Jon and Nath

Written by: Si Hawkins
Published: Thursday 26th October 2017

If there's one night you really want to be out of the house, it's Halloween, what with all those masked teenagers banging on the door demanding stuff. Ah, the festive shakedown. So how about watching a couple of smartly-dressed comics party in a London pub instead? We asked Jon Levene from Jon & Nath to tell us who Jon and Nath are.

"Jon and Nath are two best friends with almost nothing in common but our sense of humour," says Levene. "The fact we have remained best friends for roughly 15 years shows how powerful laughter is, mostly at each other's expense, but whatever."

His comedy colleague is Nathan Lang, and their latest show, Jon and Nath Like to Party, "is a rebirth," says Levene. "Following many live performances in Australia as part of a four-piece sketch group we spent a lot of time in the UK writing and filming stuff ourselves, before deciding that the only way forward was to be performing live."

Their emergence handily coincided with "a resurgence of sketch comedy on the circuit," he suggests, and this show "moves along at a cracking pace. We include the audience without really asking them to do anything, so they get to be part of it without any intimidation. It feels really good."

No intimidation on Halloween? It beats staying in with the lights off.

First Gig?

It feels like we've had more than one first gig. The first time we performed as a duo was about ten years ago at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival but it wasn't so much a sketch show as a concept show about morality and ethical standards (at the time we both smoked a lot of pot).

After we moved to England, we performed for the first time together at a stand-up night without any real idea of what we were going to do. Both of our names got mangled in the introduction and it just went off a cliff from there.

However, I consider our first proper gig together to be the opening night of Camden Fringe 2016. Nath got us a brilliant room with only two weeks notice, so we assembled a show and it just came together beautifully. About 30 people turned up and it was a success. Had it gone badly I would have blamed Nath and never done comedy again.

Favourite show, ever?

Our first show at Brighton Fringe 2017 stands out. It was our third gig of the day, and the first two were tough. In the morning we had a showcase gig in a huge space to a lot of families (our show is 16+) so we had to drop all the swearing and the kids didn't understand our reference to Christopher Walken.

Then we had a street gig which started with a classic Jon and Nath fight about how to do it, so with no introduction we stumbled into the crowd as our Jehovah's Witness characters and started busking the set... despite all this, it went surprisingly well. Then, without a break and feeling extremely nervous, we headed to our venue to do our full show - to our utter surprise it was sold out and the audience loved it.

Worst Gig?

Day one of this year's Edinburgh Fringe. We had done a preview the day before which went pretty well, then on opening day we had nine people in a 50-seat room, and within the first few minutes it was clear laughs would not be flowing. I thought 'Oh shit, we have 50 more minutes of this'. It was silent and horrible.

After that we just moped around and the next day I was walking to the venue thinking I couldn't cope with a repeat, I would have to feign illness and skulk off back to London. We were backstage in silence 10 minutes before showtime when the venue manager came in and said we had to open the doors immediately because people were queueing down the stairs, and every show from that day was full.

I know you only wanted to hear about the most horrendous gig but it's too painful without the happy ending. However there was a close second in Edinburgh when we did a late-night gig and they hated us... well, hated me. Someone screamed out I was a "speccy fuck" and I was sad (by that, I mean I dropped my shit). Fortunately Nath used his skills to win them back (by that, I mean an audience member slapped him hard in the face and they loved it).

The weirdest live experience: ever played Halloween before?

We haven't done a Halloween gig yet but we're looking forward to this one, particularly as we get to include Nath's life-long dream of an abridged version of The Shining. To date the weirdest gig was probably the Brighton street gig. Without any intro we just went marched up and down a pedestrianised street waving Watchtowers and drumming up a crowd so Nath could get possessed and I could exorcise the demon. I can't imagine what people who were just passing thought because it looked like we were actual Jehovah's gone mad.

Who's the most disagreeable person you've come across in the business?

I know it's a cop-out but there isn't really anyone. I mean, sure there are some promoters I wouldn't really want to get stuck at a party with, and certainly some comics whose jokes I think are awful, but I am sure those doors swing both ways.

Is there one routine/gag you loved, that audiences inexplicably didn't?

As of writing this it hasn't really happened: we've written and rehearsed awful sketches but we hated them enough before an audience had to sit through them. Having said that, I think the 'Groovematic 3000 Robot Dance' sketch should get a standing ovation each time but it never has...

What's your best tip for keeping a comedy duo together?

Work with someone you are comfortable enough with to offer up truly terrible, unfunny ideas. It's the quickest way to get to the really funny stuff.

The most memorable review, heckle or post-gig reaction?

After the second night of Camden Fringe (where Jon & Nath Like to Party premiered) a guy came up with a big smile and said, a little breathlessly: 'That was relentless'. I can't think of a better way to have your live comedy described.

How do you feel about Halloween, generally?

I view Halloween with the ambivalence of a guy who went trick-or-treating once as a young boy only to return after a solid two hours with one Creme Egg and an apple. I am sure Nathan hates it because it's popular with more than ten people.

Jon and Nath are at jonandnath.com