Skip to main content

Review of Richard Herring: Happy Now? at Royal & Derngate (Royal), Northampton

Long before the show started last night there was something that slightly felt wrong to me. On the stage was the quite usual projection of our star of the night, this time an apparently contented family pose. What differed from all the previous stand ups I had seen though was a quote: "At the very top of his" The Scotsman. Now I had happily used my money to purchase a ticket and was seated for the show, I needed at that point no sales pitch, in my mind it just seemed weird to have it up there on the screen.

However putting aside such wayward thoughts I was ready to see Richard Herring's stand up for the first time. Originally part of a double with Stewart Lee, Herring has become a huge success on the comedy circuit with Happy Now? his twelfth show in as many years. He must be doing something right? Sadly for me after the show, I wasn't entirely sure what it was.

Unlike the recent comedy shows I have seen, Happy Now? is a tremendously rigid performance based on his new found life as a 48 year old first time father. There is very little audience interaction which for me makes a comedian appear more confident on stage. The quick witted bouncing off the audience tells much about a stand-up and Mr Herring offered nothing of this, although while he did have some vague observation of the front row, he got involved in little exchange with them. This was basically a play masquerading as a stand-up, rehearsed and ready to go, with the only requirement from the audience being to laugh.

In absolute fairness many of them did, I myself rarely got above a rigid grin. There was an uncanny feeling with Herring's act and some of the audience that I had arrived at some sort of happy gathering of fans. There were groups of people scattered around the theatre that were happily loving every minute of proceedings. They were in on it almost like "I love this guy, I am going to laugh at everything he says". However unlike those recent shows I had seen from Ed Bynne and Katherine Ryan (and her fabulous support Stephen Bailey), there was an awful lot of us that didn't seem to be in on the joke.

There were moments I gladly enjoyed, including rather surprisingly the discussion of his self conscience informing him of ways he might end up killing his baby. This was edgy and darkly funny, but this certainly was not to everyones taste. I also enjoyed his rather clever picking apart of a welcome mat and its gramatical issues, a clever piece of work well constructed. However for every success there were many dull meandering stages where we seemed to be going nowhere. Most painful and excruciating of these was the first ten minutes or so (it seemed much more) coming out of the interval, where he tried to sell us his merchandise. If it had been funny, it might nearly have been excused. However that ten minutes was unquestionably one of the worst periods of time I have spent in my many, many hours in the theatre.

Herring also has for me a tremendously unwatchable stage presence. Pacing about is fine and many comedians do this successfully. However here coupled with that twitchy constantly endless fiddling with his hair, made the whole thing a putoff. I know we can't help mannerisms, but I have never been so distracted in my life by such a thing on stage.

There is some heart in the work and I don't think Happy Now? was ever intended to be full of belly laughs, it is a more thoughtful piece. However it still missed much of the required elements of a night of stand-up. It may well be a case of "it's me, not you", however I know others felt the same. Herring used Marmite in his one of his pieces relating that you either love it, hate it or actually just don't mind it. Sadly for me, I am much nearer the hate it. You however at the back were clearly loving every single minute.

««½


Performance reviewed: Saturday 5th March, 2016 at the Royal & Derngate (Royal), Northampton.

Richard Herring: Happy Now? was performed at the Royal & Derngate (Royal) on Saturday 5th March, 2016 only but is on a tour until June. Website for details: http://www.richardherring.com/gigs/

For further details about the Royal & Derngate visit their website at http://www.royalandderngate.co.uk/

Popular posts from this blog

Review of Hacktivists by Ben Ockrent performed by R&D Youth Theatre at Royal & Derngate (Underground), Northampton

The National Theatres Connections series of plays had been one of my highlights of my trips to R&D during 2014. Their short and snappy single act style kept them all interesting and never overstaying their welcome. So I was more than ready for my first encounter with one of this years Connections plays ahead of the main week of performances at R&D later in the year. Hacktivists is written by Ben Ockrent, whose slightly wacky but socially relevant play Breeders I had seen at St James Theatre last year. Hacktivists is less surreal, but does have a fair selection of what some people would call odd. Myself of the other hand would very much be home with them. So we are presented with thirteen nerdy "friends" who meet to hack, very much in what is termed the white hat variety. This being for good, as we join them they appear to have done very little more than hacked and created some LED light device. Crashing in to spoil the party however comes Beth (Emma-Ann Cranston)...

Review of Bat Out of Hell - The Musical at Milton Keynes Theatre

This tour of Bat Out of Hell - The Musical has become sadly a double-tribute as it tours throughout the UK into 2023 and the love of its creator Jim Steinman, and the man who made his work world-famous, Meat Loaf, both lost in the last year, runs through the cast in this impressive version of the show. The storyline of Bat Out of Hell takes the Peter Pan idea and warps it into a dystopian world of a group of youth known as The Lost trapped forever at 18 years of age. The centre of this group is Strat, who, after a chance encounter, becomes under the spell of Raven. Of course, into this mix must come a megalomaniac, as all dystopian worlds really need. This is the father of Raven, Falco, who, with his wife Sloane, battle The Lost, Raven’s relationship with Strat, and indeed their own very bizarre relationship, to the backdrop of Steinman’s music. Bat Out of Hell doesn’t start particularly well, be it the performance or a show issue, for the first twenty minutes there is a lack of clarit...

Review of It's A Wonderful Life by Masque Theatre at the Holy Sepulchre, Northampton

Remarkably I only saw the classic film It's A Wonderful Life last Christmas, this was thanks to spotting it lurking on my subscription of Netflix. A glorious heartwarming film perfect for Christmas? That must be why I was a blubbering mess at the end of it then. There was hope that in public, The Masque Theatre's performance of the radio version of the story didn't leave me in the same situation. As it happened it did a little as that final scene in the Bailey household played out again, but it didn't matter as there were members of the cast in the same broken state as many of us audience members. Left to right: Jo Molyneux, John Myhill, Lisa Wright, Michael Street, Lisa Shepherd and Jof Davies This was the first radio play that I had seen performed and on the evidence of this, I sure would like to see some more. While not having the drama of standard plays in their creation of moment and places, they do have a rather striking drive towards character creation. The ...