Marcus Brigstocke at Landmark Arts Centre

Once upon a Time the whole family were big fans of The Now Show (Radio 4 comedy) and went to see recordings when that was an easy thing to do, and we did it with military precision to get seats in the middle of the front row. At its peak, The Now Show included John Holmes, Mitch Benn and Marcus Brigstocke.

Marcus Brigstocke also did a radio comedy programme called I've Never Seen Star Wars and we bagged best seats for a recording of that too and were rewarded by Brigstocke making fun of eldest son's long hair.

Our final encounter with Brigstocke in this series was when he and Phill Jupitus did some Edinburgh warm-ups at Jacksons Lane in 2012.

Then, out of the blue, the local Landmark Arts Centre, a mere 15 minutes walk away, announced that he would be bringing his latest show, Vitruvian Mango, to the venue. 

No thought was required to fork out £18 for an unallocated seat.

Lots of people had the same idea and the venue was all but full when I arrived about quarter of an hour before the show.

Just enough time to get a beer at to find a reasonable seat towards the back.

The show was a series of stories on what being a man means today. Many of these were personal and included trying to het to close to women when walking late at night and appearing on Celebrity MasterChef with Greg Wallace.

The stories were funny and also made a point, they were most definitely "woke" which the Radio 4 listeners of Teddington appreciated.

The delivery was very much as expected, and experienced before, with longish lead-ins and wry punchlines. That produced a steady stream of steady humour that lasted something like an hour and a half plus a break. That was a lot of good jokes in one evening.

Trashfuture live (24 Nov 24)

Thanks to my sons' insistence, I have been listening to the Trashfuture podcast for a little while now and also thanks to them I went to see them live for a second time. And as with last November, the whole family was there to celebrate our eldest son's birthday.

But first we had to have a pizza and Franco Manca in The Cut did the job. It's far from the most exciting menu in the world but we have simple tastes and we went for options 1, 2 (twice) and 3. We are easy to please!

Between The Bridges is an odd venue, little more than a marquee with benches, and the being a liminal area between inside and outside meant that it was okay, and necessary, to keep your coat on. On a more positive note, they sold reasonable beer.

At the previous Trashfuture live event the main man, Riley (far left), was sick and November had to lead the show and this time she was ill and another podcast stalwart, Devon, had to fill in. In other words, the people in the poster were not those presenting the show but that is just a statement for the record, it made no material difference.

For almost ninety minutes Riley led us through the Boris Johnson magus opus Unleashed. The Trashfuture crowd are intelligent, which is rather the point of the podcast, and this was an analytical takedown of Johnson as well as a funny one. Two big points were that Johnson used the book to hit back at everyone who every slighted him and all the things that went wrong were someone else's fault even if that fault amounted to not stopping him from being stupid.

Of course there was a great deal more to the discussion than that and the observations and jokes came thick and fast, so much so that it warrants a second listen and I am hoping, as I did last year, that the live event comes out as a free episode.

Trashfuture live (28 Nov 23)

It has been ten years (!!) since I last wrote about podcasts which, given how much time I spend listening to them, is probably a mistake.

My regular walks, c20km a day on average, are spent listening to them or to BBC radio drama and I subscribe to podcast on news, science, comedy, politics, drama, technology and design. At any one time I generally have about thirty waiting to be listened to.

I got into Trashfuture both of whom are paid subscribers; I am not and I just get the weekly free episode. 

Trashfuture calls itself a "podcast about business success and making yourself smarter with the continued psychic trauma of capitalism", which it is. The format is a team discussion on current affairs that skilfully and entertainingly combines an intelligent and knowledgeable analysis of the failings of capitalism with some decent jokes; the adage a spoonful of sugar comes to mind.

Occasionally the Trashfuture do live shows and when one coincided with a son's birthday it was quickly agreed rhat the whole family would attend.

Being a family meeting meant going for a walk, Rower Bridge to Waterloo, and being a birthday meant going to Pizza Express.

Our progress towards Between The Bridges on Southbank was hampered by some event connected with Albania's independence day which is one reason that we were sat towards the back of a packed marquee. I did have time to buy a decent beer for a not frighteningly expensive £7.2.

I had been to many recordings of TV and radio shows and was interested to see how a podcast would differ. As expected from listening to the show for a while, recording it live made little difference, e.g. there were no retakes and no additional material that would disappear on the cutting room floor. What was different was that the four of them (the fifth was ill) sat in a line across the stage, so that we could see them all which is not the natural arrangement for a discussion and there were times when they spoke over each other a little.

