Blog: Moon Horse In The West End

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So, after my practice with A Little Orchestra i HURTLED back into central London to The Old Coffee House, the venue for our penultimate Moon Horse preview. Steve was already there and various people filtered in over the course of the next couple of hours, until we were really rather FULL. It was noticeable that the audience was mostly LADIES, but HEY! With two crazy hunks of manliness like me and Mr S Hewitt in the show, what do you expect?

That said, the presence of our top quality support act, Jim'll's Brain might feasibly have been an explanation. He had to get changed/painted in the room itself, as the toilets were too small for his purposes - he joked about this destroying the magic and i LARFED, only to be HORRIFIED ten minutes later when I realised he didn't paint his BACK green! THAT'S WHY HE WEARS A CAPE!!

I was actually really properly a bit taken aback! HOWEVER this didn't stop him being SUPERB. He's just brilliant, is Jim'll, there's nobody like him. The things he sings about could easily come over a bit RUM but he does it all with such charm, delight and presence you can't help but love him, and when he launches into the Entirely Gag Free songs it feels RIGHT. He sings lots of stuff about stalking and general mental illness which lesser performers might (well, DO) play for laughs AGAINST/AT the people he's singing about, but with Jim'll it's background, giving a window into completely different ideas that nobody else looks at. I'm explaining it in a bit of a po-faced way I think, but basically: go and see him, he's ACE!

After a short break it was US, and we got off to a slightly NERVOUS start. I reckon it is the ROOM, as EXACTLY the same thing happened when we did the Dinosaur Planet West End Finale there a few months ago. Words which we KNOW were forgotten and there was the hint of FEAR in a LOVELY room, but after five or ten minutes we got into our STRIDE and it was GRATE. When we did Dinosaur Planet there were several patches that I knew NEVER got LARFS, where there'd be stretches of SILENCE as the audience listened and waited for the GAGS to start agin, but this time there was laughing and GIGGLES all the way through. I know it was a very FRIENDLY audience mostly of CHUMS but still, the single section where everyone was QUIETENED (i think it's when Geoffrey and Sir Wilberforce discuss following the trail of acorns - gosh, that sounds INTRIGUING, right kids?) stuck out like the proverbial sore BUM.

So yes, we were very very pleased, not least because in front of an audience who CLAPPED and LARFED as much as we could possibly hope for we still brought it in at 56 minutes. PHEW! That should make us FINE for our hour long slot at the Fringe, which is a MIGHT relief!

With the gig complete we retired downstairs for some delicious Brodey's Beer, and the evening descended into CHAT. It was a lovely evening, a fantastic bit of build up for Edinburgh. A week from now we'll be there! EEK!

posted 29/7/2011 by MJ Hibbett

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