Wednesday 3rd July 2013

 
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’s without 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’s and 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 15 on 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!

Thursday 16th May 2013

Some big events and changes are brewing for JUICE Comedy, dear reader, so sit back as we give you the inside scoop.

First and perhaps foremost, after nearly nine years it looks like our time is up at the pub Joxer Brady’s.  Joxers is where it all began for JUICE, many moons ago, and even though we’ve expanded to other venues over the years, the little Irish pub has always remained our spiritual home.  It’s also continually played host to our monthly New Act / New Material night. Sadly, the pub is shortly due for a complete change in management, which will bring to a close an important chapter in Stafford’s comedy scene. It’s only through the support of previous managers James Woodhams and Eve Colclough that we got our humble start in the comedy world, and it’s only thanks to outgoing Landlords Sam Swift & Chyrell Standish that the New Act / New Material shows flourished.

It won’t be the end of our monthly grass-roots comedy show, we’ll relocate elsewhere within the town centre and carry on. Meanwhile, June 3rd & July 1st will be our very last shows at Joxer Brady’s (and between you, us and the lamppost, we’ve got at least one very special guest lined up!) so it’d be lovely to see as many of your faces at those shows as possible.

Tuesday night saw the first JUICE Comedy showcase of Edinburgh Preview Shows, which took place at Number 15. We’ve planned a season of 6 Edinburgh Previews across three months, as the whole country gears up for the biggest arts festival in the world! Stafford hasn’t had Edinburgh Previews is nigh-on ten years, so these events were always going to be a little bit tricky as JUICE tries to educate our audience a little bit. These showcases are very different from a regular comedy night. Instead of having a different comedian every ten/fifteen minutes, with plenty of intervals breaking up the show, these nights consist of two comics delivering roughly one-hour shows back-to-back. That can be a big change for an audience to get used to, but a rewarding and enjoyable experience once done.

We also want to profusely thank all our wonderful Twitter Followers who have this event so much love and support, Retweeting and Favouriting posts about it, spreading the word whether they could make it to the show or not. Considering how much (deserved) apathy there is on Facebook when people are invited to yet-another event, it was heart-warming to see so much involvement and action on Twitter!

Our first showcase featured top talent Tony Jameson who was prepping his show ‘Football Manager Ruined My Life’. Tony’s tale features his obsession with the sporting video game and how blinkered and involved he became in it. There was a good mix of football / video game fans in the audience, along with those of us who had limited experience of both. Yet Tony’s jokes and stories managed to not fly over people’s heads. JUICE received some lovely feedback from punters who enjoyed seeing a comedian visibly working on his show before their very eyes, letting the audience behind the curtain as he talked about re-ordering the jokes, and confessing when certain things didn’t work.

The other performer on the bill was Michael J Dolan, a comedian who won plaudits and critical acclaim at last year’s Edinburgh Festival with his previous show. This year’s outing for Dolan is titled ‘Nothing Will Ever Be Alright Again’, which certainly sets the mood for his misanthropic rage and self-hate. Dolan’s persona and delivery are marvelous, and it was joyous to see such bleak subject matter generating deep belly laughs and uncontrollable giggles in the audience.

As ever, we had a beautiful Stafford audience who came out on a rainy Tuesday night to get themselves a bit of arts & culture, and have themselves a big laugh as well. We hope the success of this first showcase will lead to bigger, brighter things on Tuesday June 11th when we’ve got previews from Phil Ellis and Katie Mulgrew (tickets available now)!

Speaking of “tickets available now” don’t forget to book your seats for Friday 31st May when JUICE returns to The Gatehouse Theatre! These show are always our favourite of the year and so much fun is had both on and off stage. The MET Studio at the Gatehouse is a brilliant space for stand-up comedy and the comedians we’ve had on have done nothing but rave about what a nice gig it is and what a lovely audience we get. This show will feature not just the excellent Danny Deegan and Fern Brady (amongst others), but we’ll also have Mr. Paul Savage back on-board as our Resident MC & Compere!