Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7/10
Clever comedy used to be sneered at, it would be seen by some as the preserve of a university system that was, possibly rightly, too elite for many to understand. Perhaps with the great timing that the Cosmos affords us, the only creatures on the planet that deal in time as a concept rather than just the way of marking the difference between night and day or when to mate and eat and die, the 20th Anniversary of the legendary American Bill Hicks’ passing has been more kind to this type of humour.
Of course there is a huge difference between Bill Hicks and Steve Punt and Hugh Dennis but at their very core, the very belief of comedy is not just to make people laugh but also to make them think on how absurd the world really is. In that quest Hugh Dennis and Steve Punt succeeded, they also showed exactly what is missing from live comedy when the people behind it stay away too long and become entrenched in television and radio for too long.
Hugh Dennis and Steve Punt have always been able to garner affection, their stage craft is without dispute and Hugh Dennis especially just knows which buttons to press, buttons slightly lower down the trouser leg of comedy, as he exclaimed that he has lost half his act as he can no longer mention somebody’s name. The wonderful way in which he feels less inhibited from his television duties is clearly evident as he rises to the occasion many times as poor Steve Punt looks amusingly aghast as he tries to keep a lid on the ever more frantic pace in which the lines are being delivered and the moments of well-structured Ad Lib are to be praised.
From the look at how television coverage has expanded exponentially, without necessarily adding any benefit to the viewer, the remarkable way in European countries were asked to celebrate the anniversary of the Treaty of Rome, including a very surreal but perhaps highly logical way in which Cyprus added to the festivities and how passing T.B. between badger and cow is just a black and white issue, this was Steve Punt and Hugh Dennis on good quick-fire form.
To see both men in action on stage is surely a particular thrill for many in the audience and for Steve Punt and Hugh Dennis to have received tremendous appreciation and a genuine sense of affection from a Liverpool audience that never suffers fools gladly and who understood the satire and some of the more off beat jokes more than perhaps anywhere else on the tour, would clearly have been a huge boost.
Punt and Dennis certainly gave a lively performance at The Playhouse Theatre and one in which to revel in.
Ian D. Hall