Shrewsbury International Comedy Festival : Comical end to a feast of comedy
“This is Shrewsbury’s first international comedy festival,” said Greg Davies.
“And why shouldn’t Shrewsbury have a comedy festival?”
I happen to agree with him.
And with the acts it brought to the first Gala night at Theatre Severn, in my opinion, it was a great success.
Hosted by Wem’s own Greg Davies, the line up was something for everyone.
Acting as compere, the always hilarious Davies got the crowd warmed up and kept the audience laughing at each of his appearances.
Driving back from the show I was wracking my brains to think of any segment of it that I can repeat in a family newspaper but, genuinely, I’ve come up blank.
Topics included his family and growing up in Shropshire, along with the troubles of middle age.
Part of that included lifting his shirt to show the audience his belly, which made my mum, sat next to me, audibly gasp, and made me laugh - a lot.
The show brought on four very different acts from across the country.
First was the bizarre Terry Alderton, who some people may have recognized from TV appearances from shows like Live at the Apollo.
His part was mad, and completely indescribable, going from Gollum-style talking to himself and invisible tap dancers to “pointless songs” – you’ll get it if you were there – stopping off with a few monster noises.
Next was Abandoman, a British and Irish rap duo who make up rhymes on the spot from the audience.
Full of energy, they started with What’s in My Pocket, with the most unusual items lifted from the audience before they made up a musical love story about two audience members and in another song told the minor gripes of some of the crowd, like running out of teabags and shoddy scampi.
The penultimate act was Mrs Barbara Nice, who I have seen before in a much smaller venue where she really worked the crowd, but she was no less engaging in a bigger venue like Theatre Severn.
Appearing from within the stalls, she got the whole auditorium singing and dancing before she left the stage.
Headline act was Brummie Joe Lycett, who described himself as a “comedian who doesn’t do jokes” but still had the audience in stitches.
Joe spent most of the act sat on the stage and really engaged with the crowd. His stories were hilarious and he deftly tackled a few hecklers towards the start.
As a close to a weekend of comedy it was excellent, and I hope the comedy festival will bring more great acts to Shrewsbury in future.
