waitingman (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
waitingman) wrote2007-01-25 07:28 pm
waitingman) wrote2007-01-25 07:28 pm
Personal Opinion
With the Lad(ie)s from Little Britain about to hit town ~
Mark Dapin
January 24, 2007
What makes Little Britain different from The Footy Show?
I am in the heart of London's Little Australia, watching the Little Britain stage show in a theatre full of little British people (and some big ones). I'm sitting with my British little brother, who is excited we have tickets to the sell-out show. He is a fan and I'm hoping he can explain Little Britain's appeal to me.
Like the rest of the audience at Hammersmith's Carling Apollo, my brother has heard all the jokes before, because the Little Britain TV series has exactly the same number of gags as it has regular characters.
Identical things happen to each person in every sketch in which they appear. Grotesque, ridiculously dressed Daffyd Thomas, who believes he is "the only gay in the village" is blind to the evidence of homosexuality in everyone else around him. Grotesque, ridiculously dressed transvestite Emily Howard says, "I'm a laaaady," then does something unladylike.
Grotesque, ridiculously dressed Maggie Blackamoor vomits when she comes into contact with minorities or anything they might have touched. Grotesque, ridiculously dressed criminal single mother Vicky Pollard, caught committing an offence, tries to talk her way out of trouble with inarticulate, repetitive babble. Grotesque, ridiculously dressed Bubbles DeVere, a fat, bald woman, takes off her clothes and wig, and tries to act seductive.
But the Little Britishers love it. They laugh at every punchline, even though they know it's coming from the moment the sketch begins. Every time I ask my brother why a particular action is funny, he says, "It's because they always do that."
When the stage show opens in London, the curtain rises and a disembodied voice announces an evening in which men will dress up as women and act gay. And that pretty much sums it up.
Most of Little Britain's female characters are played by its co-stars and creators, David Walliams and Matt Lucas. Lucas is gay, Walliams is not, but they make equally attractive transvestites. Like all cross-dressing male entertainers, from Fatty Vautin to Barry Humphries, the core of their joke is: aren't women absurd! They speak in silly, high voices! They wear funny, floral clothes! They have trivial, small-minded concerns! To this, the Little Britain team add: aren't fat women revolting! Aren't poor women stupid! Aren't rural women bigoted! And so much more.
Little Britain's rhythms, cadences and reference points come from Blackpool pier pantomimes, where faded male entertainers saw out their twilight years, overmade-up in oversize frocks, and rising young women strapped down their breasts and pretended to be boys.
To appeal to adults as well as children, the familiar, simplistic plots were layered with national servicemen's innuendo and rugby-club double entendre; the villains were as camp as bush tea and always "behiiiiiiiind you".
Generations of British children - including me - were raised on this seaside-postcard humour, but I seem to be the only one who has grown out of it. The rest of the audience laughs like a baby who sees a parent's hand poised to tickle. It giggles in happy anticipation of familiar pleasure. Oh, the transvestite's going to vomit! Oh, the transvestite's going to wet herself! Oh, the transvestite's going to undress down to her fat suit!
In homage to another pantomime tradition, members of the Little Britain audience are pulled from their seats and onto the stage.
One young man plays a game of "hide the sausage", during which he is mounted by Walliams, who is pretending to be an aggressive homosexual. Walliams tears at his trousers. Oh look! He's simulating anal rape! In a later scene, a pregnant woman is brought to the front and told she looks ridiculous.
I can't believe the young guy is a genuine, paying customer, but he goes to the bar at the intermission and drinks a beer with his girlfriend. He does not seem insulted, violated or even embarrassed. Maybe I should lighten up.
In the second part of the Little Britain show, there are a couple of really funny bits: understated, apparent ad libs, where Walliams and Lucas play off each other with an unforced battery of jokes about - sigh - anal sex. For the most part, though, it is Viz comics brought to life with the irony rendered invisible by misanthropic zeal. It feels like middle-class men looking down on the lower orders; a private schoolboys' end-of-term review, in which the prefects mock their cook, their gardener and their classmates' vulgar mothers.
Some of the characters may play a little differently to Sydney audiences. Ting Tong, the grasping, deceiving, promiscuous, incoherent Thai mail-order bride - who is, in fact, a Thai lady boy from Tooting - might not seem so funny in a city with a large Thai community.
That said, most of the audience will surely be the same crowd who turn out for the much better and much funnier shows by the Streets and Lily Allen. There will be backpackers and expatriates from Pendle and Pontypridd, refugees from the real grotesqueries of little Britain - the British National Party in council; the threat of terror on public transport; the new Morrissey album - none of which appear in this show.
As we file out of the Apollo with the little British, most of them smiling and exchanging some variation on, "That was great, that was," I challenge my brother again. Why does he like it?
