Review by Jay Richardson

The irony of Ben McFarland and Tom Sandham’s late afternoon address, is that despite their mantra of ‘drink less, drink better’, the subject matter can attract the already refreshed, with the danger that disruptive elements babble away and spoil this lecture on the history of alcohol for others.

Clearly, that’s not exclusive to this hour. And considering the many samples that ushers hand round to accompany the narrative, the Guide To Alcohol is surprisingly slick and certainly quaffable, with free beer, gin, rum and vodka. All the same, the oblivious venue staff ought to have picked up on the impotent tuts and nods directed towards the drunks and had a word.

Because this is an hour that demands a certain degree of focus. Notwithstanding Knockabout sketches in pirate and monk costumes, and few opportunities missed for a booze-related pun, what makes this a worthwhile endeavour is the fascinating little facts McFarland and Sandham pour into your ear like so much pub trivia.

They rather assume the benefits of alcohol for creativity, quoting a few eminent piss artists like Hemmingway and De Quincey, and even a more critical imbiber like Nietzsche, as an excuse for some daft historical re-imaginings.

At their crudest, these tend to speculate on what Picasso was necking when he painted Guernica. Or pre-empt an interesting analysis of the Koran’s attitude to alcohol by the needlessly philistine  reference to the Sumerian Empire as ‘Iraqiland’. Still, an increasingly agitated encounter between Toulouse Lautrec and Vincent Van Gogh amusingly captures the latter’s incremental descent into intoxication-assisted madness.

Alongside the samples, the best aspect of this show is the scholarship, the role of alcohol in the expansion and ruin of the British Empire and its influence on the English language. The reason we employ the term ‘teetotal’ to signify abstinence, for example, derives from one of those wonderfully ridiculous quirks of human misfortune that you’ll be sharing with anyone who’ll listen.

Caught between a desire to educate and entertain on an enormously broad subject, The Thinking Drinkers pull off a reasonably enjoyable compromise, the lubrication of their audience certainly helping.

Review date: 20 Aug 2012
Reviewed by: Jay Richardson
Reviewed at: Assembly Rooms