Catherine Bennett resumes the weekly look at the performing arts world, with the sad end of Jerusalem, the luck of a cabbie, and French revolt. Do you hear the people sing?
Adam Alcock reviews Nigel Kennedy playing Vivaldi's Four Seasons and his own Four Elements at York Opera House.
Catherine Bennett highlights the trends in the performing arts world today.
Jonathan Cridford reviews 'Ghosts', one of the Freshers' plays for this year.
Playing a succession of what his tour manager deems “boutique” locations, Cochrane is clearly comfortable in such an intimate venue (and The Basement really is intimate – think 100 people crammed into the space of an average sized seminar room. Yes, it gets pretty toasty.). Despite encountering a very shy York audience that evening, he made attempts to interact with people who eventually warmed up, but didn’t exactly provide dynamite, apart from a guy who had a proud knowledge of German toilets. However, it didn’t really matter, as Cochrane’s material was more than enough to extract some proper belly laughs throughout the evening.
Whilst there are many comedians who favour the “I am angry at inconsequential matters, raaarrr!” approach – it seems to be all the rage these days, ho ho – Cochrane has mastered the delivery of his rants so that they are permanently hilarious. Nothing escapes his wrath: air fresheners, fridges, Alan Titchmarsh cardboard cut-outs... This, added with his hypothetical musings, often had the audience in stitches and the time just flew by. Even with Cochrane’s frequent deadpan approach, I also found him more endearing than comedians of a similar mould, such as Jack Dee and Rhod Gilbert.
The audience may have been reserved at the start, but Cochrane soon had them producing all number of noises; there were definitely some “AWWW”s when he was at his most self-deprecating, although these were nothing compared to the shrieks of disgust as he relayed dirtier material. He wasn’t talking smut though, or “the nuptials”; it was very much toilets and slugs’ innards. Drawing only from his personal experiences though, there was a danger that some of Cochrane’s material might not have been entirely relatable. Some of his anger about mortgages and estate agents went over my head, being the young whippersnapper that I am, but they were still enjoyed by the people around us who were guffawing in recognition.
Cochrane states that he has no interest in playing stadiums, mainly because he’d “feel guilty about all the traffic [he’d] cause,” but also because he thinks anecdotes about corned beef hash may not ring true with nine thousand people. Maybe. However, I can still see Cochrane’s shows selling out for many years to come, so with any luck he’ll soon pay off that mortgage.
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