I wanna see that one (Little Britain Live)

Member Name: SWSt

Product:	Little Britain Live
Date:	24/02/06 (2838 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great characters and funny, new sketches - much more like the humour from series 1

Disadvantages: Some weak sketches involving rubbish characters

Background
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The Little Britain TV series has been a huge success for the BBC. Starting off as a radio show before appearing on BBC3, it moved to BBC2, ending its third series on BBC1. The show attracts millions of viewers and has made stars out of its creators David Walliams and Matt Lucas.

Little Britain is based around sketches in which Walliams and Lucas dress up (often as women!) and play a series of grotesque characters, all with their own catchphrases – these are supposedly the inhabitants of Britain. So, we get Vicky Pollard, the motor-mouthed chav queen, world’s worst transvestite Emily (Eddie) Howard, “only gay in the village” Dafydd Thomas and, best of all, supposedly wheelchair bound (but actually just terminally lazy) Andy and his gullible carer Lou. Each of the sketches are linked by a short, silly voice-over provided by Tom Baker.

The TV show has gone through 3 series of gradually declining quality. The first series was consistently brilliant, the second mostly good, whilst the third series was poor, increasingly relying on sick jokes and puerile humour to try to get laughs.

Given that the live show came out after the rubbish third series, I was worried that it, too, would be disappointing.

The Venue
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I saw the show at Manchester’s Carling Apollo Theatre and was very impressed with it. It was easy to find and secure parking was available (at only £4, quite reasonable for a city centre location). Inside the theatre, once you’re out of the crush of the small entrance way, there’s quite a lot of room and good toilet and bar facilities.

Although we were in the upper circle, our seats were excellent and we had a great view of the stage. The only exception was when the action moved to the very front of the stage, when the view was blocked by the balcony (and by all the people in front standing to see what was going on). Fortunately, this only happened about two or three times.

The only downside was that occasionally you could see people in the wings setting up the next sketch, or the side curtains would billow out as someone bumped into them. On a couple of occasions, backstage people even accidentally appeared on stage – very distracting! However, since this was the show’s first night in Manchester, I wonder whether they simply weren’t used to the size of the stage.

My fellow audience were an annoying bunch too. People were up and down all night, going in and out to the toilet and squeezing past you each time, or blocking your view. It clearly annoyed David Walliams too. At one point, he stopped mid-sketch, stared at a woman coming back in and shouted “That’s right, we’re all waiting for you to sit your fat a**e down!” Personally, I don’t blame him – it was really distracting.

Sets
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I was a bit concerned over how the show might translate to the stage, as much of the TV show is filmed on location rather than in a studio. It was very cleverly done, however. A computer generated image was projected onto the back of the stage, allowing characters to appear to come in and out of doors built into the set. Various bits of furniture (tables, chairs, bars etc.) were also whizzed on and off stage on tracks, as required. This meant that the show could race from sketch to sketch without the need to wait for scenery changes – in much the same way as the TV show switches between sketches rapidly.

The Show
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Anyway, onto the show itself. It started brilliantly, with Lou coming onto the stage with an empty wheelchair and asking the audience had anyone seen Andy (“he’s not what you would call conventionally handsome”). Andy then proceeded to come on stage on a jetpack, run into the audience to steal someone’s sweets, before ending up in his wheelchair, to Lou’s surprise. It was a great opening sequence before the show proper started.

It was really good to note that most of the material was new, not simply a re-hash of things which had already been in the TV series. The most disappointing sketch in this regard was Vicky Pollard, which was just a slightly expanded version of a previous TV sketch. However, this was very much in the minority. It was also pleasing to see the return of old favourites who didn’t feature in the third series, especially insane Scottish hotelier Ray McCooney, whose appearance probably got the biggest cheer of the night and who greeted the audience with a cheery “Yeeees, I’m back!”

The style and humour of the show was also much closer to Series One that Series Three, although some of the sketches were still based on weak characters (personally, I don’t find incontinent woman/vomiting woman or Ting Tong MacaDingDong funny). However, all the sketches were kept short, so even if they featured a character you don’t like, you knew they wouldn’t be on stage for long.

