Hello and welcome to our very first brand new monthly Norwich Playhouse podcast.
My name is Kaz.
And I'm Tristan.
This is where you can hear all the latest news about our shows and events, staff recommendations about things you really, really should see, and we have some interviews with some performers who've been at the Playhouse.
This month, because it's our first podcast, we've got two interviews to bring you.
The first is with Adam Buxton, who's a Radio 6 DJ, half of the Adam and Jo show, and he presents BUG, the evolution of the music video, which is our regular music video showcase at the Norwich Playhouse.
The second interview is with comedian David O'Doherty, who's a fan of tiny, tiny little keyboards, and he won the 2008 Edinburgh Comedy Award, which was formerly known as the Perrier.
As well as that, we're going to tell you about what's going on in the theatre and what's happening in the bar this month, including some shows that we're personally looking forward to, so let's jump straight into that.
So Kaz, what are you looking forward to at the Playhouse this month?
One of the shows I'm really looking forward to is called Switch.
It's a dance piece presented by Ace Dance and Music, that's short for African Cultural Exchange.
They're a really big, very well acclaimed dance company.
The show is on Friday the 5th and Saturday the 6th of March, 7.30.
It's a beautifully choreographed multimedia dance piece.
It's in a black and white space.
I've seen some of the trailers on YouTube.
It looks absolutely breathtaking.
It's just all a mixture of movement and lights and music and sound.
I think it looks really spectacular.
There are three projectors on the stage and in the air.
There's all sorts of light from the sides and from the top.
It's going to be an absolutely beautiful, beautiful show.
and we're really looking forward to having in the space.
There's nothing better than having dance at the Playhouse because they're so close to you.
You're really sort of part of a wonderful intimate dance piece.
They've hand-picked the dancers.
It's an international company.
There's three from the UK, three international dancers.
They're just the very, very best at what they do.
It should just look beautiful.
And what are you looking forward to, Tristan, that's coming up this month?
Well, obviously I'm an enormous sucker for anything cabaret burlesque style, so what we've got is on the 13th of March we have the Tigerlilies doing songs from Shockhead Peter and other gory stories.
Now these guys are absolutely wonderful.
They're a trio of musicians who sing strange, macabre, terrifying children's songs which you would never ever let your children...
here.
They're doing songs from their album Shocked Peter which is just one of my favourite albums.
On it there's a song called Suck a Thumb which is based on old German folk stories about a child who sucks his thumb and his mother warns him, oh don't suck your thumb or bad things will happen and then he sucks his thumb and then bad things happen with scissors and removing of thumbs.
Oh it's absolutely terrifying but sort of magnificent.
So I'm really looking forward to that.
That's going to be on Saturday the 13th of March at 8pm.
and tickets are £15 and that is a 16 and up because it is going to be quite terrifying but in a fabulous, burlesque, magnificent sort of way.
I'm so excited about that show as well.
And it's for anyone, if you've been to Burlesque Nights, if that's your kind of thing, if you're into Tim Burton, if you came to see Camila O'Sullivan last year, she is amazing.
I'm such a fan.
Anything like that, then it's definitely something you have to come and check out.
They're huge at the Edinburgh Festival, but I don't think they've played in East Anglia very much at all.
They've certainly not been in Norwich for a few years, if ever.
So really take the opportunity, come and see them.
They'll just be blowing your mind.
Oh, it'll be exciting.
Oh, we're looking forward to it.
Now it's the first of our interviews with people who are performing at the Playhouse.
This is with Mr Adam Buxton, who is one half of Adam and Jo, who had their fabulous TV show in the late 90s and now they have their own radio show on BBC Six Music.
So we decided to aim high with our very first podcast and interview the man whose podcast is the most popular in the UK.
Okay, I'll run this show.
Let me tell you listeners that my name is Adam Buxton, and I'm sat here in the control room of the Norwich Playhouse, just about to go on stage and do Bug, the evolution of music video.
This is the third time I've been here at the Norwich Playhouse, actually the fourth, because we did a show last night, which was good fun.
What have you been doing since the last bug in September?
Since the last bug?
Crikey, what have I been doing?
Was it only in September?
It was only in September.
I don't know.
I never know what I'm doing from one moment to the next.
I'm like a kind of rudderless boat of stupidity, like with one man just flailing around, drifting from shore to shore with no real clue of why he's doing it.
And then every now and again, someone will put their hand on my rudder.
That sounds a little saucy, doesn't it?
but I don't mean it like that, and they maybe will steer me to a friendly shore, and I will do some enjoyable work.
