Now, I don’t do many reviews of live things. But until recently I’d never reviewed a video game and for some reason that is consistently one of my more popular posts, so hey, worth a shot.
Those of you who follow me on Twitter will be aware that I went to see Michael McIntyre on his current tour of the UK at Wembley yesterday and so the time has come for me to offer more than a measly 140 characters on it, in true pointless fashion.
I actually have no idea how you review a stand up comedy show. I can do films, that’s easy, you look at the film, you can comment on the way the actors work together, or not, how the story holds up, the cinematography, any number of things that people don’t really care about. Video games get you talking about gameplay, story, controls and apparently graphics and price, but bah to you if that’s what you care about. I have even reviewed one concert before. That was Star Wars A Musical Journey, and that was easy because:
a) I could talk about Star Wars
b)I could talk about the music and
c) I could talk about the shiny pictures
With a standup show, however, I can only talk about how funny I think a guy is. I can’t tell his jokes because that’s both stealing his funniness and eliminating the point of you seeing the show. It’s one man on a stage so I can’t really tell you about character interaction. Or can I?
There is interaction. Because whilst he’s one man on a stage he has, in the case of Wembley Arena, 12,500 people to work with. Well, slightly under, but it’s still a lot. McIntyre undeniably has charisma, he has something that endears him to the audience. Standing on a stage and just telling jokes won’t get you very far in stand up, bouncing off the audience will. Ignoring a solitary female cheer to a comment about girls having unprotected sex would be easy, but why ignore it when that will keep the laugh going.
I’ve been accused of being funny some times, I was even told I could do stand up once. Only once, which shows that person was an idiot, but that isn’t the point. I couldn’t do stand up. I may be able to make jokes, but just me on a stage wouldn’t work. I can tell the odd joke, I can even string some together, but being on a stage, with a crowd to work with for 90 minutes, that takes a whole new level of funny. One that I don’t have, one that Mr. McIntyre does.
A laugh a minute doesn’t do this show enough justice. There, in trying to close, I hit another problem of this comedy-reviewing thing. Something I find funny, other people won’t. The fact dates have had to be added to the tour, extra tickets sold, all these things prove that, yes, he’s popular, the laughs yesterday show that people funny, but there’s the telling sign. People who pay to go to a Michael McIntyre show find him funny, how surprising. But it’s my kind of comedy, and it’s a similar problem with films, games and everything else, this tells you my opinion, and chances are, if you don’t like McIntyre you probably didn’t get all the way to the end here anyway. So, let’s try this again.
A laugh a minute doesn’t do this show enough justice. McIntyre has a stage presence that young, and I mean career wise, McIntyre is still relatively new, comedians dream of. He is a truly funny man who, as all good stand ups do, points out those things in life we’re too busy, or too lazy, to pick up on, and he makes them funny.
A funny man, with a funny tour. Tickets are scarce, so if you can’t get in bear in mind the DVD that will follow. If you go, take a nappy, it saves you wetting your pants.
MTFBWY
Filed under: Show Reviews | Tagged: Comedy, Michael McIntyre, Stand Up
