Right now thousands of comedians are descending on Edinburgh for tomorrow’s commencement of the world’s biggest arts festival. Some of JUICE’s favourite comedians will be performing at the Fringe Festival, and throughout August we’ll be able to bring you exclusive blogs from comedians reporting behind the scenes!
Speaking of Edinburgh, we’re really proud of the Edinburgh Festival Previews we were able to put on in Stafford over the last three months. All the comedians who performed are no doubt going to achieve great things at this years Festival. Look out for Tony Jameson, Michael J Dolan, Katie Mulgrew, Phil Ellis, Kiri Pritchard-McLean and Gein’s Family Giftshop, as they’ve got bright and exciting futures ahead of them!
Monday night sees the start of a brand new chapter for JUICE Comedy, as we move our monthly New Act / New Material Show to Number 15. We’ve got some great things lined up for Monday night, including the release of our JUICE Comic Strip. We’ve collaborated with Stafford artist Jade Thompson to create a series of newspaper-style comic strips. We released one of these online earlier in the year. This time around, however, JUICE decided to do some guerrilla/zine-style publishing. The small black-and-white comics are a simple concoction, dreamed up by our imaging & design whiz CODENAME_U81K.
The comics are absolutely free and will be available as of Monday from Stafford businesses such as Number 15, Joxer Brady’s and Stafford’s very own comic book shop Too Fat Goblinz. Make sure you look out for them!
Last night our Season of Edinburgh Previews concluded with two more excellent full-length comedy shows. The quality of these comedy shows has been very high, comedy fans and casual punters alike have been full of praise for all the performers and their shows in the build-up to Edinburgh. Last night was no different.
One big road block occurred a fortnight before the event, when scheduled performer Dan Nightingale had to drop out. Dan is a comedian in such high demand that he was suddenly offered some very high-profile work for Channel 4. This was obviously an opportunity that Dan could not pass up, and we really hope we’ll be able to showcase him in Stafford in the near future because he’s an excellent comic.
One show down left us in a tricky spot, but luckily we were able to book in the sketch troupe Gein’s Family Giftshop. Comprised of talented performers James Meehan, Kath Hughes and Ed Easton, this trio have been causing a real stir on the Northern comedy circuit and JUICE has been eager to see their act for months.
Audience numbers weren’t quite what we’d hoped for, but the punters we did have in were a lovely, eager lot of laughers. The comedians were all delayed by traffic, which meant that MC Rob Halden had to fill quite a bit of time. He did this by pulling a reluctant volunteer out of the audience and creating a shambolic bit of improv sketch comedy that was cheerfully bad but got everyone involved and laughing.
The first part of the Previews came courtesy of JUICEAward-Winner Kiri Pritchard-McLean. Kiri’s is a show of bitter-sweet anecdotes about childhood and relationships, relayed with a dry wit that’s just this side of sardonic. It’s a show peppered with some well-crafted dark punchlines that are nicely set amongst some more life affirming stories. Kiri also has a natural talent for performing, and these small physical touches add greatly to the material.
Gein’s Family Giftshop were the final act in our Edinburgh Season, the first sketch group JUICE has hosted, and they were absolutely fantastic. Short, sharp sketches that delivered more jokes-per-minute than most stand-up on today’s circuit. The sketches are inventive and enthralling, with some very clever deconstruction at work that, crucially, didn’t go over anybody’s head. Press releases have labelled the act as being “dark” but there’s far too many laughs and giggles for this to be taken to heart. There are big punchlines, hilarious little lines and some excellent performances.
All three members of Gein’s display sublime comedy timing, fully-committed acting that snares the audience and really gets them believing in the characters and scenarios before it’s all undercut by the big jokes and funny endings.