Or maybe they will steer me directly into the rocks, and I'll become embroiled in a project that perhaps isn't quite so salubrious.
Basically, Christmas happened.
Christmas happened, yeah, it did.
And Christmas for me is about a two-month operation.
Build up to Christmas, Christmas, recovery from Christmas.
Two months.
And by the end of January, I'm just about back together again.
Nice.
Did you have a nice Norfolk-y Christmas?
It was great.
Yeah, really good.
Yeah, there's a couple of days when all the pipes froze.
So I just filled up loads of old, you know, gallon milk cartons, washed them all out, filled them all up with water, stored them in the shed.
I was like a kind of hairy survival man.
Well done.
Yeah, that's country living.
How long have you been living here now?
Just over a year.
And enjoy it very much.
Yeah, it's lovely.
Everything about it, except for the pipe freezing business.
But I think we've
sorted that now we found the offending pipes and we buried them beneath the ground where they belong well done indeedy along with my enemies when you're doing live performance yeah what has been your worst ever heckle
Once I was doing a gig in North London, preparing to go to Edinburgh with this show I did called I, Pavel, where I was kind of a very angry, pretentious Russian animator, you know?
And also I would read poems, that kind of thing.
It was quite an obscure, strange kind of a character.
So I went up to play this really rough pub in North London.
And I come on with my lame East European accent and start reading poems that I've written.
And at one point I said, I shall read some poems.
And this really frightening looking BNP type guy in the front row just went, don't.
And the whole room was silent.
It was not a good atmosphere.
There was an atmosphere of impending violence.
And luckily, because my character was quite a shouty character, I was able just to shout at him in character.
But I was ready to run.
Was that very good fun though?
No, that was bad fun.
Really?
Not even a little bit enjoyable shouting at the PMP men?
No, that was on no level fun.
So you just think that was the worst night of my life?
Oh no!
I've learned nothing except that I shouldn't do my obscure East European animated character in rough working men's pubs in North London, which I knew already.
Continuing on the theme of violence, with who are you currently in an East Coast, West Coast hip-hop style rivalry?
Ooh, I try and avoid rivalries.
They always send in tears.
Maybe the stereophonics.
It's fairly one way because I don't believe the stereophonics are in any way aware of my existence.
Uh, and it all started basically, it's like a pathetic grudge.
I, I feel like everyone's got to hold one grudge, right?
So even though I know actually that they're quite nice fellows and I've met them a couple of times and deep down don't have that much against their music, although I'm not a massive fan, I must say.
But once my dad interviewed them years ago at a festival like V97 or something, and we were filming it for our TV show.
You know, the deal was that my dad is an old duffer, he doesn't know who he's interviewing, really.
And they were quite off with him, right?
A little bit rude, a bit offhand, and took the mick out of him in a way that I didn't appreciate.
So ever since that time, you know, I've just been sort of rude.
I mean, these are soft targets.
I'm hoping they won't lose any sleep over me sniping at them from the margins.
What shows coming up at the Playhouse are you looking forward to?
Zoe Lyons.
I did a gig with Zoe Lyons once.
She was nice.
I mean, it always comes down to the word nice with me generally.
If people aren't absolutely appalling, then they're nice, which in my book is very good.
I was always told off at school for using the word nice because it's too neutral.
It doesn't say anything.
But I think it says quite a lot.
You know, there's an art to being nice.
Not that many people are nice.
And Zoe Lyons is one of them.
Richard Herring with his Hitler moustache, 3rd of April.
That is an amazing bit of photography that he's got done for his tour.
He's got someone to take a brilliant picture of him looking exactly like Adolf Hitler.
That's not only a great bit of photography, I mean, that's just a brilliant photograph.
He looks really sinister.
That sounds good, man.
Sunday Telegraph are calling it superbly constructed and wickedly clever.
It is.
Both of those things.
There's a glaring absence of quotes on my bug page.
I don't know if bugs ever been reviewed, actually.
I'm quite happy.
Time Out says something like it's the classiest way to catch up with what's happening in the music video world.
There you go.
I like the thought there's a grubby way to catch up with what's happening in the music video.
Yeah, that's right.
I know.
The tacky way of catching up.
You're going round the back of pubs and sort of, you know, can you show me something really cool and exciting?
Classy's not a word I'd use to describe anything that I do, really, but there you go.
Endearingly shambolic is about the best I could ever hope for, but I'll take whatever praise I can get.
Thanks.
Thank you very, very much, Mr. Buxton.
Thanks a lot.