There were also a couple of sketches which just didn’t work very well on stage. This was particularly true of the Dennis Waterman/Jeremy Rent sketch. The central joke in this is that Dennis Waterman is really tiny, and so anything he comes across is much bigger than him, but normal size to everyone else (for example, a small Chihuahua in someone else’s hands becomes a Great Dane in Waterman’s). On the TV show, this obviously uses all sorts of camera tricks to work – something which is not possible in a live stage show. Instead, they had to rely on pretty rubbish sleight of hand to try and work it. In fairness, though, they clearly recognised this and so took the mick out of the whole sketch themselves, with knowing little comments and asides to the audience (“they just haven’t thought this through, have they?”)

Audience Participation
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Be warned! If you go to see this, you might get more than you bargained for! A couple of times, audience members are hauled up on stage to join in. The first time is when two “volunteers” help washed-up TV presenter play his new game “Hide the Sausage”. I won’t tell you too much about this sketch, but it involves choosing a young, good-looking member of the audience and an older, not so good-looking one. No prizes for guessing which one Des likes and which one he more or less ignores. This is probably one of the funniest sketches of the show -made all the funnier because of the reaction of the hapless victims!

The second main bit of participation comes when Marjorie Dawes invites a “new member” of Fat Fighters to join her. This was less funny, to be honest, as the jokes were somewhat predictable and telegraphed and again, some of the material had already been seen on TV.)

How much you enjoy these particular sketches will depend on whether you are the victim or not! However, if you’re sitting more than about 10 rows back from the front of the stage, you should be safe.

The Cast
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Obviously, Walliams and Lucas are the two stars, taking most of the roles. However, they are supported by Paul Putner (“Paul” from Fat Fighters) and Samantha Power (“Jane”, fiancée of “bitty” obsessed Harvey). Putner I quite like, as he brings a kind of gruff charm to the shows. However, Power has an incredibly annoying voice. I can just about stand it when she’s only in a couple of sketches, but when she appears in so many, her voice is just incredibly grating and puts me off.

The other cast member was Tom Baker who, although not there in person, was providing his typically stupid, overblown introductions to each sketch. Sadly, this didn’t work as well as in the show. I don’t know whether it was the sound system in the theatre or the quality of the original recording, but the sound was really muffled and distorted. At times it was difficult to hear what was being said. In addition, the voiceovers were sometimes started when the audience was still clapping/cheering the previous sketch, so again, some of the introductions were lost.

Ad-libs and Gaffs
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Of course, being a live show, there was plenty of opportunity to depart from the material. In truth, the temptation to adlib too much was resisted and, where departures from the script did happen, the asides felt more like tried and tested ad-libs, rather than genuine off-the-cuff, spontaneous remarks (Vicky Pollard flicking the V to the audience taking photos of her and saying “if you want a photo, take one of this”). Walliams and Lucas come across as a couple of excellent comic actors who like the protection of a script, rather than genuine stand-up comedians.

There were also plenty of gaffs – both Walliams and Lucas cracked up in the middle of the “Mr Mann” shop sketch and took a few minutes to get themselves under control (whilst each was trying the make the other “corpse” even more badly!) However, this really just added to the sketch. The highlight of the gaffs, though, came during the grand finale (a song-n-dance pastiche of YMCA, featuring Dafydd Thomas), when Matt Lucas slipped and fell over, then spent the rest of the song bemoaning the fact he’d hurt himself, instead of singing the lyrics. It was a really funny moment (although, in fairness, you had to be there to truly appreciate it!)

Conclusion
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Overall, this was a top night’s entertainment. The show lasted for approximately two hours (with a 30 minute break) and there was very little to criticise about it. After the crude, unfunny humour of the 3rd series, the show returned to its roots and managed to re-capture the elements that made it such a hit. Having said that, I do think that, after 3 TV series and one live stage show, Little Britain has probably now run its course and should be allowed to bow out (dis)gracefully.

The remaining shows in the tour are mostly sold out (although some extra dates have been added). If you have got tickets, though, you’re in for a great time. You’ll laugh till your sides hurt, renew your acquaintance with some old friends, hope like hell you’re not invited to play “Hide the Sausage” or join Fat Fighters and generally have a great time!

Summary: The TV show translates surprisingly well to the stage