The audience absolutely loved this show and were raving about it at the bar afterwards and later that night on Facebook & Twitter. JUICE are already eagerly awaiting the next time we can bring this excellent sketch troupe back to Stafford. In the meanwhile, we highly recommend seeing them at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
Friday Night – Marcel Lucont at Lost Theatre, South London
Easily the best French comedian on the UK circuit! Marcel is an inventive act full of miserable, dry wit that best typifies the staples of British humour, personified in this over-the-top Gallic caricature. Tickets just £10 – 8pm show time
Saturday Night – Joe Lycett, Danny McLoughlin & Keith Carter at Liverpool Slaughterhouse
Joe Lycett’s meteoric rise to fame has seen him win numerous Best Newcomer and Breakout Star awards, before becoming a panelist on BBC1’s prime-time TV show Epic. See him live alongside the brilliant Danny McLoughlin and Keith Carter for a pittance of a ticket price! Tickets £15 – 8pm show time
Sunday All Day – Patrick Monahan, Gary Delaney, Dan Nightingale, Alfie Moore, The Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre & Silky at Sheffield New Barrack Tavern
A jam-packed all day event featuring some brilliant stand-up comedians as well as some inventive and exciting Sock Puppet Theatre! And because all these acts are warming up for the Edinburgh Festival, you can see ALL these preview shows for just £6! Six pounds for all day! You’d be mad not to! Entry just £6 – starts 1:30pm runs all day
Here’s the JUICE Guide to some of the best stand-up comedy showing around the country this weekend!
Friday Night – Bush Hall, Shepherds Bush, London Stewart Lee, Tony Law & Daniel Simonsen
This glorious old venue hosts a stunning line-up tonight. The comedian’s comedian, Stewart Lee is gearing up for his Edinburgh stint, so don’t be surprised to see some of that new show creep into his performances over the weekend. Lee is joined by the stunningly unpredictable Tony Law, who admirably blends improv. clowning with surreal concepts. Also on the bill is award-winning Norwegian comic Daniel Simonsen, who’s off-kilter, European-flavoured stand-up has won him numerous accolades in a short space of time.
Tickets are £16.50 and are still available
Saturday Night – Queen’s Square, Bristol Adam Buxton, Omid Djalili, Sean Walsh, Mark Oliver & Arthur Smith
The Bristol Comedy Garden continues this year with two comedy shows back-to-back. The first is a special presentation of the best of Adam Buxton’s show ‘Bug’. Buxton will present his favourite videos and comments from the recent BFI shows. In the second show, Omid Djalili, Mark Oliver &Sean Walsh will be performing on a bill hosted & MC’ed by the legendary Arthur Smith.
The event takes place on the beautiful lawns of the Queen’s Square in the heart of Bristol, underneath a Big Top.
Tickets cost between £18.50 and £24 – click here for more details
Sunday Night – The Cannon, Newton Pagnall Gary Delaney Edinburgh Preview
The most quotable comedian on the circuit will be previewing his brand new Edinburgh Show on Sunday night. Delaney is a regular guest on Mock The Week and has also brought his razor-sharp comedy to Dave’s One Night Stand. His last last Edinburgh show sold-out every single night of the festival and received numerous 4 & 5 Star Reviews. Get in on the ground-floor and see his next show develop for the bargain-price of just £4! Grab your tickets now!
This week featured the end of an era for JUICE, as we bid farewell to Joxer Brady’s, our original venue and the home of our monthly New Act / New Material Show. JUICE began life at Joxer’s eight-and-a-half years ago when Neil Reading & Rob Halden started dicking around in the back of a pub. From their it grew into a well-respected performance space for stand-up comics, and acted as the launching-pad for JUICE to move into bigger venues and more diverse shows.
With Joxer Brady’s going through a change of management it felt like the perfect time for JUICE to move away from running shows in pubs. So to bid farewell to Joxer’s we assembled some of our favourite performers for a final show. It ended up being a wild and unpredictable evening of beautiful grass-roots stand-up.
As ever the night was hosted by Neil Reading & Rob Halden, who have started to compliment each other well as co-comperes. Rob spouts off near non-stop ranting, which gives Neil time to work on considered and funny interjections. Some of the high points of their MC’ing involved picking on a young lad on the front table who worked in a Particle Accelerator, chatting to a local author about her latest novel, and the constant mocking of Paul Savage.
The show kicked off with Chris Norton Walker, who immediately started pulling people out of the audience and getting them to stand on the stage. With no explanation of what he was doing, Chris sent punter after punter up onto the stage. He then arranged them like a football team taking a group photo, and had Rob Halden lie across the knees of the lads crouching at the front. Once this was all over, Chris revealed that his ten minutes was up and left the stage after not telling a single joke, but receiving a great deal of laughs.
Craig Deeley returned things to normal next, bedding the audience in before trying out some new material. Craig is consistently one of the funniest people on Social Media, following him pays endless dividends, and it was interesting to see how these observations and one-liners translated from the screen to the Microphone.