Thanks for allowing me to ramble with you.
That was us meeting Adam Buxton.
Bug Music Videos 4 is on sale now.
It's on Thursday the 10th of June at 8pm and you can come down and you can watch the latest selection of the most breathtaking and amazing and fabulous music videos from all across the world.
So now is the section we would call the Playhouse News if it had an official title, but instead I think I'll just tell you some exciting things that have happened and are going to happen coming up soon.
Tell me what's happening, Kaz.
First of all, we've had two comedians
Mr. Chris Addison and Stuart Lee, who've been doing shows this season, or will be, and they've been so popular, they've completely sold out their original dates.
So we've managed to confirm second dates for both of them.
Chris Addison's original show is on the 29th of February, completely gone.
His new show is now on Wednesday the 7th of April, and there are still plenty of tickets left for that one, so you can come down.
He's the guy who's in In The Loop and The Thick of It, wrote for Lab Rats, very, very funny man, lots of curly black hair.
Stuart Lee's original show in early March has also completely sold out.
Stuart Lee is a comedy legend.
We've already seen this show.
It's absolutely fabulous.
So please come down and watch it.
The new show is on Friday the 30th of April, again at eight o'clock.
And there are still tickets left for that one.
Also something to look out for this month is our new summer season.
New season.
All very exciting.
Particularly, we have some very, very big comedy names coming.
Not telling you what they are yet.
We're not allowed to tell.
We really want to, but we're not allowed.
And these are people that are going to sell out incredibly quickly, probably within 48 hours.
So what you have to do is keep an eye out on our website, which is the first place most of the new shows will be announced.
Those should be going up from the first or second week in March.
And then a little bit later on in the month, our new paper brochure will be out.
You can find that in the Theatre Foyer, all across the city, shops, bars, restaurants.
It's bright pink, so you're not going to be able to miss it on the flyer's shelf.
In theatre at the Playhouse this month, we have three fabulous shows coming up.
We have Unexpected Opera doing Orpheus Down Under.
This is an Australian themed version of Offenbach's Orpheus and the Underworld.
Last time they came they did The Barber of Savile Row.
Which was rather spectacular and rather silly.
And that's on Thursday the 11th and Friday the 12th of March at 7.30pm.
Next practical productions bring us A Midsummer Night's Dream.
It's classic Shakespeare, what more can you say really?
It's going to be on Tuesday the 16th and Wednesday the 17th of March.
OK, this one's rather exciting.
This is actually a playhouse pick from the Edinburgh Festival.
Les Enfants Thoribes present Ernest and the Pale Moon.
which is a rather creepy gothic horror.
Alfred Hitchcock meets Edgar Allan Poe.
It's on Saturday the 27th and there's a show at 6 and at 8.30pm.
This is going to be absolutely amazing.
Yeah, anyone who's coming along to the Tiger Lilies should definitely consider this.
It's something I went to see in Edinburgh and it's very creepy and really, really creatively done.
Lots of physical theatre, very good storytelling, really, really good show.
And that one's a 13+.
OK, this is the second of our two comedy interviews.
This interview is with David O'Doherty, who was with us on Friday the 6th of February.
Wonderful man.
We love him very, very much.
And afterwards, he ate crispy snacks with us, which we think was a lovely, lovely thing of him.
So this is our interview with David O'Doherty.
Hello, dudes.
Thank you very much.
What a fascinating control room it is with the two guitars, electric guitar, acoustic guitar.
Oh, someone smashed that guitar.
Very smashed.
It's got an irregular lateral acoustic hole.
There's something curious about smashing an acoustic guitar, you know what I mean?
That classical guitar rage.
Yeah.
After a particularly difficult flamenco piece, chugga-da-jung, crunch.
It's just too fiddly.
Welcome back to the Playhouse.
And you were here last February.
Thank you very much.
Yes, I was here.
And more people are coming tonight.
They are, yes.
Yeah, I don't know how many more, but certainly a few more.
And that's the most satisfying thing, because
you know if you do an alright, you don't really find out whether last year's show was any good when you go back the next year and if more people have come.
Less people means last year a bit of a stinky boots.
I have been on the road for about the last ten months just doing lots and lots of gigs in different places but this is one of the really fun ones so yeah it's good.
Well hopefully more fun than Cheltenham.
No that's not true.
Of course we're more fun than Cheltenham.
Cheltenham was good fun.
Right, on our list of exciting and novel questions, what object would make your tour more pleasant?
Um, A, maybe a tour bus.
