Weird’ nights and those that play with the traditional comedy club structure, pushing for a focus on the one-off event, are sprouting up in their multitudes. They make people feel like they’re part of something that’s only going to happen once, something that can’t be replicated no matter how many YouTube hits a video gets.

The big successes of last year’s Edinburgh Fringe, Funz and Gamez, as well as Gein’s Family Giftshop, showed that tastes for live comedy are changing. Both based in the Northwest, Gein’s themselves run a monthly gig at the King's Arms in Salford which sees them invite a menagerie of acts to the stage, alongside their monthly showcase of brand new material. And while Funz and Gamez was intended as a special for the Fringe, the improvised children’s show is a collection of sketch, standup and character-driven comedy all in one show, no doubt influenced by and influencing peers in the Northwest.

Further variety nights such as Peter Slater and Lee Fenwick’s SOS TV Live, Sham Bodie and Twisted Comedy have been allowed to flourish with this thirst for something different for audiences. Sham Bodie is, as host and co-founder Ben Tonge describes it, "a variety show at heart." And in this respect, the show runs a tight structured ship, offering a notoriously difficult mixture of comedians and bands. It's often thought that it is difficult to balance the energy and the different tastes required of potential audiences – not so, claims Tonge: "The musicians and comedians have seemed to really enjoy playing the same gig. Apart from when Phil Ellis threw bread rolls at the Bell Peppers." While a hearty dose of audience interaction from Tonge (from hot dog eating competitions to audience bingo) helps to create a high and engaging energy, Tonge admits "we owe a lot of the credit to the audiences we have been getting – they’re along for the experience of the whole night, and are dead happy to jump from comedians to music and back again."

Based in the Northern Quarter, Sham Bodie sits alongside a number of other fantastic nights including the aforementioned SOS TV Live, a night of exciting character comedy, and Hayley Ellis’s House party, both based in the Three Minute Theatre at Affleck’s Palace. What these nights show is not just a wide array of formats and types of comedy performance, but also a willingness of audiences to be swept up by the proceedings. Though it is not just the avant-garde theatre spaces that are on board with these nights. Manchester comedy institution The Frog and Bucket recently set up Twisted Comedy, where each month one of the country’s best circuit acts headlines; the final had hulking Canadian absurdist Tony Law alongside guests Masai Graham, Stephanie Laing, Jo D’arcy, Rob Kemp and this month’s Spotlight, Will Duggan.

In a similar vein to Set List, the US show where acts must perform completely improvised material based on audience suggestion, Twisted provides audiences with a chance to watch comedians react on their feet to factors beyond their control. As founder Amanda Philips explains, "The headliner makes three arbitrary rules that the other comedians must follow. These could be anything – speak in a particular accent, talk about squirrels, pretend you are in the shower the entire time." Whereas many of the other nights featured deliberately move away from the established comedy club space, Twisted embraces it. "It makes a difference having a comedy night at a dedicated comedy club, especially when you are trying something very new and unusual" says Philips, and working with the reputation of the Frog has helped "a level of trust to be already there." And this idea certainly helps, with the most recent night packed not only with punters but also acts looking to watch comedians pushed to their limits.

Liverpool’s Hot Water Comedy is also not one to shirk away from different kinds of nights and has found great success with its comedy rap-battle night, ‘Crapbattles’. Pitting two comrade comedians together as they lyrically rip one another to shreds, like Twisted it allows an audience who will have been able to watch the acts’ sets online beforehand witness them in another light, where anything could happen (providing it’s in rhyming verse). Debs Marsden covered such duels for The Skinny back in January and they continue to flourish, helping to prove that there is an audience for events deliberately welcoming the unexpected, the haphazard and the unique.

Tempting as it is from a journalistic point of view to herald a new dawn in comedy, with hitherto unimagined riches of live laughter experiences, that’s not really the case. Speaking to a number of the promoters running these nights, they’ve been influenced by a huge range of other comedy nights and events, TFI Friday and Vic and Bob right through to The Comic Strip, whose members Rik Mayall and Ade Edmondson famously ran 20^th Century Coyote while at Manchester University, and even further back to music hall. Though you needn’t look that far back for another upswing in non-traditional nights.

The spirit of live diversity and different performers was something Mick Ferry echoed with his night Mick Ferry’s Space Cadets, run by himself and Northwest promoter Rob Riley. Based initially at TV-21, the night ran for a number of years, moving in the process to the Comedy Store. With an opening and closing comedian, there was space in between for something that Ferry describes as "not odd, but different." There were "burlesque dancers, magicians, a guy who could kick himself in the head and a guy who set fire to his pubes – he could only do that twice a year though." Failing this, they would have an indoor sports day in the middle.

Now as part of the sketch group Funz and Gamez, the same unpredictable anarchy features in the children’s comedy show, with a collection of improvised and pre-planned bits that play not only with the live comedy night but also family entertainment.

For whatever reasons, these nights keep springing up; but rather than a straight and ascending staircase, with each new step going upwards, the scene instead moves in cycles. Trends emerge and recede like waves on the beach, washing ashore things long since forgotten in a new configuration.