The topic of the discussion was Nadine Doris' new book The Plot. One of the team, Alice, had drawn the short straw and had read it and she took us through both the content and the style with the other responding with analysis and humour. It was very like a normal show and so delivered on my expectations.

They talked for about an hour then the conversation reached a natural end and we all applauded enthusiastically before heading back out into the cold night.

I hope they pick this episode as a free one so that I can listen to it again.

Al Murray: Gig For Victory (Tour Warm Up) at Theatre At The Tabard

I do not do comedy gigs very often but this one had a lot going for it.

Firstly it was at Theatre At The Tabard which is a favourite place, easy to get to and above a pub.

Secondly, while Al Murray is not someone I have watched a lot he is old school and does not do observational comedy which is definitely not my thing.

I also had fond memories of a few other warm-up gigs with the likes of Armstrong and Miller, Phill Jupitus and Marcus Brigstocke.

So I forked out £20 for a seat in the front row. I was aware of the risks in doing that but so was everyone else and that is where the last seats were.

The warning was necessary as a few people in the front got beer on them almost immediately and I escaped with just a wet shoe.

Most of the hour was a dialogue with members of the audience and everyone in the first few rows got involved in some way, I got off lightly though he did suggest that Julie could have become a consultant if she had worked harder. Hardest hit was the young man sent to the bar to get drinks, twice.

There was some scripted content but as this was a warm-up gig I'll not say anything about that other than it was built on a subject that he is known to be interested in.

I like like my theatre in small venues where you can feel part of the action and I like my comedy the same way. This was a fun experience.

Socks Do Shakespeare at Camden Fringe

If this blog is to be believed it was almost five years ago that I had last seen the Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre. That was five years of bad luck with the occasional Socks gig in the London area always clashing with something I had already booked.

So when a date was announced that there was a chance that could make I jumped at it. The start time (6:30pm) and location (Islington) were far from friendly but needs must and I sneaked out of work early, grabbed a train and a tube, then walked the final mile or so down from Highbury and Islington to the Bill Murray, which is a little off the beaten track.

There was a bar so I grabbed a pint while somebody wrote "15" on my hand in green pen.

The club room was small, dark, packed and hot. That was far from ideal but the discomforts were forgotten as soon as I heard Kev Sutherland say the familiar, "Hello, we are the Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre. And so am I. And so is he."

The only other material that I remembered from previous shows that I had seen was the I am a Sock song, which I guess is mandatory. The Socks do tours, or seasons, on a theme and this was all about Shakespeare so it was new material to be, apart from the odd clip that I had seen on YouTube, though Kev tries to keep his live act and YouTubing separate so there is not much opportunity to see the live show except by going to it.

For the next hour the Socks did what the Socks do and, I believe, better than I had see them do it before. The hour simply whizzed past and I spent almost all of it laughing. The only times I was not laughing at jokes I was groaning at puns.

Socks Do Shakespeare was simply far funnier than it had any right to be. Kev Sutherland is an artist who knows his craft and his audience. It had better not be another bloody five years before I see the Socks again.

Relatively Speaking at Wyndham's Theatre (very funny)

I love the theatre but generally find West End prices not justified by the performances so I am grateful to be able to go to some of the shows that appeal through work's social club where I can get discounted tickets.

And so I found myself in one of the front rows of the stalls for a revival of Alan Ayckbourn's Relatively Speaking, which in 1967 was his first hit.

The play's premise is simple but quickly opens up the way to much confusion and complexity.

The young woman is the only person who knows what is going on. Her current boy friend wants to marry her but first she has to clear an older married man out of her life. She heads to his house in the commuter belt telling her boyfriend that she is off to see her parents. He follows, manages to get there first and the confusion begins.

Along the way this includes the husband thinking that the young man is his wife's lover and the young man thinking that the wife has disowned his girlfriend because she was illegitimate.

It gets much more complicated than that and every line either twists the situation unexpectedly or produces a laugh-out-loud punchline.

The acting was wonderful and all four characters were utterly delightful. A lot of the comedy rode on the young man's innocence of the situation and he carried his naivety brilliantly.The young woman was reassured and in control while the older man was confused and on the verge of loosing it. The one known star, Felicity Kendall, was calm among the chaos and did not let all the supposed and suspected relationships get in the way of her orderly Sunday in the garden.

Alan Ayckbourn's plays entertain through humour and this one was an undoubted success with the audience, myself included, laughing uncontrollably throughout. This is a good solid farce that is well crafted and well delivered.