But, you know, it doesn't... I tour with a sports bag with a keyboard in it.
I think that might sort of break the bank as regards the budget of the tour if we did get the bus in with the jacuzzi and the entourage.
Absolutely.
You guys are my entourage tonight.
Yes, we will be your entourage tonight.
We'll make way as you go into the bar.
Excuse me, Mr O'Doherty's coming through.
It'll be very intimidating.
Yeah, we're very intimidating.
That's a lot of touring, ten months.
Yeah, well, I mean, I can't do anything else.
Well, I guess I can write, but I write on trains and write on buses.
It's a bit lonely when you're on your own.
But then, I mean, in March, I get to go and do some gigs in Australia.
That's with Josie Long and
I think Daniel Kitson and a few others.
We'll all be staying in the same hotel.
Oh, that sounds like really good fun.
Yeah, no, it's unbelievable.
Comedian road trip!
Yeah!
Oh, it's absolute summer camp.
It's trips, ten pin bowling and everything.
With whom are you currently in an East Coast, West Coast hip hop style rivalry?
Well, I have some beefs, certainly.
I wrote this book with Claudia and Mike, my friends, of made-up facts about pandas.
And they're blatantly made-up facts in the book.
And National Geographic did a review of the book.
And they said they quite liked it, but there were some factual inaccuracies in the book.
But the thing was, the problem wasn't that these are made up facts by pandas.
There's one fact, which is that our fact is due to a mistake by Dr. Joseph Banks in 1820.
No, sorry, in 1831, the panda bear is officially classified not as a mammal, but as a nut, like an error in registration.
And National Geographic seized upon that and said that that was an example of a factual inaccuracy because he died in 1820, disregarding the whole nut aspect.
So National Geographic, you can't really get angry at that.
It'd be like getting angry at Attenborough or something.
I was going to say, do you have any strongly worded letters from David Attenborough?
Other beefs?
I'll pick someone obscure and have a beef with them.
Do you know who I really hate?
Who do you really hate?
Josie Long.
She is the nicest person.
Is that why you're going on tour with her?
So you can stalk her down?
Yeah.
I can just put her down slightly in different ways and just undermine her confidence all the time.
Just pulling that homemade rug she has from beneath her.
Cool.
I wrote children's books for a while and I did a reading in a children's library and about 10 minutes in, a boy who was about six put up his hand and he said, excuse me, does this get good soon?
Something I've wanted to say and we've all wanted to say quite a lot in our lives, you know, be it during family dues or maybe even during a relationship, just raising your hand one morning going, is there any chance that this is just all it is?
Is this the size of it?
I'm going to start asking that now.
Yeah, all the time.
What a brilliant idea.
Yeah.
Is there anything coming up at the Playhouse soon that you would like to see?
Well let's have a look through it.
Poppies are playing here now.
They are.
And they stayed at my house in Dublin the last two nights, the three of them.
Oh really?
And one of them, Matthew, the guy in the pictures with the sort of Prince Valiant hair,
He uses Lynx, Lynx Africa, the deodorant for 11 year olds.
And so, yeah, my house now smells of Lynx, smells of horny children.
Chris Addison is playing.
Chris is brilliant.
Chris and I invented a thing called Troomers, which we're trying to make up rumours about our friends that were so dull and boring.
that people would just accept them.
And so the one he made up about me was that David had already once had a job playing keyboards on the Irish version of The Weakest Link.
Oh, that's amazing.
Which is so bland.
Everyone just went, did he?
Oh, wow.
So all I could return with was Chris Addison's father owns the largest chain of garden centres in the north of England.
And again, people, I think, started asking him questions about bulbs and things.
Stuart Lee is playing here.
Stuart is one of my favourite comedians ever and that's a really nice show.
Tom Rigglesworth, what a lovely man.
Oh, Stacey Kent.
I like Stacey Kent, a great singer.
My dad's a jazz pianist so he's played with Stacey Kent.
That's one of the real thrills of this job.
Sometimes you go to a venue
and you see a poster for Dad and his gig there.
It's been on there recently.
Annie is on.
Would you say they put on American accents for that?
I mean, what happens in Annie?
Annie's sad.
She's an orphan.
But then is it like different strokes?
She's eternally perky, even though she's an orphan.
Wow, little ginger lady.
The sun come out.
I'm going to do my Annie medley right now.
It's a hard knock life for us.
That's from Annie as well, isn't it?
Do you have to get a ginger child to play Annie as well?
That's going to be fascinating to see actually.
Because you know, the ginger gene is being sort of bred out of society.
