While
Chris Rock is travelling around the world breaking ridiculous audience
size records, Tony Robinson's first one-man comedy show is located in a
fairly run down town hall in some obscure English village. However once
you get past the poor acoustics (and the feeling that most of the
audience members are senior citizens who have mistaken the turnout for
a town meeting) this truly turns into a unique piece of theatre.
Cleverly mixing history, family stories & anecdotes, as well as a treasure trove of Blackadder behind-the-scenes, Tony Robinson presents a funny, poignant & extremely entertaining one-man show.
The
only problem with Robinson's attempt at stand up seems to arise when
Robinson attempts to be funny. The jokes die and awfully awkward death
(which is odd, surely if you were recording something you would cut out
the bits that don't work), but luckily the attempts at humour are few
and far between, with Robinson letting the stories do all the work.
Anicdotes
here range from childhood, to families and as well as the inside
workings of the Entertainment world (in which Robinson has been a part
of since he was a child). Occasionally the whimsical flow of the
narrative is distrupted by the odd bitter remark by Robinson regarding
his career (with folks like Hugh "House MD" Laurie, Stephen Fry, Ben Elton and Rown Atkinson all going onto bigger and better things than Time Team) which often comes off as little more depressing, desperate and sad rather than humourously delf depreciating.
None the less, the man knows how to spin a yarn (if you are a child of the 80s and 90s, I strongly reccomend you revisit Fat Tulips Garden on YouTube) and there aren't many people out there these days that could keep an audience on side without "performing".
It's true it seems, sometime the truth is stranger (and more entertaining) than fiction.
EXTRAS
Extras
wise, it's a more of the same, with selected pieces taken from the
Q&A session which obviously took place as an encore. The most
interest seems to surround the behind the scenes action of Blackadder (the series which Robinson is most widely known for) and Robinson doesn't dissapoint with a few juicy morsels.
Not
sure how many repeat viewings this may warrant - but it's certainly one
to check out if you're a fan of Robinson or the British comedies he has
been associated with.
Conclusion:
Movie 70% Extras: 65%
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