Socks in Teddington

I have a great deal of admiration for Kev F. Sutherland, the man behind The Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre. The Socks would be enough for that but he does so much more and has a relentless schedule that takes him across the country delivering art classes, doing caricatures and being the Socks.

This travel brings the Socks to London most years and this time it was even better as they came to Teddington and that is walking distance from home.

Admittedly I was not at home. I was working in Cardiff that day but I escaped in good time to get to the Landmark Arts Centre before the show, if not to eat an evening meal. That's a very small sacrifice to pay.

The Landmark was built to be a church so it comes with high ceilings, almost invisible in the dark, and an echo to match.

I was the first one in (it was not meant to be open) and was lucky to spend some time with Kev talking about places that films and TV shows were made, we were close to the famous Teddington Studios, while I grabbed some peanuts and a bottle of beer. An excellent start to the evening and worth the price of admission in itself.

I was soon joined by some friends that I had persuaded to join me for the evening. The Socks' humour is somewhat off-beat so there was a little trepidation about recommending the show.

I need not have worried. Almost with the opening words they were laughing out loud as were the other fifty or so people in the theatre.

The first half of the show, Boo Lingere, was a series of sketches, spoofs and puns on a horror theme, a new set for this year.

There was a short break, I'm sure more for Kev to rest in than anything else, where another beer was consumed, then it was a second half of older material.

I had seen some of this before but that did not make it any less funny and the loud laughter continued as before.

There were a few spills along the way, as expected, and Kev's ad libbing abilities were remarkable, especially as he was doing it in two characters at the same time.

There is no point in over-analysing what the Socks do or how they do it. The point is they are funny. Very funny.

Comedy World Cup - The Final

I was only vaguely aware of the Comedy World Cup (C4 Saturday evenings) when I got an offer to be in the audience to see one of the programmes being filmed. This came from one the emailing lists, SRO Audiences, that I subscribe to for just that purpose.

The main reason for wanting to go was the location, Teddington Studios is a steady 20 minute walk away. I have been to a few recordings there but these have become less and less frequent as UK production companies prefer to use other locations.

Of course it had to be something that I was prepared to sit through too and this had the word "comedy" in the title and that was enough for me. It was enough for a lot of other people too and there was quite a queue when I got to the studios just after midday.

The logistics worked and I got a seat about three rows back in the central block.

Unlike other panel comedy shows this is a genuine quiz with proper questions, answers and points. In contrast, shows like MTW and HIGNFY just toss feed-lines to comedians for them to grab with their prepared scripts.

The show went much as expected with much off-camera banter, or rather on-camera banter that has no chance of making the final cut for legal and decency reasons. I enjoyed the actual quiz, especially the archive footage sections.

We all clapped and hollered enthusiastically at the right places having been effectively warmed up. You might just see me joining in as I was next to an aisle and was wearing my pink and grey hooped Leeds Rhinos shirt (because we had won the Supper League Grand Final the day before).

I was going to say something like, I know who won but I am not allowed to tell you, but I do not know. Whether it was to stop us spilling the beans or not I do not know but they miss counted the score so both teams were declared the winners at some point. I'll just have to watch it again in a couple of weeks.

Phill Jupitus and Marcus Brigstocke at Jackson's Lane

It's that time of year when comics want to try out their Edinburgh shows which can mean cheap tickets for good comedy. And so I found myself back at Jacksons Lane to see the double bill of Phill Jupitus and Marcus Brigstocke.

Marcus Brigstocke was the main draw for me as I have enjoyed seeing him live a few times, though not for four years apparently. Having Phill Jupitus on the bill too certainly made the decision to go much easier.

This was my fifth trip to Jackson's Lane and was my first conventional show there. It is good to have venues that are prepared to put on such a diverse range of shows. It is just a shame that they are on the other side of Town.

Marcus was trying out his Brig Society show and made no pretence of this being anything other than a work in progress by bringing the script on stage and leafing through it during the performance to decide which part to do next.

It was a fairly typical Brigstocke rant, or collection of rants, against the Government and it hit some easy targets.

The Big/Brig Society featured in the opening and closing sections and the middle was more commentary on other foolish aspects of modern life.

It was a very rough and ready show at the time and, judging my his tweets, it is just now settling down a couple of performances in to the Fringe run proper.

That's not to say that it was not funny because it certainly was, it is just that the delivery was broken and it did not flow naturally as a set. But that's why comedians do try-out shows.

In the last segment Marcus chose people from the audience to take leading positions in the Brig Society and sitting in the middle of the second row (the front row was too low) we were natural victims so Howard became head of Treasury and Richard head of Eduction. Last time we saw him me had a go at Howard's long hair and this time he picked on Richard's It's nice to keep things like that in the family.