For whatever reason, there are less and less ginger people now every year.
It's going to be harder and harder to find Annie.
You know, I see the point of musicals in the world.
My favourite lyric ever is, I think it's Rogers and Hart lyric, which is when love congeals, it soon reveals the faint aroma of performing seals.
That is a proper lyric right there.
That is Wu-Tang style.
I noticed the Woo aren't playing here again this season.
It's been hard.
I thought you might get them together.
You were the one theatre that might have a chance to reunite the original Woo.
Oh, we only get one of them's dead though.
Oh yeah, ODB.
The incredible thing about Old Dirty Bastard is that sometimes I appear, because I've released two albums, and occasionally in record shops the artists, if they're alphabetically listed, go Old Dirty Bastard, David O'Doherty.
That's amazing.
Beside each other, yep.
And very often Daniel O'Donnell then is the third member of the
of that unlikely trio.
Oh that's fabulous.
Maybe that's the gig to get together.
We'll have ODB on a screen with him just rhyming and freestyling, Daniel O'Donnell doing this weird country and western Christian thing and then me just keyboarding it up singing songs for Manny.
Thank you very much David O'Doherty.
Thanks for having me.
So that was David O'Doherty.
He was the winner of the Edinburgh Comedy Award in 2008.
and we have coming up in March Tom Wriglesworth who is one of the 2009 nominees and his show is called Open Return Letter to Richard Branson and it's all about the rudest ticket collector on a virgin train that he's ever met and it looks really funny.
It got really good reviews in Edinburgh and that one is on Thursday the 18th of March.
Lots of good female comics this month which is always good to see.
First, on Monday 8th March, which is International Women's Day, we have a show called Lady Ha Ha, sort of comedy club style night, four comedians, one compere and then three stand-ups, all very, very highly promising acts, up-and-coming female comedians.
And then, at the end of the month, on Friday the 26th of March, we have lovely, lovely Lucy Porter!
Hooray for Lucy Porter!
We do love Lucy.
And she comes back every year and always sells out.
And she's a very, very funny lady indeed.
And she's doing a show all about gold and the history of gold and Mr. T. OK, and now we bring you Karen from the Playhouse Bar.
She's going to be telling us all about what's coming up at the Playhouse Bar during the month of March.
I am.
Hello.
Hello, Karen.
Hello.
So I'm going to tell you what's going on in the bar in March.
Every Tuesday we have Buffet Emporium, which is three different DJs and they just play very different but always strange music.
Sometimes it sounds like grating metal, but a lot of the time it's very beautiful.
On Saturday March 6th we have the Vintage Clothing Fair.
Unfortunately it's just for ladies but it's a mega sale and everything, I say everything, everything is £3.
So you've got to come along and that's from 11am to 4.30pm.
March the 7th.
We've got some amazing bands.
Our gigs in the bar are free.
Eric Chenoux and the Dead Rat Orchestra are coming on on March the 7th on the Sunday.
They're rather dead and rather ratty on March the 28th, which is a Sunday again.
Bleeding Heart Narrative, supported by Alan Muerta.
I've listened to Alan Muerta and it's a lady and she sounds very, very beautiful.
Bleeding Heart Narrative have been to the bar before and they were
blinking good.
Fiddles and basses and drums and lots of harmony vocals and stringy things.
DJs most nights throughout March nearly every night and they're all good, they're all alternative and they will make you happy until it's spring.
Thank you very much Karen.
Thank you very much for having me in your luxurious studio and I'll have some of that champagne now.
Thanks for listening to the Norwich Playhouse, exciting, extra exciting podcast for March 2010.
We're going to be doing one of these every month and we're going to include interviews with comedians and rather fabulous people who come through the venue.
It's also going to have all up-to-date news, things about the latest shows that are on sale, everything that you need to know to have a good night out in Norwich.
At the moment you can either look on our website which is norwichplayhouse.co.uk or you can call our box office 01603 598598.
Thank you very much for listening and we hope you'll listen to us again.
And just to finish off we're going to have a little bit of Tristan's very favourite Tiger Lily song.
Conrad's mother said, Conrad, dear, I must go out and leave you here.
But mind now, Conrad, what I say.
Don't suck your thumbs while I'm away.
That great old tailor, he always comes for naughty boys who suck their thumbs.
And here they wander.
What he's about, he's got his great long scissors out.
Snip, snip.
Snip, snip.
The scissors go, and Conrad cries out, oh.
Snip, snip.
Snip, snip.
They go so fast, Conrad's thumbs are off at last.