POLICE COPS: BADASS BE THY NAME at the VAULT Festival
★★★★
“the physical comedy and the easy rapport with the audience is what we’re all there for.”
Comedy trio Police Cops (Zachary Hunt, Nathan Parkinson and Tom Roe) are on a nationwide tear with their latest show Badass Be Thy Name. And to judge from the packed space at the VAULT Festival last night, their audiences can’t get enough of them. With an hour of fast paced comic situations, sight gags, and ingenious costumes—these guys pull off (and pull down) their particular brand of humour with flair. They also pull it off with a bare minimum of staging.
The plot is also barely there. Badass Be Thy Name is a confused mix of a 1990s northern bloke comedy about a man leaving his soul crushing telemarketing job for more meaningful encounters in the Manchester clubbing scene. We know this won’t end well, right? Especially as there has been a series of mysterious murders of young men in the vicinity of the Hacienda Club where Tommy goes to dance away his troubles. In the midst of a medley of good music and even better drugs, (and lots of references to popular culture of the time) our hero encounters the mysterious Father Badass of St. Bartholomew’s. Badass is the man who swoops in to rescue him from a bunch of vampires, and inspires Tommy to sign on to the vampire busting team. From there Badass Be Thy Name devolves into a tale of runaway fathers, and bum baring stepfathers (and other father figures). Tommy and Father Badass take on the lord of the vampires, Satan himself, as Satan attempts to find a portal into 1990s Manchester in a search for better sweets. Does the plot make sense? Not really. But then it doesn’t have to. Because the physical comedy and the easy rapport with the audience is what we’re all there for.
Hunt, Parkinson and Roe switch characters and situations with breathtaking speed. They often flub their lines, corpse, or just give up and give the audience the side eye when they trip themselves up in the scene they’re presenting. Again, it doesn’t matter. It all just makes the audience laugh harder. And their brand of gangly undergraduate humour is what keeps this madcap tale afloat. There are also some genuinely inventive moments involving costumes that become vending machines, socks that become swords (you have to be there) and ziplines. The ziplines are there to deliver action figure stand ins into epic fight situations when the constraints of the Vaults can’t give these guys the Hollywood blockbuster ending they’re searching for. A lot of Police Cops’ appeal is that they give the audience’s imaginations a workout as well.
Badass Be Thy Name is an hour of fast paced fun that will appeal to audiences in search of a nostalgic trip to an imagined Manchester in 1999. Go for the awful puns, references to Lord of the Rings (the earlier, animated one) and some wildly anachronistic, self referential jokes about writing a play and putting it on. There’s something for everyone.
“an intriguing mix of gifted improvisers and some still learning their craft”
The Free Association Improv Company is well named. Its latest offering, 666 Hell Lane, is an illuminating example of the company’s particular style of work. Staged in the appropriately named Crypt space at the VAULTS, Free Association present sixty minutes of “comedy horror”. The performance style is a low key kind of humour, filled with lots of references to contemporary movies, movie stars, and classic horror genres. But if you’re expecting to be scared out of your seats, or left aching with laughter, 666 Hell Lane will leave you, ultimately, a tad underwhelmed.
There’s still plenty to appreciate in Free Association’s work, however. The company is committed. There are several talented improvisers in the team. So what’s 666, Hell Lane about? On this particular evening, it’s about two start up creators who have lost their way in a forbidding forest in the middle of the night. It’s only a matter of time before they see a light among the trees, and find a creepy hotel presided over by a creepy host. Sound familiar? Yes, said host looks faintly reminiscent of Riff Raff from the Rocky Horror Show. Sadly, there is no Frank ’n Furter to accompany him, but there are a lot of jokes about Rupert Grint. Either the Harry Potter star is a friend of the company, or else he is desperate for some publicity. And some work. But I digress. Seriously, 666 Hell Lane is all about digressions.
So let’s just back up a moment. Why have the heroes of this particular evening’s horror story, Bash and Crash, lost their way? Well, that’s how each Free Association show begins. The audience is asked to provide a question as a jumping off point for the evening’s comedy/horror story. The company take the question, “free associate” from scene to scene, until, eventually, many shaggy dog stories later, some sort of a conclusion is reached. On this particular evening, the audience asked “Why am I here?” It’s a nightmare question, really, and it says much for the performers that they took that on board, in the ironic spirit intended, and ran all over the set with it. A tortuous tale of disappearing diners emerged, complete with bumbling policemen, neighbourhood comedians desperate to deliver punchlines if not narrative coherence, zombies, and “genre hopping.” Every so often the audience would find themselves in yet another narrative space, and the diner would make a shift back to the hotel, or a video rental store, for example. (Do we still have those?) The contemporary culture jokes would then get a work out. Yep, these guys are pretty slick with all their self-referential irony. Hence all the Rupert Grint jokes, one presumes. And for some reason, Cate Blanchett’s Tàr came in for a lot of heavy hitting.
666, Hell Lane is not the worst way to spend 60 minutes, even if trains rumble loudly overhead every so often, and drown out the dialogue. You might miss a few essential plot points in that particular scene, but rest assured that if the cast gets into narrative trouble, there is always another performer waiting in the background to tap a shoulder, and get stuck into taking the story in yet another seemingly random direction. Performers Alex Holland, Graham Dickson, Alison Thea-Skot, Mariam Haque, Kiran Benawra, Luke Healy, Kat Bond and Laura Riseborough are an intriguing mix of gifted improvisers and some still learning their craft. At its best, free association is this company’s super power. But they could still use a more energetic presentation if they wish to use this American performance style and make it their own.