"I suppose it's not that funny," he says, crestfallen.
I feel as though I have stolen something from him so I don't say anything more.
Mark Dapin
January 24, 2007
What makes Little Britain different from The Footy Show?
I am in the heart of London's Little Australia, watching the Little Britain stage show in a theatre full of little British people (and some big ones). I'm sitting with my British little brother, who is excited we have tickets to the sell-out show. He is a fan and I'm hoping he can explain Little Britain's appeal to me.
Like the rest of the audience at Hammersmith's Carling Apollo, my brother has heard all the jokes before, because the Little Britain TV series has exactly the same number of gags as it has regular characters.
Identical things happen to each person in every sketch in which they appear. Grotesque, ridiculously dressed Daffyd Thomas, who believes he is "the only gay in the village" is blind to the evidence of homosexuality in everyone else around him. Grotesque, ridiculously dressed transvestite Emily Howard says, "I'm a laaaady," then does something unladylike.
Grotesque, ridiculously dressed Maggie Blackamoor vomits when she comes into contact with minorities or anything they might have touched. Grotesque, ridiculously dressed criminal single mother Vicky Pollard, caught committing an offence, tries to talk her way out of trouble with inarticulate, repetitive babble. Grotesque, ridiculously dressed Bubbles DeVere, a fat, bald woman, takes off her clothes and wig, and tries to act seductive.
But the Little Britishers love it. They laugh at every punchline, even though they know it's coming from the moment the sketch begins. Every time I ask my brother why a particular action is funny, he says, "It's because they always do that."
When the stage show opens in London, the curtain rises and a disembodied voice announces an evening in which men will dress up as women and act gay. And that pretty much sums it up.
Most of Little Britain's female characters are played by its co-stars and creators, David Walliams and Matt Lucas. Lucas is gay, Walliams is not, but they make equally attractive transvestites. Like all cross-dressing male entertainers, from Fatty Vautin to Barry Humphries, the core of their joke is: aren't women absurd! They speak in silly, high voices! They wear funny, floral clothes! They have trivial, small-minded concerns! To this, the Little Britain team add: aren't fat women revolting! Aren't poor women stupid! Aren't rural women bigoted! And so much more.
Little Britain's rhythms, cadences and reference points come from Blackpool pier pantomimes, where faded male entertainers saw out their twilight years, overmade-up in oversize frocks, and rising young women strapped down their breasts and pretended to be boys.
To appeal to adults as well as children, the familiar, simplistic plots were layered with national servicemen's innuendo and rugby-club double entendre; the villains were as camp as bush tea and always "behiiiiiiiind you".
Generations of British children - including me - were raised on this seaside-postcard humour, but I seem to be the only one who has grown out of it. The rest of the audience laughs like a baby who sees a parent's hand poised to tickle. It giggles in happy anticipation of familiar pleasure. Oh, the transvestite's going to vomit! Oh, the transvestite's going to wet herself! Oh, the transvestite's going to undress down to her fat suit!
In homage to another pantomime tradition, members of the Little Britain audience are pulled from their seats and onto the stage.
One young man plays a game of "hide the sausage", during which he is mounted by Walliams, who is pretending to be an aggressive homosexual. Walliams tears at his trousers. Oh look! He's simulating anal rape! In a later scene, a pregnant woman is brought to the front and told she looks ridiculous.
I can't believe the young guy is a genuine, paying customer, but he goes to the bar at the intermission and drinks a beer with his girlfriend. He does not seem insulted, violated or even embarrassed. Maybe I should lighten up.
In the second part of the Little Britain show, there are a couple of really funny bits: understated, apparent ad libs, where Walliams and Lucas play off each other with an unforced battery of jokes about - sigh - anal sex. For the most part, though, it is Viz comics brought to life with the irony rendered invisible by misanthropic zeal. It feels like middle-class men looking down on the lower orders; a private schoolboys' end-of-term review, in which the prefects mock their cook, their gardener and their classmates' vulgar mothers.
Some of the characters may play a little differently to Sydney audiences. Ting Tong, the grasping, deceiving, promiscuous, incoherent Thai mail-order bride - who is, in fact, a Thai lady boy from Tooting - might not seem so funny in a city with a large Thai community.
That said, most of the audience will surely be the same crowd who turn out for the much better and much funnier shows by the Streets and Lily Allen. There will be backpackers and expatriates from Pendle and Pontypridd, refugees from the real grotesqueries of little Britain - the British National Party in council; the threat of terror on public transport; the new Morrissey album - none of which appear in this show.
As we file out of the Apollo with the little British, most of them smiling and exchanging some variation on, "That was great, that was," I challenge my brother again. Why does he like it?
"I suppose it's not that funny," he says, crestfallen.
I feel as though I have stolen something from him so I don't say anything more.