A short beer break and then the second half with Phill Jupitus.

One the stage was a simple board announcing the name, title and dates of a dead U-Boat captain from WWII.

On walks Phill dressed nautically. He gives us a little spiel about himself, his brash wife who lives in the East End of London (the war made their relationship a little strained) and the efforts he went to to avoid sinking allied ships.

Then it was audience questions.

This was then all unscripted though some of the questions had probably been asked before, such as how he met his wife, and that allowed expansive and often surreal answers. From this we learn that he spent some of WWII hiding in Lulworth Cove and his favourite food was bagels with crab meat.

A quick costume change and he returned as the dead himself from the future and happy to answer any questions about the time from now until his death. Here the questions were less constrained and most of the answers were devised there and then, often causing Phill to snort a few laughs before he could bring himself to speak. We found his answers funny too.

In the final, brief, Q&A session with Phill as himself he explained that he was trying an unscripted routine simply because he was getting tired of writing jokes all the time, and with such a quick wit he does not need to.

The contrast between the two shows worked well too and it was another entertaining evening in Highgate.

The Lady Killers at the Gielgud

If you know Father Ted, The IT Crowd and the film of The Lady Killers (and most people do) then you will have some idea of what to expect from the stage play. And you'll not be disappointed.

The play is well crafted in every respect and knows how to draw the comedy out of every situation, character, plot twist, object, scene and speech.

I'll try to explain some of that, starting with the easy ones.

The story is not quite the film but it's close enough for you to know what is going to happen. Sort of. It's the familiar story of an old woman up against a group of hardened criminals with only one possible outcome.

There are some nice scenes along the way, starting with the very opening with the old lady in conversation with her local Police Constable regarding her suspicions about her newsagent.

The set is bit of a star. For most of the time it is like looking in to a damaged doll's house with the rooms leaning at odd angles. Of course the main reason for this is to make the main parts of the house visible to us the audience and if the result is quirky and distinctive then that's a nice bonus.

The set twists and rotates occasionally to reveal the outside and the roof when the action moves that way. The depiction of the robbery is pure genius and was one of the very many points that compelled us to laugh out loud.

The heart of the play is the characterisation and the way that this is portrayed in the dialogue and acting.

Peter Capaldi leads the way as the maniacal Professor Marcus, the gang leader. He stalks the stage like a discordant stork with a touch of Dr Who (it's the scarf). He has to think on his feet to keep the truth from the old lady and you can see his brain whirl as he does so. It's all his fault basically.

Ben Miller is fantastic as the Eastern European tough guy who likes to talk with his knife that he brandishes frequently. A favourite moment of mine was his dead-pan delivery when trying to explain what he wants his share of the money for - no spoilers though, you'll have to see it yourself.

We also have James Fleet as the Major with an unnatural interest in dresses, Clive Rowe who has little clue as to what is going on and Stephen Wight as the young career criminal who has more enthusiasm than ability, he's also the butt of a stream of slapstick jokes (like the old waiter in One Man Two Guvnors).

The dialogue is crisp and purposeful delivering its humour with subtlety rather than taking the easy route with obvious punchlines or swearing (other plays take note).

The story and players change pace cutely building tension and humour and then gently releasing them, like in a good song. This is class writing.

The sum of all this craft and cleverness is a play that is seriously funny and with plenty of depth to warrant repeat visits.

One Man, Two Guvnors at the Adelphi

When I first heard about One Man, Two Guvnors I was rather dismissive seeing it as simply a comedy vehicle for James Corden (who I am not a fan of) and so I refused all the offers thrown my way to see it at the National Theatre.

But the excellent reviews kept pouring in to my Twitter stream and so when the chance for cheap tickets at the Adelphi came through I finally acquiesced.

And everybody was right; it is really very funny.

Missing it at the National was a mistake because that is a much better theatre than the Aledphi where the cheap seats in the Upper Circle have scant room for any superfluous extras, like legs.

Getting everybody in and out of their seats was such a palava that I even missed the usual half-time ice cream to save the bother of getting out of my seat.

The show is a riot because it teases humour out of every facet of the play.

The story is a true farce, one where identities are mistaken, doors are opened and closed regularly and nobody has control of the situation.

The dialogue is excellent. There is a stream of one-liners (e.g. "love goes through marriage like shit through a dog"), several catch-phrases (e.g. "In Parkhurst") and some staged word play that the Two Ronnies would have been proud of (e.g. the alliteration around diagnosed with diarrhoea but died of a damaged diaphragm in Didcot).

