It’s safe to say
that comedian Lee Mack enjoyed the audience at the Concert Hall as much as they
enjoyed him.
The stand-up and
star of TV’s Not Going Out stayed a full 15 minutes longer than his billed
timings last night – and for that we were grateful in what otherwise was a set
that flew by.
From the outset
he was gag-heavy. Rattling them out like a Ken Dodd for the 21st
Century (in the nicest possible comparison, of course), he was on his way into
the next story, punch line or observation while the sell-out audience was still
recovering from the last.
OK, he could be
hit-and-miss sometimes, and a bit of a lull 40 minutes from the end showed he
was at his best working the audience rather than relating those scripted tales
of home life, children and his sex life.
From telling us
why elephants actually have a short memory to the vagaries of Irish
name-spelling, he covered a vast range of topics from the point of view of the
punters. Fair enough, his topics were mostly end-of-the-pier stuff – and some
of the punch lines could probably be spotted from the spaceship that landed on
that comet recently. He even managed to fluff a few lines so completely that we
never got to hear the end of his stories.
But he was very visual on stage,
using the space well, pacing, pausing and reacting to the crowd.
His audience
interaction was the key – and got by far the biggest laughs. Good old Grace
from Kimberley, and a wonderful hair-stylist from Burton-on-Trent who made up
her own line and probably got the biggest laugh of the night, laid the
foundations for some good old-fashioned spontaneous fun.
His contact with the crowd was a mix of the traditional “What’s your name” and “What do you do” to
remembering their names and what they’d told him to bring back into his gags
further into the show.
Indeed, the encore was simply inviting questions from the floor. A risky strategy but the good folk of Queen of the Midlands delivered – and gave him the perfect material to round off a busy night.
Indeed, the encore was simply inviting questions from the floor. A risky strategy but the good folk of Queen of the Midlands delivered – and gave him the perfect material to round off a busy night.
