Review by Steve Bennett

Les Dennis delivers an excellent performance as Jigsy, one of the last of a dying breed of working-men’s club comics. Almost literally a dying breed, if his hacking cough is anything to go by…

We meet him backstage between sets, while the bingo takes over in the main room, ruddy-faced and swigging back ale amid the battered furniture, crisp boxes and yellowing photographs of bygone comics, which reawaken dim memories.

Thus he reminisces to us Al Read, Billy Bennett, Eddie Flanagan and Ken Dodd, weaving real-life anecdotes, such as Doddy’s tax trial, with some of the gags of old. Dennis’s skill as a mimic is used occasionally and lightly, conjuring up the likes of Bernard Manning and Cannon & Ball to add life to his stories.

Comics back in the day were bitter rivals and firm comrades, according to playwright Tony Staveacre – who has definitely an affectionate, romanticised view of the scene. ‘In the old days, there was an unwritten rule that  you didn’t [do another fella’s jokes],’ he clams, a little disingenuously given the generic nature of much of the gags that made it on to The Comedians.

This play is set in Liverpool in 1997, and the city is very much the other main character, so your attitude to the mawkish/proud Scouse attitude might colour your enjoyment. ‘Always good to play to your own,’ says Jigsy as he comes off stage. ‘We’ve got a dark sense of humour in Liverpool cos we’ve had to rough it.’ The self-enforced ‘otherness’ of the city’s inhabitants is frequently stressed.

He reminisces about comics meeting, post-show, in the Eagle & Child, the city’s most notoriously rough pub, and memories of  the 1939 Thetis submarine disaster – a chapter in history that deserves wider knowledge  – provide an emotional hook towards the end, even if the story does seem to emerge from nowhere.

The script can be funny – it’s got those old gags and tried-and-tested backstage anecdotes to thank for that – but at times is sluggish.

The attraction is nostalgia more than insight, reflected in the older demographic of the audience it attracts, even though, thanks to Dennis, we come to know Jigsy and his ilk as battle-hardened old soldiers facing the realisation that their war is over.

Review date: 15 Aug 2012
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Assembly Rooms