Just For Laughs festival, London - Mark Muldoon's Comedy Diary
Published: Tuesday 7th March 2023
Organisers are aiming for London's Just For Laughs festival to eventually become "the UK's most recognised comedy festival". With a debut line-up that included Graham Norton, James Acaster, Aisling Bea and Nish Kumar, Mark Muldoon sizes up just how likely that's looking...
Canadian live comedy brand Just For Laughs refer to themselves as the "largest global player in the humour industry". Their latest venture is London: last weekend they launched their first proper festival on UK soil, in and around London's sizable O2 Arena.
It's probably fair to say they're setting their ambitions high. At a swanky VIP reception hosted by the High Commission of Canada in Trafalgar Square the night before the festival, President and CEO of Just For Laughs Charles Décarie said they were aiming to become "the UK's most recognised comedy festival". It's uncertain, however, if they're including the vast amounts of comedy at the Edinburgh Fringe within that target. If they're not then - with the greatest of respect to the UK's other comedy festivals - you could almost accuse Just For Laughs of lacking ambition. If they are including Edinburgh then the scale of their goal is somewhat breathtaking.
It'd be hard to argue they didn't pull together a quality programme of events: from straightforward stand-up to live podcast recordings, discussion panels and comedy-leaning live music. Household names (Graham Norton, Ryan Reynolds, Katherine Ryan, James Acaster) rubbed shoulders with the kind of buzzy shows - Stamptown and The Wrestling, say - that get slightly more hardcore comedy fans excited.
Talking to punters across the weekend, you got the impression attendees are stand-up fans not used to visiting the UK's existing roster of comedy festivals. Anybody who does will immediately be able to sense a different atmosphere at Just For Laughs. You don't have to Google too hard to find some strong criticisms of the Edinburgh Fringe in its current form, but for all those frustrations you can be confident that if you show up to a venue with an ordinary-sized bag, you won't be slapped with an infuriating £10 (£10!) mandatory cloakroom charge. Which is exactly the O2's policy for anyone that tries to bring a bag larger than "A4-sized" into their main arena.
Likewise, ticket prices were more expensive than Londoners are used to paying, let alone customers of Britain's other comedy festivals. Last year, fans wanting to see acclaimed comedian Jessica Fostekew's show Wench needed to stump up £12-14 at the Edinburgh Fringe. It's £18-21 to see it at Soho Theatre this week if you fancy it. The asking price at Just For Laughs (once booking fees etc. have been included) was £24.
Stamptown, meanwhile, is a great night out - you must go sometime - but it seems unlikely they'll look back at this festival show with great fondness. Customers who attended will have witnessed some horrible unpleasantries. As the show started to overrun, security reportedly manhandled the brilliant Jazz Emu off stage. You also wonder how many fans were willing to pay the faintly astonishing asking price of £29 for a ticket when just a few weeks earlier they were charging £16 at Soho Theatre, when the latter is more established, widely loved and (for so many people, crucially) centrally located. In the end, you got the impression maybe not many people were willing to pay that much: checking online again a few days before the show, Just For Laughs had quietly dropped their asking price down to £13.75.
Similar reports of poor ticket sales dog the festival generally. If there's a sense, then, that corporate expectations may have been set a little too high for this debut event, once you were sat in a seat and watching some comedy you were usually having a great time: Nish Kumar interviewed James Acaster with the latter in character as undercover cop Pat Springleaf - or perhaps more accurately, drifting in and out of character. It was a freewheeling and consistently fantastic hour. A couple of years ago Aisling Bea put in a disappointing set at (presumably now bitter local rivals) Greenwich Comedy Festival, and she hasn't been doing all that much stand-up since. Hosting a mixed-bill show on the Saturday night - and clearly thoroughly enjoying herself - this weekend represented a fantastic return to form for her.
Elsewhere, a panel of Jonathan Ross, Jo Brand, Miranda Hart and Richard Curtis told fun behind-the-scenes anecdotes from Comic Relief's 38-year history.
FOC It Up! Comedy Club did their usual good work of platforming line-ups featuring comedians of colour who aren't cisgendered men.
The weekend's only letdown was Reggie Watts: his late-night show did have its moments, however he came across as someone naturally quite funny but not particularly bothered enough to have workshopped any decent material.
The highlight of the weekend, though - as it has a track record of being - was The Wrestling. Staging the event in London for the first time, it features comedians literally wrestling other comedians (as well as some professional wrestlers) in a ring, in front of a baying crowd. The list of comedians involved in some manner (be it wrestling, commentating, or putting in brilliant cameo appearances) was pretty wild: Joe Lycett, Greg Davies, Alex Horne, Aisling Bea, Nish Kumar, Ed Gamble, Rosie Jones, Iain Stirling, Rachel Parris and Suzi Ruffell to name just a few. There was fireworks, several fantastic set pieces, pleasing plot twists and a lot of extremely high-quality ringside banter.
Whilst it appears to have been confirmed that the festival will return next year, it can be difficult to predict what the long-term future holds for the event, and whether audiences will allow it space in London's competitive comedy market. What does seem likely, however, is that Just For Laughs are willing to put serious resources into trying to make it succeed.
Read previous editions of this column
Mark Muldoon is also available on Instagram and Twitter. Mainly for the laughs, though.
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