Review: Covent Garden Comedy Club
Saturday 9th April 2011
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| Erich McElroy |
Situated in the arches of Embankment (at G.A.Y club), the venue is not too bad. The lighting was too dark though so we had trouble reading the acts list before the show started. The music was also far too loud for those sitting right next to the speaker system!
The house was full for tonight’s comedic offerings and MC for the night was Erich McElroy, an American stand-up now living in the UK. He warmed the audience nicely with his anecdotes of life in Britain comparing to the US, and this was a welcome start to the evening.
Ian Moore was first to take the stage. A very likeable comedian, the audience warmed to his style of story telling. His material consisted of stories about his family and living in France, and the told lots of jokes about being lost in translation with his lack of ability to speak French, referring to the old ‘Tricolore’ text-books from the school days. The only problem I found, was that Ian would start telling a story, and then he would go off on a tangent and forget to tell us the end of the tale… I never found out what happened when he was left on a train confronting a youth playing his music on a mobile phone.
Paul Pirie was next up, a Scottish comedian, who didn’t really impress or get my laughs. His style is to shout down the microphone all the time, which to be honest, isn’t funny, and isn’t great microphone technique. His choice of material leaves a lot to be desired too, telling everyone how he keeps messing his pants, isn’t at all funny. Looking around at the audience’s reactions, they didn’t seem to be with him and he had the least laughs of the evening.
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| Abandoman |
Headlining the night were a comedy duo called Abandoman – Two hip hop teachers who improvise on the guitar and vocals about people in the audience. For me, this was the highlight of the evening: very clever, cutting edge comedy, which is very hard to pull off night after night, but they do it with style. Making songs up abut the contents of ‘Whats in your pocket?’, and telling a lifestory of an audience member, is quite simply, pure genius.
An interesting evening of comedy, certainly a different mix of styles of laughter, but for me, Abandoman are the ones to watch, with Ian Moore also stepping up the comedy ranks.
More info http://www.coventgardencomedy.com/
