Things continue to look very positive at the Arts Theatre. I don't have the exact figure but I think I sold around 150 tickets tonight (164 in fact - ed), which is beyond my wildest dreams (this is not true, in my wildest dreams I have sold ten million tickets for the 330 seat space and the front row is taken by huge talking dogs with elephant legs and dragon cocks - that is as wild as my dreams get though. The other 9,999,988 seats are taken by regular human beings. I don't have a deep enough imagination to do any better).
My point is that this time last week I was expecting maybe 20 people and would have settled for 50, so to have a half full theatre (is the theatre half full or half empty - I am clearly in an optomistic point of view) was extremely gratifying. And I had a lot more fun with it tonight, performing a lot more confidently and sailing the laughs. Playing to lots of people is, as I have surely said before, so much easier than playing to a few. And it generally makes the show and the performance all the better, allowing the comedian to open up and really do his job. When there are 20 people chuckling along you can't afford to take your time as the silence fills the room, but with a bigger audience you can allow an idea to settle, you can subtly or unsubtly alter your expression. You can be playful and cocky and control the room. I did this show at the
Battersea Arts Centre back in January and the audience was small and close and it was hard to get any atmosphere going. I did OK, but annoyingly the Evening Standard had unexpectedly attended that gig and gave it a luke warm review. I wonder if journalists really realise the difference that the size of the audience makes though and even if they do, how can they appreciate how much better a comedian would be if 200 people were in front of him? It's a bit of a vicious cycle, cos obviously it's tricky to get the big audiences before you have impressed the small ones, but I felt slightly annoyed that the main London paper had already reviewed me and missed me at my best. But I am definitely improving at this job all the time and the audience numbers and reaction seems to suggest that people are beginning to notice this.
I had a couple of nice heckles today, the first asking my why I did not simply tattoo my "gullible" letter on to my chest to save the inconvenience of having to carry it in my pocket. It was an inventive and intelligent interjection, but evenso I laid into the young man, telling him that that would be painful and inconvenient and that there would be times when someone hadn't just done the gullible trick on you and you had your top off and people would think you were a fool. Plus tattoos are expensive. And if you've seen the routine you'll know that you'd need a lot of tattoos. But it was nice to have something to work with, even if I made out on stage that the bloke was an idiot. Later a woman preempted one of my jokes, which was quite smart of her as no-one has before, but I had some fun telling her that it didn't work as well where she had said it and to watch where I put it, and then signposting it as it was coming. It was a good natured and fun show that ran on for at least 80 minutes, which I had worried would be too long, but it seemed OK from my perspective.
This is a good show and I am doing a good job and it's quite exciting to think that maybe I am getting some recognition for it. The run is long enough to build an audience and so at the moment I am hoping that next week the audiences will be even bigger, even if there are no dog faced, elephant legged, dragon cocked creatures in the first row. Though you might like to come dressed like that if you're coming to the gig to put the frights up me. But it will mainly be funny because you'll look like an idiot and only a very small proportion of the audience will understand why.
The first draft of the poster for "Oh Fuck, I'm 40!" came through today. It's not perfect - I don't think the icing looks real enough, but really that's just the icing on the cake. I like the banner and the face I am pulling and the cake slice gag and the fact that my greying hair is all too noticeable, adding somewhat to the impact of the ageing theme. I am going to pretend that they photo-shopped in that grey for comic effect, and no-one will ever find out the truth. Unless they read this. Or look at my hair. But it's nice to try and pretend to yourself that certain things about you aren't true. I have done some good Edinburgh posters in my time, my favourites being "Richard Herring is Fat" and in first place "Christ on a Bike", but I think this one might be up there in the top three once we've ironed the kinks out. Let me know what you think. I sat back looking at it this afternoon feeling quite satisfied. Now all I have to do it write the show. But that's a small consideration. The poster is the main thing.
