Chris Jarvis / Alison Spittle / Amy Matthews - Bobby Carroll's Comedy Diary

Written by: Bobby Carroll
Published: Wednesday 8th February 2023

The sheer joy of shouting at the stage. Screaming your head off. Bellowing so loudly that the performer looks your way, catches your eye, witnesses the family next to you leap a little in their seats at the shock of your gleeful volume.

Don't worry I haven't turned full blown heckler. The body builder bouncers of The Comedy Store don't need to have a quiet warning and then bundle me out. I took my niece to see the panto, Cinderella, at the Poole Lighthouse. A performance art considered even lower than stand-up but one where sanctioned interaction and engagement is actively encouraged. Chat shows have sign posted applause breaks. Burlesque encourages wolf whistles. Yet nothing in live comedy matches the sanctioned call and response mayhem of a traditional Christmas pantomime.

Joseph Grimaldi is the performer most recognised with popularising the British form. His Christmas season productions at Sadler's Wells and Covent Garden during the Regency period chiselled out the essentials - the colour and the shape. A spectacular stage adaptation of a well known fairy tale that allows flex for current songs, skits and drag. And if the 21st century panto has an equivalent impresario / performer it might be CBeebies and Broom Cupboard stalwart Chris Jarvis.

Leading up to lockdown many of the festive shows we went to as a family were wobbly and coarse - more Jim Davidson than Frank Bruno. Even cheaper. Too much was aimed at the Stella and Rosé swigging adults, not enough for the young at heart. Maybe we made bad choices but it felt like the good old panto was losing its way as a family entertainment. No longer a gateway to theatre and comedy, more a Wetherspoons On Ice.

This year's Cinderella, however, was refreshingly pitched. Jarvis - who writes, produces, directs and stars in his perennial events - keenly understands what works for everyone. The gags stay on the right side of cheeky. The modern pop hits crowbarred in are recognisable... even to a set of grey hair filled ears like mine. The skits and sketches are bubblegum spins on gold standard classics - "Who's on first?" and Groucho Marx's missing mirror set piece are resurrected with minimal missteps. There's a real buzz to sitting next to an unjaded child living out these foolproof chunks of comedy for the first time ever. Jarvis has been involved in pantomimes for four decades. What chimes and what is old hat is pumping through his veins. His Buttons is easily the star of the show but every other character is given generous space to shine.

Approaching the show now less as an over enthused uncle and more with a critical eye you can see the constant pull of modernity versus tradition in many of the artistic decisions. The first half curtain drop sees live ponies appear briefly on stage to carry Cinders off to the ball. It feels like something that might happen in the 1800s but not in 2023. What a coup! Every little face looking ahead is beaming at their cute arrival. The excellent Ugly Sisters, Nadine and Doris, have as many wardrobe changes as jokes and each one is more mind boggling than the next. Ornate head pieces and more day-glo colour than Timmy Mallet's underwear draw.

The double act of Dame Andrew Pollard and Alim Jadavji both excel in their roles, mugging and vamping the plot along while everyone else gets loved up and magic-ed away. Twas hard to boo them during their final bow. The second string casting feels effortlessly diverse without being self consciously woke and you are quietly impressed by how well the very young understudies and just graduated chorus line hold their own. I doubt the mainstream audience of the Poole Lighthouse care all that much about woke awareness or surprising jibes at the Tories' expense but the small touches towards inclusivity and satire were welcome.

As someone who has endured many a duff panto, it is nice to recognise a man getting the balance exactly right, not just repeating what worked five years ago, and pushing to be a top value night out. The eternally youthful Chris Jarvis and his crew are back this December with Aladdin and even this stand-up pure heart happily concedes this exceptional standard of panto should be taking up as many arts centre dates as possible. That next Off The Kerbalon tour show can wait until Feb.

Last time I saw Irish comedian Alison Spittle, it was in the teeny tiniest attic possible on the wet fag end of the Free Festival. She seemed to know most of the sparse audience. The show was abandoned for something a bit more freewheelin' and a pleasant conversation occurred. A little half-formed but teeming with her personality.