There's some slapstick too, such as the accidental waiter who gets repeatedly banged on the head and who also falls down the stairs a lot. And he's 87 years old. The slapstickiest moment comes courtesy of a member of the audience but I won't spoil that one for you.

The large cast of characters each plays their comic part.

To pick just a few of them; there's the young man who wants to be an actor and who hams it up continuously, his dim girlfriend who does not understand anything that is going on, the ex-public school boy who goes beyond any other exaggeration of the stereotype, and there's more ...

It goes without saying that these roles are funny not just because of the characters, all the actors are excellent in their roles.

Amongst the panoply of talent James Corden is still very much the front man. In some ways his is the simplest characters and he is witness to most of the story rather than part of it (his main motive most of the time is simply to get food) but that gives him the freedom to be the comedian and to play with the audience.

James Corden is very good and very funny but the rest of the cast are excellent too and the dialogue is the real star of the show.

Lysistrata at the Rose

The theatre's blurb for this mentioned "Aristophanes’ no-holds barred comedy" and "absurdist masterpiece" which has got to be good enough for any theatre goer looking for something that is both fun and unusual.

It didn't exactly work out like that.

It is based on the original Lysistrata, where the women of Greece try to stop the war by denying their men sex, but any claims that this is anything substantial, subtle or innovative are unfounded.

A better description would be Carry On Greece with a big dollop of Viz.

The humour, and there is a lot of humour that draws genuine laughter, comes from the many crude references to sex. It's a one trick pony and that pony gets flogged near to death.

If I had gone expecting a romp I probably would have enjoyed it more (or, more probably, not gone) but I was lead by the references to Aristophanes' original to expect more.

To over promise and under deliver always guarantees disappointment.

Much Ado About Nothing at Wyndham's Theatre

The obvious draw for Much Ado About Nothing was the pairing of David Tennant and Catherine Tate as the reluctant lovers Benedick and Beatrice.

This was reflected in the long queues for the merchandise and the number of small children dragged along for the evening.

I had other reasons for going. After a heavy run of his late plays at the National Theatre around twenty five years ago my diet of Shakespeare had been a little thin and a top-up was welcome. I had not seen this play before. And there was a cheap ticket deal through work!

As usual, I'd paid scant attention to reviews beforehand so apart from some idea that it was a modern setting my preconceptions were minimal.

The modern setting soon revealed itself to be mostly about new clothes.

The dialogue was refreshingly Shakespearean though I suspect there were a few minor changes along the way, mostly additional exclamations of the "Hey. Ho." type by Catherine Tate.

Keeping to the original script was a big plus for me but soon lost some of the children who had probably never heard many of the old words before let alone encountered them strung together in lyrical prose.

Most of the play was left untouched too with the rich humour coming from the dialogue and the plot from overheard conversations.

The big change were the addition of some slapstick scenes. Two of these were when Benedick and then Beatrice try to listening to conversations. Benedict has a series of accidents with paint left behind by decorators and Beatrice got hoist in to the air by the wires they were using to reach the high places.

These scenes had the whole audience cavorted in riotous laughter in a way that would make the best pantomime jealous.

But while the slapstick might have been a useful prop for those unfamiliar with Shakespeare (or even theatre) it was not really necessary as the whole play was genuinely funny. Laugh out loud funny.

The whole cast contributed to this. Several of them were recognisable from various tv programmes (don't ask me which) and while the two stars drew most of the attention they could not have shone without everybody else supporting them magnificently.

And the stars did shine. David Tennant was the more convincing as the love-sick Benedict who is easily led by others but Catherine Tate was also strong playing Beatrice as one of her sassy characters, much as she did with Donna in Dr Who. David Tennant simply did more acting.

This was a near faultless production and while some purists may object to the modern setting or the additional slapstick those criticisms would be a matter of taste rather than an objective view of the performance.

This was a highly enjoyable show and is as good as this sort of theatre gets. Much Ado About Nothing is really something.

Three Farces at the Orange Tree

Three Farces is just what it says it is, three farces in one evening.

John Maddison Morton wrote all three farces which made them refreshingly similar in mood and style, though they are quite distinct from each other. These are three plays in a series not one play in three acts.

He wrote them in Victorian times which makes them comedies of class and manners.

To keep the continuity going the Orange Tree uses the same cast for all three farces. There were some familiar faces among them too, like Stuart Fox and Jennifer Higham, so that was reassuringly familiar too.

The only unfamiliar thing was finding myself in the second row (rather than the front) due to the eagerness of the audience to get in and my own difficulties with the 65 bus.

