Blog: A Night Of Unnecessary Detail

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On Monday night I headed off to see An Evening Of Unnecessary Detail, a night of New Stuff put together by the Festival Of The Spoken Nerd people. It was taking place in The Cockpit Theatre in Marylebone, which is not a venue I've been to before, and in a bit of London I'm not very familiar with, so wasn't sure how to get there. Rather wonderfully, as I was stood around trying to find a map in St Pancras station, I saw the mighty SUSAN, Totally Acoustic regular and all-round excellent gig-goer. walking past. "I bet she's going where I'm going", I thought, and LO! she very much was, and entirely knew the way, so we went together. This was GRATE not only because I GOT there, but also because I had someone excellent to chat to there and back - HOORAH!

When we arrived at the theatre we found Ms H Arney on the door. I haven't seen for AGES, and in the time SINCE I last saw her it appears that she and her colleagues have become Interweb Superstars with YouTube Channels and LITERALLY MILLIONS of Followers and Socials and BOOK DEALS and all sorts of things like that. It's always a bit weird to me when this happens as I tend to think "Oh look, there's Helen who does Totally Acoustic" whereas other people think "EEE! That's Helen Arney Off The YouTubes And Everything!" It's similar to how I think of Mr M Zaltz Austwick as Martin From Big Tim's Gigs And Also The Fire Marshal At My UCL Job" whereas since those days he and especially his wife Mrs H Zaltzman are GLOBAL SUPERSTARS who do gigs on FLIPPING BROADWAY for heaven's sake! It is all rather wonderful, but it does make me think that maybe I'm in the wrong line of work!

Anyway, we went in and got ourselves sat in the LOVELY Theatre, what was in The Traverse Style i.e. there were seats on three sides. We were on one of the aforesaid sides which meant I could see the semi-concealed TIMER that all the acts had, showing them how much of their 12 minutes were left. I flipping LOVE this, as it was similar to the timers at the wheelchair basketball last week. Apparently it is A THING with us SPECIAL PEOPLE that we like to know exactly how long an event or other appointment is going to last, and I think ALL shows should have something similar. Imagine how great it would be if a PLAY had a countdown running to the end - especially for SPECIAL PEOPLE like me who also have SPECIAL BLADDERS!

There were many INTERESTING and INTRIGUING topics covered, with my favourites being a talk about LIMPETS and another about CLOTHES PEGS. These were especially good because they were funny but also DEAD INTERESTING. I'm beginning to realise that one of the reasons I don't really like most stand-up comedy is because it tends to be POINTLESS - just someone SAYING things with the sole purpose of getting a LARF, whereas FACT-BASED COMEDY contains LARFS but usually leans towards THE FACTS being the point, with the LARFS coming along as a by-product, which appears to be how I prefer it.

I should also say that the BAR STAFF at The Cockpit were excellent - there was a HEFTY queue at the break which they worked through diligently and at speed. It may seem a trivial thing, but TOO MANY TIMES have I been to The Theatre and been ENRAGED by the vast incompetence of the way the bars are organised, but here it was GRATE!

It was a pretty GRATE evening all together I must say, and also pretty LENGTHY, so it was Quite Late when we me and Susan finally emerged and headed back to Edgeware Station. I've got a couple more of these sort of gigs to go to over the new few months, so I will monitor the FACT-BASED COMEDY situation closely and report further!

posted 11/9/2024 by MJ Hibbett

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Comments:

A traverse theatre has the audience facing each other on either side of the stage, rather like the UK Parliament commons. The clue is in the name. If on three sides, that's a thrust stage. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traverse_stage https://illuminated-integration.com/blog/types-of-stages/#:~:text=Thrust%20Stage&text=While%20the%20end%20stage%20has,proscenium%20and%20into%20the%20audience.
posted 11/9/2024 by a stagehand's life for me

The Cockpit is, usually, properly In The Round*, so sounds like they just fancied not having people on one side? *have been many times for The Wrestling before the thing...
posted 11/9/2024 by Carsmile

Does your Special Bladder have anything to do with Special Brew?
posted 12/9/2024 by insert 'piss artist' joke here.

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