My tendency is not towards aggression. I wouldn’t, for example, sit in the second row of a comedy show and fight with my partner. i.e. actual physical fisticuffs. I wouldn’t do that. Neither would I be thrown out of a comedy show by security for hitting my partner and then feign a confused look of “What did I do?” But tonight during my performance one couple will do just that. It is a Sunday night and I am not prepared for a fight but then when is a good night for a fight?
Before Gig
I don’t want to say that my guard is down but let’s just say it is at half-mast. It is a Sunday after all; I am not expecting a tsunami of drunken high-jinks. People may drink themselves silly on a Sunday but they can rarely achieve the “schools out” energy of a Friday night or the “biggest night of the week” mind set of a Saturday. Sunday is not the traditional night of the stag-do. Sunday night audiences are usually containable. If anything they can suffer form the opposite problem – a sluggishness as their minds turn to the start of the working week.
However as the audience pour in tonight, a large group enters who have shit-hitting-fan potential written all over them. They are a birthday party. They have clearly been reveling all day. They will clearly be reveling later on. This show is only an interregnum in their reveling but the risk is they will revel straight through. They are young, possibly students? And clearly no respecters of days of the weeks. They are carrying on like a Friday night. As I watch this group, I can keep upping the danger level of this audience.
The show starts. The Birthday Party are indeed a handful. They are a writhing drunken mass of distracted, youth. The compere takes a strong line with this group right from the start. She lays down the law to them immediately. She lets them know who is boss and the consequences of stepping out of line. There is two-ing and frow-ing between compere and the birthday party. They heckle, they are slapped down. It is a very combative stuff. It is more reminiscent of “late and live” during the Kitson years than a typical Sunday night West End gig. The compere beats them. As I watch the compere I keep upping the danger level again. I imagine all sorts of things before I go on. I imagine them being a delight as an audience. I imagine it all descending into chaos. I see myself successfully surfing the madness. I see myself walk off stage before my time. I see myself sharing an amiable chat with the birthday party after my set. I see myself wanting to kill them. I had a lovely gig at this same venue three days ago. Now the memory is that is confined to the dustbin. I have to do it all over again.
I am first on after the compere. Seconds before I go on the technician says to me “I apologise for what is about to happen” But what is about to happen? Something is about to happen, I just don't know what it's going to be yet.
During Gig
There is an eye of the storm feeling as I take to the stage. It is calm for the moment but this is just temporary. How long will it last? The audience haven’t quite gelled yet. I can feel the seething factions. There is the birthday party to my left, drunken and distracted, then there are the young people frightened of the birthday party and everybody else has that look of “lets see how this goes" fence sitters waiting to see who's side to take. Problems could arise from anywhere. I have a feeling I haven’t had for a while but which is reminiscent of an earlier Stephen Carlin who found himself playing gigs he wasn’t quite ready for and was forced to do an impression of somebody who looked like they knew what they were doing. The first 3-4 more minutes are fine. There is one interruption but order is maintained although the truce cannot possibly hold. It doesn’t matter how well routines go I know there is a malaise bubbling under the surface.
Eventually the threat breaks cover. It is not the birthday party. It turns out that they are not the problem. Another problem breaks from left field (actually the middle of the audience). The problem is a couple in the second row. The pair of them are really three hecklers. She is interrupting. He is interrupting and then quite separately they are interrupting as a couple. Their destruction is greater than the sum of their parts. There is always one of them with something to say. Routines have one in two chance of making it to the end. There are interruptions aplenty but sometimes I can get back on track and continue with the material and other times the reprise is not worth it. The moment has passed.
Taking the compere's lead, I take a firm line with this pair and it is working but it is not quite working. It is working in a superficial sense. I am postponing another showdown. But it is always fire fighting. It merely quells the flames until the next eruption. It never quite caps it. The trouble is I am being aggressive and this aggression doesn’t really suit me. I am not being myself and on some level the audience can sense that. Having inherited a highly combative dynamic when I came on stage, I sense that I'll need to switch to something more Carlinesque. The question is how? I'd been trying to stay on my agenda rather than embracing the chaos. I could fire fight this all night and it would be OK but it would never be great. And sooner or later they will sense this isn’t really me. I need to do it my way. But How? And what is my way?
Perhaps taking their cue from my material, they start fighting during a routine about relationship break-ups. When I say fighting I mean actually hitting each other. The guy also calls me a “Jack-ass” repeatedly but in a voice that is too deep for his face. That almost throws me more than the violence. Fighting in the audience is bad. It is the worst. It indicates a lack of control of the room. It poisons that atmosphere. I can’t ignore it and neither can I be overly flippant. And it has happened on my watch. Perhaps this is the moment it goes tits up? There is a tension, a bad feeling, an ugly mood. The couple are escorted out by security. And they do not go quietly. It drags the whole process out. I wonder how to tackle this. I don’t want to launch into something new while they are still causing a ruckus. I tread water. I feel like a commentator at this moment. There really is an apprehension now. And I could see it sliding away now and never getting it back on track. I remember this happening once before. I can hear little groups breaking away to chat. And I don’t quite know what to do. And then I say wistfully “I wonder if they are going home to have sex?” This speculation concurs with the audience and it gets the biggest laugh of the set. I have struck a different tone with it now and for the first time it seems I am totally in control of the room. I start deconstructing the couples relationship and hit a seam of comedy, this, I realize, I should have been doing all along and to hell with the pre written routines. All the seats are taken, there is standing room only at the back and so now people filter down the front and take the rows vacated by the domestic violence couple. I start a riff about reserve audience members standing by in case something should happen to the original audience. Like co-pilots on a plane. I have found my stride with the disruption. More chaos ensues. People get up and leave, others come in, people shout out. But now I am able to weave it into the fabric of this ad-lib. It goes on for about seven minutes. It is the most fun I have on stage this year. I pull it back into material right at the end just to round of the set. I pull out an old routine about “something to tell the grandkids” I don’t use it anymore but it seems apt tonight and hopefully I can fake it as ad-libbed to round of my turn.
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