drive-in
Veronica Lee
What a year that was. Live performance was stopped dead in its tracks for most of 2020, and comedy – as viscerally live as you can get in dark and sweaty enclosed spaces above pubs or in club basements – was particularly hard hit. Never again, I suspect, will comedy fans complain about the privations of broom-cupboard venues at the Edinburgh Fringe.I'm so glad I went to Glasgow in March to see what turned out to be one of the last major gigs of 2020, Steve Martin and Martin Short (pictured below), who were great fun. But while it wasn't a bumper year for comedy overall – how could it be Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Hot on the heels of The Car Park Club and @TheDriveIn comes Car Park Party, a series of shows presented in partnership with The Comedy Store. Car Park Party presents an evening of four comics doing short sets, presented by an MC.The performance I saw in the beautiful surroundings of Henley Royal Regatta, where the cancelled Henley Festival would normally be held, was hosted by Stephen Grant, who jollied things along nicely and created as much audience participation as is possible at a drive-in – much helped here by the good weather, picnicking guests and the large proportion of the audience Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Drive-ins are now firmly establishing themselves as the only method by which culture fans can see live arts in person for the future. Hot on the heels of The Drive-In Club comes @TheDriveIn, sponsored by Suzuki and produced by Jericho Comedy.The producers are staging two kinds of drive-in shows; those mainly about comedy, and others mainly about film, the latter with a broader entertainment vibe. On the evening I went, a couple of comics and a turntablist were the warm-up acts for the main event, a screening of Grease.Ivo Graham kicked off proceedings and instead of doing a truncated version Read more ...
Veronica Lee
It was a weary and frustrated Dom Joly (★★) who left the stage after performing the first drive-in comedy show in the UK. Sadly it had been, as he said earlier, “the first car crash at a drive-in”.In the inauspicious surroundings of the car park at Brent Cross shopping centre, we were entering the new world of live comedy – where closely packed small rooms above pubs and even socially distanced arenas are verboten for the foreseeable future – but this momentous event had turned into a technical nightmare for the Trigger Happy TV star.His show, Holiday Snaps: Travel and Comedy in the Danger Read more ...