The Comedy Crawl review: 30 April - 1 May 2011

Written by: Anna Lowman
Published: Monday 2nd May 2011

This sunny Bank Holiday in the capital marked the inaugural Comedy Crawl - an offshoot of the uber-trendy city music fest Camden Crawl and, it turned out, a weekend of excellent acts, logistical issues, lovely moments, and a sense of generally good-natured chaos...

Before I wax lyrical about the great range of comics and sketch groups on show here, there were, it should be said, teething problems. The biggest was that while those who had bought tickets for the Comedy Crawl couldn't pick up their wristbands until 5pm, but acts had actually been performing since 2pm. The Comedy Crawl officially started at 7pm on both nights it seems, with the earlier performances falling under the wider Camden Crawl banner, but not included in the main comedy event... which all just seems over-complicated, and a shame for comedy fans.

I'm still not sure whether Comedy Crawlers were originally meant to be going to the afternoon sessions but the organisers tweeted that punters should head down earlier on the Sunday, and so a much longer, and much more fun day was had by all* (* me and my comedy compadres). Just splitting the comedy and music entirely might be the best solution, not only for clarity, but also to make sure that acts don't have to shout over Camden Crawlers using the comedy venues as somewhere to drink and chat - though that was sometimes fun, more on which later...

Like any festival - and with over 100 acts and 10 promoters - there was far too much for one person to take in, and so you had to try to strike a balance between getting a flavour of the whole event, making sure you caught your favourite comics, discovering some new ones and not mindlessly rushing between venues.

The comedy venues were dotted along Camden High Street, with (breathe) Get Comedy at Lock 17 at one end, Camden Fringe at RTE marking the halfway point, Phil McIntyre Ents/Gag Relfex at the Lyttleton Arms opposite Koko, and Theatro Technis hosting improvised shows just around the corner. Personally, I generally ended up in the central Beluishi's/Camden Head/Wheelbarrow triangle, taking in the bills curated by Old Rope/Fat Tuesdays, Really Lovely Comedy and Knock2Bag respectively.

These three venues may have been utterly different, but they all had insanely strong line-ups. Incredibly for a sports bar, Belushi's was one of the most civilised spaces on the Crawl, with Tiernan Douieb (pictured) MCing with aplomb to ensure acts had the full attention of the audience. On the Saturday evening, Dan Antopoloski kicked things off in a magnificently unseasonal woolly cardigan, closely followed by Tom Craine who bounced around the diminutive stage with his usual energy. The mind reader who can't read minds Chris Cox also went down brilliantly; particularly frazzling the brain of one audience member who was convinced that her friend had suddenly been imbued with astonishing telepathic abilities.

There was a barrage of great comics the following afternoon too, with Marek Larwood, Bethany Black, Sir Tim Fitzhigham, Sarah Kendall, Thom Tuck and Danielle Ward all performing one after the other, and all going down a storm in a genuinely lovely atmosphere.

Over the road at Knock2Bag's temporary home, The Wheelbarrow, there was a slight lion's den feel to the whole thing. This is absolutely no fault of the comedians or the promoters, more an unfortunate perfect storm comprising the L-shaped room cutting off much of the audience from the action - resulting in them taking no notice of what was going on - random bursts of music cutting into the acts and several beered-up punters wanting their share of attention.

As someone who gets a more than a little nerdy about the mechanics of comedy, though, I have to say it was pretty fascinating to see how the comedians dealt with these - some would say unplayable - conditions. The excellent Elis James, for example, focussed his whirlwind of charm on the first few rows, while Romesh Ranganathan treated the experience like a rowdy rock gig, and Joe Lycett cut his losses after a few minutes, but went onto play a great set over at the more genteel Camden Head an hour or so later.

Hero of the weekend award goes to Tony Law (pictured) who provided a swashbuckling set there on Saturday night; masterfully adjusted his delivery from super-happy, to angrily shouting down some particular idiots, back to super-happy, providing a running commentary on his thought-processes and noting that despite the madness, some people (including me) were really into it. This may have been a ridiculous venue, but it provided some great moments along the way.

And finally to some Really Lovely Comedy at the Camden Head, where I ended up on Sunday night - a hot little room above a noisy pub which had a real Edinburgh Fringe feel to it. The emphasis was certainly on high energy fun, with sketch acts Pappy's and the Beta Males, gagsmith John-Luke Roberts and a pumped up Naz Osmangolu all appearing before musical double-act Frisky and Mannish closed the night with nursery rhyme lyrics set to Girls Aloud's Sound of the Underground. Wonderful.

A proper mixed bag, then, as you can tell. The general confusion created by some comedy not being part of the Comedy Crawl got things off to a wobbly start, but as time went on the atmosphere built, fun times were had and - above all - the strength in depth of acts currently gracing the comedy circuit was well and truly confirmed.

[i]More reviews of The Comedy Crawl: Si Hawkins | Lydia Nicholas.