Slasher and Cracker opens the evening. These are the names of the gentlemen chasing the daughter and sister of a recently rich ex-army man who finds them both wanting in valour.

The contrive a plan to demonstrate their worth that leads to them fighting a rigged duel. This is a farce so all ends well but there are lots of laughs before we get there.

There is a quick interval to change sets, costumes and to rest and then it's An Unwanted Intrusion.

Another rich man with a daughter to get rid of rescues a drowning man from his pond only to have that man committing to stay with his rescuer in the rescuer's house, a bit like The Man Who Came to Dinner.

Here the comedy comes from the eagerness of the rescued to inveigle himself in to his rescuer's home when that is clearly not what the rescuer expected or wanted.

This relies heavily on the exuberant acting of Edward Bennett who meets the challenge with relish.

The last play, Grimshaw, Bagshaw and Bradshaw is more typically farcical with mistaken identities and a room with three door through which people come and go with bewildering frequency. It is also typically funny.

There are some nice touches during the evening as the Orange Tree maintains its own tradition of engaging well with its audiences. We even had an entertainer to sing to us between the plays and who also chatted to us during the intervals.

There is nothing particularly clever about any of these plays but that's not their point. They are three different farces that keep you laughing all evening, which is exactly what three farces should do.

Chekhov in Hell at the Soho Theatre

I have been rather successful over the last year or so in seeing good innovative plays in small theatres and so it proved again with Chekhov in Hell at the Soho Theatre.

This was my first time at the Soho Theatre too though I had walked past its nondescript frontage many times, especially when I worked in Soho in the early 90s. In marked contrast to most of the theatres I've been to recently this one is not buried underground but is up on the third floor then sinks down like a lecture theatre. It certainly does not look purpose-built.

There is a little theatre bar that just about lives up to its name but is certainly the smallest theatre bar that I have been to. Not a big problem as I was happy not to have a drink and did not have long to wait before the doors opened.

There was a minor scramble for the best seats when the doors opened (my definition of a small theatre is one with free seating) but I am well practised at this and managed to get a seat in the front row. In the middle.

I like minimalist sets as great plays do not need much in the way of props and too many or too extravagant props can detract from what you are meant to be watching.

Chekhov in Hell has a wonderfully minimalist set. For most of the play there is just a chair or two on the stage and sometimes there is nothing at all.

The minimalism extends to the costumes and while the small cast each plays several roles (apart from Chekhov) they do so in the same clothes. And I mean clothes rather than costumes as the actors are dressed normally.

That simple approach works well as the superb cast are able to convey the different characters that they play through just voices and mannerisms. It's a joy to witness.

The play takes a look at modern life through the eyes of Anton Chekhov who awakes from a coma after a hundred years and after being introduced to his closest living relative, a chavy single mother, he escapes in bemusement in to the world of today.

The story then evolves as Chekhov moves from one scene to another each rich with comedy as the slightest weaknesses in modern life are exposed cruelly.

There are too many scenes running thick and fast after each other for me to do anything other than pick out a few.

There was the self-help group, The Survivors, who were somewhat less than helpful to each other. A gay designer who explains that fashion is just men's way of proving that women are stupid. A Customer Support Officer who provides very ineffectual and patronising support, e.g. offering a hug.

Chekhov also gets inadvertently involved with the Russian Mafia and that theme makes the play a story rather than just a collection of disjointed scenes.

Chekhov in Hell is some of the best fun that I've had at the theatre for ages. It is genuinely funny throughout, pointing an irreverent mirror at ourselves, and is acted with aplomb. Superb stuff.

Laughing at socks (again)

When I saw the Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre back in September I went by myself, not risking the experiment on other people, but I when I went back just seven months later I brought five other people with me.

We approached Leicester Square from different directions so it was sensible to arrange a meeting point and even more sensible to pick the original Pizza Express in Wardour Street. Pizza and wine consumed we walked the short distance to the Leicester Square Theatre where I successfully convinced that the two PDF attachments on my phone entitled us all to entry. Who prints tickets?

Once inside I managed to get a few words with author, performer and general star, Kev.

He was just back from giving a performance in Aarhus, Denmark which I have been to so the opener was on how well jokes that rely heavily on cultural references go down with people who do not watch British TV. Quite well apparently.

This time I was prepared for laughter which was just as well as it was soon required.

The Socks are in many ways a traditional double act with a straight guy and a silly guy, the difference being that they are the same guy.

This is quite hard to believe at times so well established are the two characters. At one point one sock told the other off for ad libbing as though he really was not expecting the line!