Billy McGuire is one of the longest serving comedians to perform for JUICE. He’s been with us since the early days, performed for us in a muddy tent at Stafford Castle and on the lovely stage of The Gatehouse Theatre. Billy’s affable act was wistful, funny and charming.
Closing the first section of the bill was Johnny Sorrow, an absolute legend on the West Midlands comedy circuit. When introducing him, Rob Halden tried to lay-in Johnny’s backstory and create an air of uncertainty in the audience (something which Johnny’s act feeds off). But the crowd knew exactly who was coming on stage and the cheers and applause for him was deafening. Despite Johnny’s act being largely the same as the last few times JUICE has seen him, Johnny never seems to get apathetic with his delivery and always throws in something different into each performance. The people in the audience who had never seen Johnny before were quickly swept up in waves of giddy laughter that everyone else was experiencing. The audience began chanting along with Johnny’s catchphrases, egging him on to the next punchline that they all knew in advance. It would have been impossible to leave Joxer Brady’swithout having Johnny Sorrow on the bill.
We came out of the break with “The G’vnor”Dave Dinsdale in fine form. It’s been a while since Dinzy has played for JUICE, but he really threw himself into this performance with energy and vigor. As well as his tried and tested material, Dave brought out some new jokes to JUICE and these contained some absolute gems we’re still thinking about today.
The Men With Bananas were a late addition to this show, mainly because they’ve stopped gigging. We’d assumed that they’d moved on with their lives and were no longer available. Luckily a message or two on Facebook ensured that this unconventional double-act reunited for the first time in two years just for JUICE! The Bananas were a big part of our early days at Joxer Brady’sand it was really special to have them back. Their larger-than-life act is full of silliness, songs, props and audience interaction. These are an act that really should have made it big on the major Festivals and would be right at home with a spot on BBC3’s Live At The Electric.
Following a second break, Paul Savage was due to be introduced. The problem with this is that Rob Halden and Paul Savage are very good friends, which means that whenever Rob is supposed to introduce Paul, he just repeatedly fucks with him. Earlier in the show Rob had shared a number of stories at Paul’s expense, and now he stole Paul’s T-shirt and used it to mock him. Paul swaggered on stage, yelled that he’d be doing this gig for eight years and didn’t want to do any jokes. “All of you, put your hands up and move into the middle. I am going to Crowd Surf you!”
Now, the above sounds like a funny way to start off a set. A wild and outrageous demand that the comedian will soon move on from. However, this was not Paul Savage’s plan. Instead, he leapt into the waiting arms of the audience and literally crowd-surfed! The audience held Paul up high and carried him across the length of the pub, depositing him safely on his feet! Savage then yelled “I’m not doing any fucking jokes!” and promptly left the pub to a thunderous applause.
Tom Allsopp had the unenviable task of having to follow that spectacle, with an audience now giddy after what they all just got involved in. He made a very good accounting of himself with some witty stories and presented a poem that was extremely well written and managed to be both funny and touching at the same time, without one disparaging the other.
The final comedian on the bill was the first ever comedian on the bill, Lovdev Barpaga bringing things full circle. Since first performing for us nearly nine years ago, Lovdev has gone on to make regular appearances at The Glee Club and The Comedy Store. Having Lovdev closed out our time at Joxer’s was very fitting.
When all was said and done, Neil & Rob sung a bad but enthusiastic version of ‘Send In The Clowns’ and the lovely audience indulged them with a standing ovation. What was perhaps most pleasing was to see so many comedians from the circuit in the audience. Comics who were scheduled to perform, but had just showed up to raise and glass and mark the occasion.
So it’s onwards and upwards for JUICE! On Monday 5th of August we relocate the monthly New Act / New Material Show to Number 15on Greengate Street in Stafford town centre. A lovely bistro that will be more suited to our needs, and to the needs of our audience. The layout will be better, the arrangement of chairs will be much better for everyone’s viewing pleasure. We won’t have to deal with any disturbance from pub drinkers who aren’t there for the comedy. All-in-all it’ll be a much better experience for all.
To kick things off in style at our new venue, as well as the regular bout of new comedians finding their feet and some established veterans testing out new material, we’ve hired top professional comic Andy White to deliver a Headline set and close the show! Andy is a highly experience comic who regularly performs for all the major comedy clubs including The Glee Club, Jongleurs and The Comedy Store! We’re really excited about working with Andy and we hope you’ll join us as we start this new chapter in Stafford comedy!
JUICE Comedy 