Venue:
JW3, Swiss Cottage, London
Date: 11/03/2015
The evening is a version of Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner’s 1950s improv sketches of an interview with a 2000 year old Jewish man going back to his experience pre Judaism, the invention of women, historical figures he met, his 200 wives, thousands of children as well as the small business he seemed to have run all along. Didn’t foresee the Spanish Inquisition but we got that too. It’s pretty faithful to the original LPs but no less hilarious and outrageous for it. Kerry Shale (our own After and Word friendly podcast announcer) is in his element, gloriously relishing the lines, priceless expressions and gestures as only a wizened 2000 year old Jew can do. Recommended for Afterwording Jews and non Jews alike (or an anti-theist like me who only ever saw the inside of a Synagogue on a school tour).
The audience:
Intelligent North London looking crowd, a few might possibly have been Jewish I think, though the ladies of them howled with laughter like it was hen party, so plenty of Shale fans. Pre show I got talking to the delightful actress Maggie Steed, who told me more than it’s decent to repeat about being on screen romanced by Johnny Depp in The Imaginarium of Dr Parnasuss, the punchline being she was glad her character went to the devil – as it meant effectively into the arms of her hero Tom Waits.
It made me think..
Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die.
And:
We mock the things we are to be.
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