Saturday 19 July 2008

the magnificent stand-up comic Lenny Henry played one sell-out night in Brisbane, last night. The old lovable energetic craziness is still there, as you can see in his appearance on Australian Rove's tv interview.


However I was very impressed with what I take to be a new element in his work, a cunning structural organisation that turns the two hours into a singular resonating experience. That and a growing confidence to address life's bigger issues in his comedy; birth and death and everything in between are here. He does a sequence of character monologues, which interconnect, though you don't realise that at first. In one of these he plays one of his regular cast patrolling the edge of a minefield in Iraq, and he pulls it off perfectly. Lenny reads the comics, and somehow I've managed to miss making his aquaintance over the last twenty five years. We put that right at last night when the hotel restaurant stayed open and we sat around for an hour and a half. He's in New Zealand now, look for him there. I think it's Christchurch 25th , New Plymouth 26th.

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3 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

When I lived in England, I lived (literally) next door to the Wilde Theater at South Hill Park for several years. Apparently, Lenny Henry would do shows there as a warm-up for his national (or international) tours, since he and his wife Dawn French lived in the next town over. Either the shows were very low-key, or I was spectacularly uninformed, because I only ever found out about them the next day at work, when I was invariably asked "Hey, did you see Lenny Henry last night?"

It's a shame I always ended up missing him, because he strikes me as one of those comedians who, although they can easily play to a large crowd (and who can argue that Lenny Henry isn't comfortable with a big audience?), would be amazing to see in a much smaller, more personal venue.

19 July 2008 at 10:53:00 GMT-5  
Blogger Unknown said...

Eddie,
I tried emailing you but it bounced :( can you email me jencomx3@aol.com I'd like to talk to you about SDCC and a few other things ...

Best always,
Jennifer M. Contino
http://www.comicon.com/pulse

19 July 2008 at 11:48:00 GMT-5  
Blogger drjon said...

Crap on a stick. I knew that the Marvellous Mr Henry was playing soon, but I forgot to chase it up.

Sounds like it was a wonderful show. I'm really sad I missed it.

21 July 2008 at 06:56:00 GMT-5  

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