Comedy review: Sunday Special, Up the Creek, Greenwich **** (From News Shopper)

Comedy review: Sunday Special, Up the Creek, Greenwich ****

2:02pm Tuesday 31st March 2009

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Character comedians and political hot potatoes from headliner Andy Zaltzman keep Robert Fisk entertained at Up the Creek’s Sunday Special. Shame about the hecklers…

“Stone me – throw a rock in my face on my birthday” is not the kind of expression you would ever expect to hear shouted at a comedian while they were trying to tell a joke about Iranian lesbians.

You could say the heckler had been waiting for her moment for years because gags about Iranian lesbians are few and far between.

Or, more correctly, you could say her outbursts during Andy Zaltzman's headline stand up set at Up the Creek were because she was drunk – very, very drunk.

Her heckles did disrupt the flow of some of his set-the-world-to-rights comedy.

But with a witty repertoire and a vicious attack (and topical with Easter coming up) on the Catholic woman's saviour Jesus Christ he was clearly not going to let himself be beaten.

Jokes about political hot potatoes, including waterboard, torture were reminiscent of Mark Thomas' stand-up material.

Refreshingly though, Zaltzman jokingly thought we should waterboard ourselves to help us find our lost keys rather than giving the audience a lecture about the horrific practice.

Equally hilarious but very different was singer-songwriter Loretta Maine whose acerbic tongue revealed her to be a woman with major issues.

Putting paid to my long-held view comedy songs are not funny, the guitar playing American belle tore through a series of side-splitting bile-fuelled tunes which seem mainly aimed at an ex-lover including one where he truly learns what rejection feels like.

Thankfully, the crazy creature is just the comic creation of Pippa Evans because if Loretta was real I am sure she would bite the head off any heckler.

The sharp writing from Pippa, her singing voice and incredible ability to control when the audience laughs and when it feels uneasy simply by changing her facial expression from joyful to acidic and back again, make Loretta Maine both likeable and scarily psychotic at the same time.

In between the two main acts, the Sunday Special packs in emerging performers Nish Kumar, Darren Ruddle, Henry widdecombe and Gareth Richards to entertain the crowd.

Late last year I caught Nish Kumar's act somewhere or other and it is good to see he has improved it a lot since then.

This time most of the jokes were funny and clever rather than just being clever – it’s a small difference but a big, important one when you have an audience wanting to be entertained.

Darren Ruddle's character of plasterer Kev who has been paid to do the gig by his agoraphobic comic is still imaginatively impressive.

But reciting the jokes from a tape means the act cannot change and I do not know whether I would laugh as much if I saw it for a third time.

Groceries are not usually that funny but they are when Henry Widdecombe gets his hands on them and he also brings a whole new meaning to the Lynx effect.

Gareth Richards completed the quartet by delivering a fast stream of gags including why he worries about babies with their special shops and how bad the credit crunch will be before we start eating old people.

Bromley's own Matt Crosby could have tweeted the entire event but chose to compere it live instead despite his affection for the internet phenomenon.

His jokes tied together a very varied bunch of comedians who produced some truly memorable and brilliant comedy.

Up the Creek, Greenwich April 3 and April 4: Rob Collins MC, Simon Clayton, Sally Anna Haywood and Terry Alderton.

Sunday Special line-up to be announced. Doors 7.30pm. £6/£4. 020 8858 4581.

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