Coming Home

Last night was a HUGE night for JUICE Comedy, as we returned to the Gatehouse Theatre for the first time in over a year. These big, professional shows are so much fun for us. We get to play with a budget, hand-pick our favourite comics from the circuit, bring them to the heart of Stafford and showcase them in what is just a beautiful room for stand-up, The MET Studio.

Every comedian that we book tells us how much they love playing The MET Studio. It’s intimate but not small, with nice, low ceilings for the acoustics and round cabaret tables for the front row. It’s also fantastic to have professional sound & lighting to highlight our comedians and make them the best they can be.

For this show we’d put together one of the strongest line-up of comedians we’ve ever had. Strangely for us, only a handful of tickets were sold in advance for the show. Even 5 days before the event, we’d only sold 40-odd tickets. This caused us a lot of concern, as all our previous shows were three-quarters full weeks in advance and sold-out before the night. As it turned out, three days before the show tickets started flying out the door and we ended up having the BIGGEST ATTENDANCE EVER for a JUICE show!

But it was a stressful month for us when it looked like tickets weren’t selling. Our friends & colleague in the theatre industry tell us that, across the country, people just aren’t buying their tickets in advance and every show comes down to the last 5 days.

Paul Savage returned as our Resident MC, holding the show together & warming the audience up. Paul has a natural ability to engage people and draw them into the event. His audience interaction is brilliant and sets the perfect tone for the rest of the night.

First on the bill was Freddy Quinne, a comedian who has earned a reputation for being one of the most entertaining and exciting MC’s on the circuit and is gaining lots of attention on the circuit. Freddy actually had his first ever gig as a comedian for JUICE Comedy five years ago, so was it great to welcome him back now as a true professional.

In the middle of the show we had Kate McCabe, a stand-up who began her comedy career in America and who now has a great reputation on the English comedy circuit. Kate brought her background in Improv and physical comedy with her, performing some very memorable physical routines.

Also in the middle section was Hannah Silvester. Hannah has performed for JUICE at our grass-roots comedy club, and we’ve seen her numerous times at new material night, but it was great to showcase her on a professional stage. Hannah possesses a unique voice in the comedy world, delivering brilliant routines on middle-class domesticity and some excellent musical comedy.

Headlining the show for us was the wonderful Danny Buckler. Danny is a comedian with such a high-level of talent that we’re constantly amazed he isn’t on the telly every week. The show so far had been good, but Danny took it to another level and made the show great. The audience was laughing so much and so hard that twice when Danny tried to wrap things up, the audience wouldn’t let him and begged for more (which Danny was happy to give).

In the middle of all this came a special announcement from JUICE Founder Rob Halden. As you wil know, Dear Reader, out monthly comedy club became homeless two months ago when cafe/bistro Number 15 was suddenly & unexpectedly closed down. For the first time in 10 years JUICE was homeless, with no venue for our monthly grass roots comedy club. But last night Rob Halden announced that JUICE had found a new home. Or, more accurately, an old home.

On Monday 6th July JUICE Comedy will return to the venue where it all began, the pub formerly known as Joxer Brady’s, but now currently the successful and popular bar The Market Vaults!

We’ve incredibly excited to return to our spiritual home, which has improved drastically since the last time we were there! The pub has a completely new lease on live with a refurbishment, wider selection of beers, some of the best food in town and a commitment to live music.

We think The Market Vaults is going to bring us a brand new audience and this chapter in JUICE is going to be the best one yet!

Tuesday 5th March 2013

Last night’s New Comedian / New Material Night was a real joy. We have some new faces in the audience, which is always great, it lets us know that all the time we spend promoting JUICE online isn’t wasted! Woohoo! We were especially pleased that most of the new faces were woman. A lot of the time live stand-up is heavily dominated by a male presence, and therefore a male point-of-view, so it’s great that we’re getting a more equally split audience. But the bottom line is that the acts on last night’s bill were fab! We had a great mix of newer comedians, and some top-quality pro’s!

Graham Milton is a newer act who really impressed last night, with a well put together, cohesive set. Star turns came from the excellent Michael J. Dolan, who didn’t utter a single sentence that didn’t result in fall-about laughter from the audience, and Craig Deeley, who graced us with a wealth of well-crafted new material that sits perfectly in his cheeky-Brummie act. It was also great to have another appearance from the talented James Meehan. We’re very lucky to get such brilliant comedians choose our little Stafford outfit to perform at, and anyone who was at last night’s show got to see some brilliant professional comedians for free on a Monday night. If you’ve never been to this monthly gig of ours before, you should really make the effort on Monday 1st April.

If you missed it, the latest JUICE Comedy Show podcast from Rob & Neil is available here to stream. You can also download it from iTunes and take it with you on a long, strange journey. Rob & Neil discuss the current goings on in the world of comedy, review funny TV programmes you may have seen and also chat about local Stafford news and events!

We’d like to take the time to recommend an upcoming show to you, Dear Reader. On Saturday 16th March a smart, funny comedian called Rosie Wilby is making a performance at The MET Studio. Rosie’s back-story is an interesting one. She was a pop-music columnist during the 90’s, went on to write and release her own album to rave reviews, supported the likes of Bob Geldoff and Jamie Cullum on their national tours, before making the segue into stand-up. Her new show sees her revisit the heady days of Britpop, using her old music columns, personal letters and photos to explore the nature of nostalgia. She show sees Rosie mix stand-up with storytelling and punctuate the journey with a smattering of her self-penned songs.

Rosie is a truly funny comic and this show has received rave reviews. Unfortunately it’s been scheduled at The Gatehouse Theatre on the same night as national TV star Al Murray/Pub Landlord. We at JUICE would hate to see a smart, original comedian like Rosie have her show completely overshadowed by this clash. We have no vested interest in Rosie’s show, we just want Stafford to have a thriving comedy scene, one that isn’t totally dominated by people-off-the-telly. So we urge you to go to the Gatehouse Box Office and buy your tickets for this excellent show! JUICE Comedy will be there in force, and we can’t recommend the gig enough!

To whet your whistle, here’s a clip of Rosie’s stand-up from 2011.