The Socks are anarchic, which is to say that the script, such as it is, consists of a few defined sketches and songs loosely laced together with free-form interplay between the two Socks.

Some of the sketches work better than others and I think that there was some new stuff in the show that is still settling down. The second half was a lot stronger than the first and was near faultless.

And I don't count dropped props as a fault, that happens so often it's an integral part of the show. Another excuse for ad libbing, such as doing part of the Star Wars scene in an Elvis costume!

The whole point of going to see the Socks is to laugh. Out loud. A lot. And that's exactly what we all did.

A Flea in Her Ear at the Old Vic

Another theatre offer via work saw me back at the Old Vic this time for a classic French Farce by Georges Feydeau and translated by John Mortimer.

I had seen mixed reviews of the play but a farce is a farce so I went with reasonable hopes of being entertained if not intellectually stretched.

The 507 bus took me almost door-to-door from the office to the theatre and so I arrived early enough to get a seat in the Pit Bar and to eat one of the British Railway standard cheese and tomato sandwiches. The Staropramem lager was a welcome find though.

Going in to the theatre was something of a shock as it was nothing like I remembered it from just a couple of years ago for Complicit. Then the layout of the theatre was proscenium style with clusters of chairs around it but this time it was a typical Victorian theatre with the emphasis on decoration rather than comfort.

The set, a reception room in a grand house, started to allay any fears about the production and it was only the presence of some of the most attentive and dedicated camera-spotters that I've seen in a theatre that prevented me from taking a photo of it. Pity, because I liked the set and cannot find a photo of it on the internet.

The play quickly introduces us to the main characters and the first plot device. The wife of the house suspects her husband of being unfaithful to her and devises a plan to test this. She gets a friend to write to her husband inviting him to an assignation at a hotel with an ill reputation. The friend's husband then arrives and recognising his wife's handwriting things she is up to no good.

Add to this the family doctor and a nephew with a speech impediment (both of whom use the hotel), a manservant with ideas above his station and a gentleman with designs on the wife and the scene is set for the farce. End of Act 1.

Act 2 takes us to the hotel where farce reigns in typical fashion.

People come and go, hiding from each other as they do so, the many doors open and close and confusion triumphs. It may be reasonably predictable but it is delivered with aplomb and the laughter is sincere and continuous. It is genuinely funny.

The misunderstandings which sent the characters to the hotel are resolved in a riotous end to the act but the play's defining feature is that the devises that initiate the farce are them supplemented by another.

The bellboy at the hotel turns out to be the spitting image of the husband. A deceit portrayed simply by getting one actor to play both roles.

Here we see the husband dressed as the bellboy (all part of the story) attacking his wife's amour when earlier the bellboy dressed as the husband had ignored the dalliance.

When the first set of misunderstandings collapse in the hotel the participants flee and gradually they all return to the grand house where the doppelgänger ploy is played out beautifully.

As you might expect, it all ends happily in the end with only minor consequences. Then the audience claps and cheers long and enthusiastically in recognition that they have been royally entertained for a couple of hours. And there is not a lot wrong with that.

History Boys at the Rose Theatre

Only three months after visiting the Rose Theatre in Kingston I was back there to see another comedy.

Somehow I had not seen History Boys before, on stage or on screen, but I knew some of Alan Bennett's work (and not just his readings of Winnie the Pooh either) so had some idea of what to expect.

The Rose Theatre as a venue still disappoints. The reception area gives every appearance of being an odd area left over after the theatre was built that could have housed props or costumes but somebody decided to put a bar in there instead. They should have put one or two more bar staff and a wider choice of drinks as well so that I would not have to wait so long just to get a bottle of Beck's.

Inside the theatre itself a reasonable, but not full, crowd ignored the unfinished look that other venues manage to carry with more confidence and settled down to be entertained.

History Boys tells the story of a class of boys at a grammar school who, having got good A Level results are now trying for Oxford. The school does not have a strong record here and so the desperate Head brings in an additional teacher just to coach them for this.

Their current history teacher, Hector, wants the boys to gain knowledge for its own sake and also wanders wildly off the curriculum. In one extreme example the boys act out a visit to a brothel in French.

Hector also has a reputation for fondling the boys as he gives them lifts on his motorbike but they accept this (and even enjoy it in some cases) and they take it in turns to ride with him.

The new teacher, Irwin, admires the boys' knowledge but calls all their essays dull, or worse, as all they have done is regurgitate facts. He encourages the boys to look at historical events from another perspective and even gets them to question the standard assumptions about the Holocaust, for which he gets a written complaint from a Jewish boy's parents.

