The first thing I liked was that the show was scheduled to start at 8:00 pm, and was begun within five minutes of that mark. One of my fiercest pet peeves is being seated for an event on time and having to then wait an hour or more for the show to start.
Mr. Connolly started out slow, as is appropriate for an entertainer 63 years of age. Also he had the luxury of lots of time to work with; I’d went expecting perhaps 90 minutes of entertainment, and he provided two and a half hours, (that’s without a break). It wasn’t just myself noticing the laid back pace of his opening, my Bride noticed the same thing, and mentioned later that early on she’d wondered whether she could sit through the entire show!
Connolly is more of a ‘personality’ comedian, and it takes a few moments to get the audience comfortably familiar with that unique personality; once established, it was off to the races. Bill Cosby had a similar style; personality infused story telling where the narration could wander for formidable lengths of time unimpeded by regular punch lines. Once the hook was set the show started moving in a brisker manner, and I enjoyed it, with no damage more serious than a stretched slightly beyond maximum capacity bladder. My Bride was swept up as well.
There were a few things I found distracting. First amongst these was what Connolly calls his, “Fuck-fuck-fuckety-fuck”; I’m never offended by swearing, and admit that in shows by Canadian, and especially Saskatoon comics, the four letter flow can be astonishing. However, I don’t pay $60 to sit for 2.5 hours and be either offended or un-offended by words that can be detected in every work-site, office or schoolyard. It is, to me, a waste of breath, and never to be confused with talent; on the other hand it does sit comfortably with his persona.
Next on the list of, ‘why bother’, was what seemed to me a repetitive ‘stretching out’ of jokes, all the while accompanied by irritating reminders to the audience that they were indeed being led down the garden path. ‘Humour Helper’ is palatable to some, but I like steak, and, had the stretching and the ‘fucking’ been eliminated what would have been left would be a little short of a two hour show.
Last item on my ‘bitch’ list were the many times the comedian bent double in apparent laughter at his own stories; I don’t care for it ...unless it’s genuine. The only time, to my eyes, that it could be genuine would be in spontaneous exchanges with the audience, and I saw none of those. When you can put on a seamless 2.5 hour show the odds are that, in all likely-hood, you’ve heard your own material before. In most cases, heard it so often that you couldn’t possibly find anything funny in it. Canned laughter sucks even if it was canned by the artist himself.
All told, a very generous slice of entertainment. My Bride and I left feeling that we’d got more out of the show than the $60 we’d each invested, and both of us like Billy Connolly more after the show than prior to it.
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