Live At The Chapel

I attended the Live At The Chapel show at the Union Chapel in Highbury on Saturday night. There's something very peculiar about watching comedy in a church, particularly when ice cream vendors pass up and down alongside the pews. It feels as if God has sold out to the more profitable forces of live entertainment.

The surroundings make for a subdued audience for MC Jon Richardson to warm up. With his somewhat grumpy style, he doesn't strike me as the most natural of comperes. Richardson appears to agree with this, chastising himself for enquiring about a woman's cup of tea at the top of the second half. He successfully wrings laughs from such mundane observations however and the material is strong. His silly and childish tale of ice-skating with his girlfriend proved a particularly highlight. Richardson's a strong exponent of the self-depreciating school of comedy and I'd like to see him do a full set.

Kristen Schaal and Kurt Braunohler's double act were nominated for the main comedy prize at last year's Edinburgh Fringe Festival. On this evidence, I'm not really sure why. The kooky Schaal and overly earnest Braunohler undoubtedly have chemistry, but struggle to do a great deal interesting or funny with it. Some interesting ideas go unexplored, such as their sexual tension and why the two New Yorkers chose to seek fame. Instead we have a deliberately awkward and unhinged performance featuring a number of skits that are more random than amusing. Their efforts to pitch a sitcom about talking taxicabs and a meeting between assassins come across as particularly contrived. The highlight of their overly long forty minute set is the enjoyably silly phone sex conversation between John Smith and Pocahantas. S&B's closing piece, the song 'Kristen Schaal Is A Horse' eventually gains chuckles through the sheer audacity of Braunohler repeating the same verse in an increasing hysterical fashion. Whether that's enough to justify its existance is another matter entirely. Disappointing.

Finally it was time for Daniel Kitson, performing a rare headline set in London. He is no great respecter of the conventions of entertainment, indignantly railing against the extended applause and the lingering remnants of the smoke machine to his right. With an upcoming Edinburgh run, tonight is essentially a try out gig for Kitson and it shows. His set is rough round the edges, as ideas are frequently abandoned, conceding at one point that he was yet to add any jokes to a particular section. It's easy to forgive this simply because he is relentlessly funny. During the hour, he seems in a much more playful mood than in past shows, happy to discuss eating dim sum to the point of nausea and the idea of pavlova flying out of rivers. He coasts through the opening fifteen minutes, mainly riffing on the subject of his stutter, an affliction that always seems to enhance his act rather than hinder it.

When moving into his material, he proves to be a compelling figure, regardless of whether he's discussing the beauty of nature or telling the tale of ejaculating onto his own face. That should tell you all you need to know about Kitson. He is a man capable of exploring grand themes and base material in the blink of an eye. And being equally funny with both. Superb stuff.