Yin and yang
Mixed reviews for Connolly's LA shows
Billy Connolly’s latest attempts to crack America as a stand-up have received mixed reviews from the critics.Los Angeles’ most influential paper, the LA Times, savaged his new show, saying his style was too rambling and his targets too soft.
And it reported that the biggest laugh of the night came from an adlib about an audience member ‘letting out a Herculean yawn’.
‘It's a chuckling annoyance over mislaid common sense rather than the true hilarity of rage,’ critic Charles McNulty wrote, saying the evening left him ‘unsatisfied’.
However, the LA Daily News said his comedy was ‘as funny as it was clever’.
It said the show offered ‘smut-mouthed vulgarity from a badly dressed Scot in his mid-60s delivered at a maddeningly random clip’, but added: ‘Good thing the man's a riot.’
Connolly, 64, is playing a two-and-a-half week residency at LA’s 500-seat Brentwood Theatre in a fresh bid to establish his stand-up credentials there. Although he moved to California almost 20 years ago, before more recently returning to Scotland, he remains known primarily as an actor in America, not a comedian.
Trade paper Variety, devoured by all Hollywood executives, recognised the attempt to build a live audience with the run of performances, and gave the show an measured, but above-average review.
‘Some of the observations sting and others are superficial,’ it said. ‘His two hours onstage were dedicated to a rambling collection of anecdotes and quips that feature a lot of cussing, references to odd experiences in his life, religion and aging; some of it is tied together in an ungainly knot and some of it can offend, but most of it generates streams of laughter.’
However, he didn’t make enough impact in one respect – the paper continually misspelled his surname ‘Connelly’.
Reviews:
Published: 9 Mar 2007