The play explores themes of knowledge, sexuality, honesty, race and class. Rather what you would expect from Alan Bennett.

The story flows nicely. It's mostly linear but with a couple of flash-forwards to let us see how some of the characters developed.

Irwin is the strongest single character but the stretch of the play is in the ensemble of boys who speaking intelligently and wittily and who also do some song and dance routines that entertain and also provide a break from the relentlessly quick dialogue.

History Boys is amusing throughout and is often funny too in a laugh-out-loud way and while there is nothing especially consequential in any of its musings its also serious enough and intelligent enough to keep the Guardian reading Radio 4 listeners very happy.

Once Bitten fills the Orange Tree with laughter

I have been slightly less positive than usual about this season at the Orange Tree so it is a pleasure to say that Once Bitten is a hoot and a complete triumph.

Once Bitten is a French Farce that has all the features you would expect, and some you might not, including, mistresses, lost trousers, many doors with many passages through them, a hectoring mother-in-law, an over confident commissioner of the police, false names, and a dead dog.

The Orange Tree is the ideal stage for this with each of the four corners acting as doors to other rooms with the actors rushing through them with great regularity in their desperate attempts to get away from somebody who is about to enter through another door.

A good farce needs a large cast and this is another strength of the Orange Tree. It's good to see regular David Antrobus in the lead role and equally good to see the quirky support roles played so well, e.g. the useless maid and the sleepy uncle.

Once Bitten is a reasonably complex farce and you have to keep your wits about you to remember who is pretending to be who and why. It's this complexity that drives the humour, as it should in a farce, and there is a lot of it.

The only way to judge a comedy is by the laughter and the Orange Tree was full of it.

The word has got around that the play is good and the theatre is packed, so much so that I was forced to take the unusual step of getting a seat upstairs.

I much prefer to be in the front row downstairs to be close to the action in the emotional drams but this farce can be seen just as well from upstairs.

And it should be seen, upstairs or down this is a real treat.

Meet The Doyles is not at all funny

That's four hours of my life that I'll never get back. And it seemed a lot longer than that at the time.

The omens were good, the ticket offer promised "a brand new modern, fast-moving family comedy", the cast includes Will Mellor and Warren Clarke, and the team behind the show have worked on the Cosby Show, Roseanne, 3rd Rock from the Sun,The IT Crowd, I'm Alan Partridge and Green Wing.

Add to this that the tickets were free and Teddington Studio is a short walk from home it seemed like an opportunity not to be missed so one wet Friday I trudged along, collect my green armband (No. 64), went back to the pub for a quick pint then went in to the studio around 7:30.

Being a single person, and with a fairly low number, I was able to get a seat in the front row albeit on the left-hand side of the stage. Things went downhill rapidly from there.

The first problem is that, unlike all other TV recordings that I have been to, the sets are completely enclosed so all you can see in the studio audience are the wooden frames. We had to watch the takes on the monitors, and there are not many of those at Teddington.

The question you have to ask about Meet The Doyles is "why?". Family sitcoms are hardly new and the BBC already has My Family and Outnumbered which take two very different approaches to exposing the strangeness of families. Surely a "a brand new modern, fast-moving family comedy" would do something quite different?

Well, no. The family is tradition writ large, a happily married couple, a teenage girl who is just discovering boys, two younger mischievous boys, a well meaning but off-script grandparent and a brother. There is nothing unusual or unexpected about any of the characters or any of the relationships on which to hang any humour or any interest.

Part of the reason for this is that we are told so little about the people, there is simply no cover story at all. Having watched the episode I have no idea what jobs they do, how the kids are getting on at school, whether the brother is married, how wealthy they are, whether the grandfather lives with them, etc. etc. I know a lot more about the characters in My Family and I never watch it!

There was nothing unusual or unexpected in the script either. There were three concurrent plots (the father's vasectomy, the daughter and the pizza boy, and the son's theft from the local shop) none of which were particularly interesting, believable or funny.

In-between the scenes we were kept warm by Patrick Monahan. I've been warmed by Patrick a couple of times before, at recordings of Two Pints ..., but he was off form on this night and was not helped in his attempts to keep us awake by the extraordinary long waits between takes and retakes that made the evening drag on until 11pm.

The one bright spot in the whole evening was the cameo appearances from Warren Clarke as the grandfather.

It's a complete mystery to me how shows like this get commissioned. Apparently it's due on BBC TV sometime in January but on this evidence it will be on BBC Three at 2am and will sink quickly and unnoticed out of sight.