One of the huge delights of the Liverpool theatre calendar is the appearance of the Big Wow team at the Unity Theatre. Their physical comedy performances delight and astound audiences no matter what show they have put on and are firm favourites in Liverpool.
Big Wow consist of three incredible talents that are made up of performers Tim Lynskey and Matt Rutter and the writer Robert Farquhar. Sitting in the Unity theatre before one of their shows and talking to a team that not only thrill audiences but can make them question the world through the use of physical comedy is slightly nerve racking and completely inspiring.
I was able to chat with Aylesbury born writer Robert and the only member of the team that hailed from Liverpool, Tim, before another sell out performance of their incredible show The Art of Falling Apart. Matt Rutter, the man who performs for the best part of the play as the young Scottish man, Callum, is running late due to work commitments but when you are in the company of three of the finest architects of their craft it is something to savour.
Apart from exhausted and tired how are you both?
Tim: “Alright, think so.”
Bob: “Tim’s had a bad cold since we did the shows last week. I think moments like this we have to treasure a bit, you know we have arrived here and we have been doing this slot for nine years. We booked 12 shows this time which is 2 or 3 more than we have ever done before at this time, we are half through now and we have sold every ticket already, there was only one night which we weren’t full. So we have sold 1,175 tickets. So I think for the Unity that’s a big call and we did the show last year and we sold getting on for a thousand tickets then. We have made a show that people want to see and we are really pleased about that.”
How do you manage to keep the show fresh night after night? How do you three keep that that enthusiasm going, especially with the amount of energy you use?
Tim: “We always rehearse before it and we try out new bits before it. Because both Matt and I have full time jobs so getting our heads into it is quite important. Often we will talk about gags that might have worked on the audience the night before or may not have; more often than not we will change a few things.”
Bob: “Not tonight because we are not going to have the time (laughs). Matt’s obviously working till now.”
Tim: “We have been concerned about the running time because it was becoming a little bit longer than we anticipated but last night it came in really quickly, we finished at 25 to 10.”
Bob: “So we did an hour and thirty straight?”
Tim: “Yes.”
It is a punishing role though for both you and Matt?
Tim: “It is but I would say it is a bit more manageable than some of our previous shows because it is so precise and punctuated. We are quite used to the way we work now I think we have found ways to make it more measured.”
Bob: “I think what probably keeps it fresh to some degree is the idea that what Matt and Tim have to do, it’s like this big monstrous thing you know, machine that has its start and finish there and it’s all constructed in that way and the wheels of it could so easily come off, because there really are only two chairs there and it all has to interlock with each other in terms of the words, the rhythms and the physical moves that they make at times. If that doesn’t happen then suddenly the other one might just be thrown out and they have so much to remember that they are always living on their nervous energy. We haven’t done it that much to become complacent.”
There is one particular part in the performance where you are effectively playing six characters, which to an audience member if you are going to lose it anywhere it is there.
Tim: “We have had a couple of moments there.”
Bob: “We are thinking of just doing a show where it is just that for an hour and a bit.”
Tim: “On previous occasions it has mainly been me doing that around Matt and it is the next evolutionary step in which has to be involved as well, a whole show like that.”
Bob: “We have been thinking about that for ages, we just need an idea that would allow that. I don’t think it would be as fast and frenetic because people would just go stop, stop it’s too much (laughs).” It just needs that full throttle story telling of a load of characters interweaving in and out and overlapping. We have always wanted to do it and it sort of is in this show but we haven’t fulfilled the idea of magnolia and short cuts, to have lots of characters in a city and they interweave their stories with each other.”
I am not even going to try and imagine how you would do that! I have only been fortunate to see two of your productions, The Art of Falling Apart and The Friendship Experiment. How does your other work compare?
Bob: “Are they the only two shows you have seen? We might revive Insomnababble which was our big hit and there is hundreds of people that won’t have seen that!
Matt: “I think because it has been a while there are people that would like to see it again.”
Tim: “It would be interesting for us to do it again.”
How would you say the audience reactions have been to the shows?
Matt: “Last night a guy just shouted out Emu! and then said I paid a tenner for this and walked out ten minutes later. Ten minutes later he walked back in.”
Bob: “Luckily I wasn’t there, I would get so angry. Where was he sat?”
Matt: “The middle, the middle of the theatre. The lady who was with him was repeatedly hitting him on the back of the head during the show.”
Bob: “On the whole (laughs) people for this show…audiences have a tendency to stand up at the end on the whole.”
Matt: “I think people feel more emotionally moved by this than anything we have done before.”
Bob: “We always wanted that idea of wanting to see two actors really working like a boxing match and that is part of the magic of Big Wow being a great live theatrical experience and so often it is just with the two chairs, or one chair or a hat stand but there we have two blokes onstage.
Are you aware of the audience when you are there on stage?
Tim: “I think in this one we are quite a bit. I have quite a big monologue which I have to deliver to the audience. Matt’s got quite the core of it.”
Matt: “Yes obviously you are aware but quite a lot of our stuff is quite rhythmical and fast there’s not a huge amount of time to consider what response we are getting. We are on this track and we are going to go on till we get off it. I think sometimes though you can feel the audience focusing hard on it.”
You two are incredibly close on stage because of the nature of the performance, are the three of you as close as a unit?
Matt: “Yes, we are close. We don’t really have any issues. We like doing this.”
Tim: “It’s not easy.”
Matt: “Oh no it’s not easy!”
Bob: “I quite like the Big Wow thing because it’s the closest I have ever been into a band really. I would defend us to the hilt. We have this certain attitude and we work incredibly hard.”
When I reviewed the play a couple of years ago I likened the experience to watching some forgotten Monty Python, the physical acting relationship say between John Cleese and Michael Palin or even John Cleese to Andrew Sachs, that incredible intense performance.
Matt: “I would make a good waiter wouldn’t I? (laughs).
Bob: I don’t think Python is much of a part of the teams D.N.A., it is a great experience. I went to see Monty Python live at the Dury Lane when I was 13, It was probably the most awesome experience of my life.”
Matt: “Mine’s probably Ridiculusmus or Bottom.”
Bob: “We all loved things like Bottom.”
Tim: “Especially the early Rik and Ade stuff where they would just hit each other.”
Bob: “The Fast Show with Paul Whitehouse, he is a genius! They would be our comedy heroes.
You all met at Hope University didn’t you?
Bob: “I was the lecturer and Matt and Tim were in classes.”
Tim: “Matt was actually the first person I met at University and I didn’t see him again for the rest of the time I was there.”
Matt: “It was the last thing we did, we all worked together on a production called Road.”
Bob: “Which I directed, Matt at that point had been in a play that I wrote that was staged at the Unity.”
Matt: “Was that before that?”
Bob: “Yes. I felt that Matt been to my classes and I had written this play for a young lad, (laughs) because I wasn’t 20/21 at the time. I was a bit nervous and I wanted to ask Matt because I was still teaching. We got talking one day and it seemed a bit fortuitous and somehow it all evolved into Big Wow.”
What is next for the Big Wow team?
Matt: “Either a bigger show where have lots of set and stuff…”
Tim: “A set that we really could use and get the most out of.”
Matt: “Yeah, or that idea of the party scene that’s long”
Bob: “We might do something that’s really arty, or I am interested in doing something where the actor plays the same character so it is more like a play but it would still be Big Wow-ified but we can’t get back together now till mid-March.”
Ian D. Hall