Mighty Boosh live show's hit and miss

Mighty Boosh

By Sarah Walters | Tue, 02 December, 2008

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IT’S the first of a seven-night stand in Manchester for The Mighty Boosh, including a recently added third night at the M.E.N. Arena on December 23.

The stakes couldn’t be higher, and some would say that such lofty expectations inevitably set you up for a fall.

With three successful series and a much lauded debut live tour behind them, creators Noel Fielding and Julian Barratt are hanging over the great divide; on one side, the kids who turn up dressed as their favourite Boosh characters, on the other, the ones who still believe Noel and Julian have a lot to prove.

Four months of lukewarm reviews have preceded these Manchester shows, and its easy to see why.

The first half, a Generation Game-like conveyer belt of characters, is a slightly shambolic Boosh show-and-tell: Bob Fossil, Naboo The Shaman, Bollo, The Moon and alien Tony Harrison all take their turn on the all-singing set.

That it follows such a hilarious entrance – Vince Noir (Fielding) sailing on stage in a glittery boat while Howard Moon (Barratt) rows on in a dingy for a rendition of their ‘crimp’ Future Sailors – probably makes the role call seem even more like filler.

Despicable

Fortunately, it gets more interesting as the content gets more despicable.

The grotesque Crack Fox proves difficult for Barratt to operate, but his quick wit makes the most of the technical drama, and The Hitcher (Fielding’s murderous Cockney alter ego) scares everyone rigid with a wander out into the audience before sending out the first half on a song about eels.

In the seats behind me, a disgruntled young man mutters that he hopes the second half will be better.

He gets his wish – but only just, as some semblance of storytelling creeps back in via a Howard Moon (and Ernie Wise-style) play what I wrote.

In it, Moon is the messianic sole-survivor of the end of the world, but inevitably Vince can’t let Howard get away with such am-dramery and he gatecrashes proceedings in a mirror-ball rocket and gold lame mini-skirt as the winged glam-gladiator Sunflash.

From here, he takes control of the script by threatening to reveal the centre spread of Howard’s jazz-themed porn photo shoot.

Key aim

Howard goes along with the new story, written with the key aim of making him look like an idiot.

It does, of course, proving that Vince is the sort of sidekick Howard could really do without (Vince typically gets away with it via one cheeky grin at the audience).

But it does illustrate the key difference between the Boosh on TV and stage; here, the gang let their hair down and banish the surrealist storytelling to the sidelines in favour of having an old-fashioned lark.

Vince and Howard’s one-on-one front of curtain banter is where this back-to-basics approach works best, or when they milk a recurring in-joke – this time, it’s rock band Kings Of Leon and the Honey Monster (who recently mimicked their crimp style of songwriting in an advert) at the centre of the gags.

Otherwise, the show relies too much on the audience filling in the gaps in the shaky script with some adoring cheers.

Let’s hope they’re just storing up the best bits for series four.

What did you think of the show? Have your say.

The Mighty Boosh are at the Apollo until Thursday, December 4, £25 (some shows sold out). Then Friday, December 5, Saturday, December 6 and Tuesday, December 23 at the M.E.N. Arena, also £25. Call 0844 847 8000.

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Sarah_Walters wrote on the 02/10/08 at 12:08…

A STUNNED volunteer in the Buxton Opera House lobby tells me that tickets for The Mighty Boosh’s first north west shows are changing hands on eBay for a handsome £160.

Which is not quite as surprising as it sounds, because the Opera House has scored something of a golden goal with these…

A STUNNED volunteer in the Buxton Opera House lobby tells me that tickets for The Mighty Boosh’s first north west shows are changing hands on eBay for a handsome £160. Which is not quite as surprising as it sounds, because the Opera House has scored something of a golden goal with these gigs. It’s two months before Noel Fielding and Julian Barratt bring their surrealist comic creation to Manchester, and even then a fan’s best chance of catching them will be in the characterless surroundings of the MEN Arena. Facing that prospect, a mixed gaggle of supporters have plumped for Buxton’s intimate old theatre. And it’s exactly the sort of place that typifies the comic friction between Barratt and Fielding’s alter egos; you can almost hear Howard Moon sniffing in the smell of grease paint while Vince Noir comments on the ‘well vintage’ boutique décor. Three series and one live show into life as The Boosh, and the question on everyone’s lips is where they go from here. The narrative of this latest live performance shows that Fielding and Barratt have had some of the same concerns, and coherence is often left on the back burner in favour of giving the love in the room some space to swell. Cheeky grin And there is plenty of love. All is takes is a cheeky grin from Fielding to get the whole room hollering these days – evidence, if you needed it, that the men behind this once cult BBC3 comedy are now bona fide superstars writing stadium-filling entertainment. The transition shows a little in the structure of the new stage version, too. The first half acts as a sort of refresher course on the show’s hit characters – the crack fox, the hitcher, Bob Fossil, Naboo The Shaman, The Moon and Tony Harrison, now a Michael Parkinson-style chat show host, steal their five minutes each – and there’s notable progress in the show’s polish with the addition of a live band and shiny set. Conversely, the second half taps into the storytelling techniques that sustained the concept through three series: bizarre, leftfield and full of ‘tiny twisties’, and not a million miles away from their early Hen & Chickens material. This time, Howard is allowed to indulge his lofty am-dram aspirations and pen a pompous, apocalyptic play set in 2009 about the destruction of the planet – from which he (unsurprisingly) is the only survivor that isn’t left hideously malformed. Delicous pokes There’s some delicious pokes at amateur theatre as Noir and The Boosh’s talking ape, Bollo, wave around pieces of red and blue fabric to represent fire and water and cheap props are wheeled awkwardly on and off stage. It takes flight, though, when Vince Noir breaks off script and blasts Moon’s bleak vision with a skip-full of glitter, emerging as Sunflash, a winged gladiator in the shortest of gold lame skirts, from the “future future” who speaks in his own dialect of ‘Chavese’ – a mixture of Chinese and chav. Like an Ernie Wise ‘play what I wrote’, it’s on a par with the Eels or Nanageddon TV episodes for testing the imagination, but it’s also full of peachy one-liners: “Leeds is a state of mind,” chirps Howard when his gaggle of freaks ask him where he is from, and then there’s Noir’s typically vacuous closing thought on the moral of his rebellious tale: “If you look a bit strange,” he replies, “learn to accessorize." Crimping style As always, though, the best moments are the front-of-curtain verbal spas between Howard and Vince: Moon the Stuckist jazz lover, Noir the fashionista with the upper hand. His Kings Of Leon impression and the duo’s crimp about the recent Sugar Puffs advert that mimicked their crimping style are both rib-aching moments. They close with a musical set from the Nanageddon stars and the Boosh live band, the Ungrateful Dead, turning the exquisite theatre into a bouncing gig. Which is probably the only way to sign off for the night when you’re comedians that are worshipped like rock stars. The Mighty Boosh play Manchester Apollo and MEN Arena from December 1-6. Tickets are still available for some shows.