So watching her tour show, Wet, I experienced shakubuku. She strode on immediately with a gentle tirade of jokes - no faff, no fecking about. Here is a tight hour, calibrated to reach maximum punches, which seems slightly atonal to her quirky and daffy persona. Her look is kooky - a dress made of sunny towelling, synchronised swimmer's floral headband to match - but her script... it howls like a wolf on a week of full moons.

She starts out pretty universal to get us on board - tales of being kicked out of her own childhood Spice Girls tribute band, one with an unavoidable abundance of Geri wannabees. But soon she has moved onto the meat of her show, her vagina, and there's very little subtext or diversion from that point onwards. Speculums are put to the test, beginner hand jobs are regurgitated into cringe nightmares - we share in her discomfort. Wet is mainly gynaecological - the show proudly does exactly what it says on the tin - but there are some respites. She has a few neat tricks up her sleeve.

A long form tale of vulnerable aqua aerobics mayhem has that deceptive precision of gags that only a master storyteller can make feel organic. The twice revisited story of her being coerced into doing cocaine at the backstage of a gig oozes with a risky, predatory vibe but reprises with a stinger where she acknowledges people's perceptions of her own behaviour might be entirely different. She refreshes the palette before the big closing set with some relaxing group reiki. And we trust her to orchestrate such a swerve. Spittle is a unique voice in current stand-up... one whose impressive joke writing seems to have been eclipsed by her oodles of scribbly personality. Don't make the same mistake I did on first look and underestimate her.

Amy Matthews recorded the final outing of her Fringe show Moreover, The Moon this weekend. It is intriguing to witness the ins-and-outs of such a public procedure. I don't know if many of the audience were fully aware this is what they signed up for, so the first time Matthew stopped the show and the flow, rewound herself to "tape over" a flub or clean up any live room weirdness the audience reacted a little stranger than maybe if she just soldiered on with the plan of attack naturally. I hope the final product keeps a few of the less planned moments in as they are cute in their own right.

Maybe these Stalin-esque image control responses to minor blips are fitting considering Matthews' show is pitched as being all about 'Main Character Syndrome'. The feeling that you are the protagonist and everyone else is, at best, a supporting player in your life. To be frank the concept bookends a 40 minute greatest hits show but seeing as Matthews is the lead in all her stories you couldn't accuse her of false advertising shenanigans.

There's plenty of decent bits here, well worth an hour of anyone's time even if you, like the rest of us, are only a non-speaking extra in her narrative, a face in the crowd whose only direction is to laugh.

The movie Amelie comes in for a club set kicking and comparing a Fife shark experience to a Yo Sushi conveyor belt released a massive guffaw from me that felt overdue considering just what an accomplished performer she is. The way Matthews delivers is technically flawless and the writing you can tell has been painstakingly reverse engineered back from the punchline for maximum slickness. I'd say the content is sometimes not quite as good as the presentation. There's certain bits that probably wouldn't find much purchase with an audience if you were to hand the same idea to a less precise act. Yet with her confident showmanship and studied timing she spins strong rope out of spindly threads.

I'm always fascinated about the inner workings of such a well-practised act. Just how strict is the writing and editing process? How does one ascertain what needs to be chipped away at and what is allowed room for expansion? I'll give you an example: Matthews retells of a YouTube video that feeds her anxiety in minute detail. She delivers it with millisecond accurate tone and timing. Not much later she tells us of her unlikely love of watching snooker. I find it hard to believe she didn't make the connection that the sport offers placid organisation, is anti-chaotic, accidental ASMR. The complete opposite of what her social media algorithms are slinging at her mental health. So is the lack of callback a missed stitch? Something she realised in preview nobody cared for? Or something she couldn't find the right economy of words to make work?

Because Matthews' laboured choice of words is her outstanding comedy attribute. She never gets lost in word soup nor dumbs down for her room. Her obvious intelligence and acute skills might mean she could pick up a profitable side hustle directing others' Fringe hours and tour shows. As a comedy technician she has big burly muscles others could learn a lot from.

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