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Review: 'BAILEY, BILL'
'London, Leicester Square Theatre, 18th August 2015'   


-  Genre: 'Spoken Word'

Our Rating:
The last time I saw Bill Bailey perform it was in front of about 25,000 people at Sonisphere a couple of years ago, so to see him performing his new show "Work In Progress" at the intimate Leicester Square Theatre (capacity aprox 300 people) was a cool opportunity. I assume that when he tours the show fully it will be re-named something snappy like 'Work Completed'.

It's been a while since I've been in this great old church hall that used to hold some of the most spaced out gigs of the late 80's/early 90's when it was known as the Notre Dame Hall. Since those days, they have now put some seats in and tarted it up a bit.

Bill was performing without any supports and came out to enthusiastic applause. He started the set with some political stuff about the last election and the horror of the new Tory government. Then we had some cool stuff about Contemporary Jazz that got most of us laughing but not as much as one bloke who sounded like he was being paid to laugh like a braying donkey all night long. Never mind, at least one or two people knew what his new Brazilian drum type thing was called, even if Bill couldn't play it.

The stuff about Bill and everyone else's Twitter account was cool and we had a brief bit of slapstick with a ladder that I'm not sure worked that well. Certainly not as well as the stuff about the toaster and as ever he plays several instruments during the show. The best bit being when he sat at the piano for a new Happy Birthday song, written and played in the style of Kurt Weill. That got by far the biggest laughs and round of applause of the night and it was totally spontaneous. As Bill did try a few times to get the Tuesday night audience clapping and it didn't quite happen.

He did a couple of very brief poems that got a chuckle or two but still need some work prior to playing what looked at first like a Cigar Box banjo but turned out to be a Bible Mandolin and sounded great.

He finished the set with a piece about how it irks him when people give the standard answer to the question "how are you?" Of Not Too Bad all things considered this was very funny indeed and we know where he's coming from.

He came back for the encore which was his dub version of the theme to Downton Abbey which was really good and very funny even if like me you've never seen the programme in question.It also included a little bit about Birding in Indonesia which was also pretty good.

This was a cool show to see and obviously once he's tuned it up it will probably be even better, so the forthcoming tour will surely be worth catching.
  author: simonovitch

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