Empire Theatre, Eden Court, Inverness, 20th February 2008

Frankie Boyle (photo - www.frankieboyle.com)

I FIRST saw Frankie Boyle, only a handful of years ago, in the smoke-filled cellar of Edinburgh’s, Stand comedy club. The Stand remains where it always was, although now without the smoke. Frankie, however, has moved on. Even at that relatively early stage of his career you could see he was going places, he had presence and a drive to his comedy that showed he was destined for bigger things.

Over the years he has honed his style and tightened his material and has become the sharp professional act that he brought to Eden Court. The show was over fifty minutes late in opening that evening, a delay Eden Court blamed on “severe weather” although oddly no one else noticed the weather as we arrived at the theatre.

With time on its hands the audience did what audiences traditionally do with such a delay and headed for the bar. As a result, by the time Frankie got on stage, the audience was more than a little rowdy. Frankie coped easily with the heckles that came his way, putting them down clinically with remarks he has sharpened over time in a thousand stand up gigs. It takes a great deal of preparation to appear that spontaneous.

At many stand up performances in Inverness audiences seem to feel it is their duty to heckle, almost as though it would be rude not to. Unfortunately their heckles seem reduced to single random words – one young man shouted “shoes!”, a remark that left Frankie and most of the audience bemused.

Perhaps it will be some time before some sections of the audience realise that all you have to do to enjoy most comedians is sit back and let them weave their particular kind of magic and that constant meaningless interjections don’t actually add to everyone else’s enjoyment.

Frankie is respected amongst comedy performers for rigorously preparing for his appearances, especially those on TV. His apparent ease at coming up with sharp one liners, on shows like Mock the Week, is the result of hours of work and he is reputed to write over one hundred current affairs gags in preparation for each show.

The dictates of television have clearly influenced Frankie’s style as he rarely strayed from topics like celebrity and off-colour gags that many in the audience enjoyed. Frankie’s act on Thursday night was succession of sharp quick fire gags honed to perfection and delivered with immaculate timing.

If you are a fan of rambling and fantastic storytelling or of a comedic style that reveals the personality and nature of the comedian then Frankie is probably not for you. If you like your comedy straight from the hip and fired with pinpoint accuracy then you will go a long way before seeing a better comedian.

Supporting Frankie on Thursday night was the Reverend Obadiah Steppenwolf III, in the persona of a preacher from the deep American South who has fallen so far from grace that the only thing capable of pulling him back would be an asbestos angel on a bungee rope.

The Reverend is a poet of the profane, a preacher of obsenity, who stunned large sections of the audience as he unleashed his very special brand of Hell fire. Whilst many of the Reverend’s observations are very much on the wrong side of profanity it would be wrong to class him as simply a “blue” comedian.

He is much more than that – his use of language and imagery is worthy of any performance poet. In a small venue the Reverend exudes an air of menace that fills the room and holds the audience. The auditorium of Eden Court was too large for the reverend to effectively control but, never the less, for the majority of the audience he gave a thoughly entertaining performance.

Frankie’s place on our TV screens is assured for some time to come as he applies the skills he learnt in the cellars of Edinburgh. The demands of TV have meant that he lives in London for most of the year and he is now to be seen in the small comedy clubs of Soho secretly sharpening the material that he uses to dazzle TV audiences. Frankie’s show was a sell out on Thursday night and, judging by the audience’s boisterous response, few would have regretted making the effort to see both comedians.

© John Burns, 2008

Links

• Eden Court Theatre
• Frankie Boyle
• John Burns at Purple Comedy