Hyena Lounge comedy club picks names for new season (From York Press)

Hyena Lounge comedy club picks names for new season

11:59am Friday 13th January 2012 in Comedy

COMEDY impresario Toby Clouston-Jones is determined to bounce back from the low point of the Hyena Lounge autumn season in York that wouldn’t have had even a hyena laughing.

“We ended up pulling six shows, which was horrible. I’ve never had to do that in my 12 years of promoting comedy – and we tried to do nights at the University of York and St John’s but hit a brick wall with those too. They were both disastrous and I don’t understand why.

“Even when I put Andrew Lawrence on, that didn’t sell out, whereas the previous Christmas he did.”

For the autumn run of Sunday night sessions in The Basement bar at City Screen, Toby reverted to the original format of a couple of acts and a compere, as favoured by Dan Atkinson on setting up The Other Side, the first weekly comedy club at the Coney Street cinema.

“We made an attempt to go back to what the club first did, but if I’m honest it just doesn’t seem to work now,” says Toby.

Instead, when the Hyena Lounge resumes its funny business next weekend with Josie Long’s The Future Is Another Place, the season will combine touring shows by headline names with Bank Holiday Special triple bills on April 8 and May 13.

“We’re returning to having Fringe festival acts playing here as part of a tour or doing an hour’s material as they would in Edinburgh, plus a support act for 20 minutes, playing not to a boozy crowd but more of a theatre crowd,” says Toby.

“The Bank Holidays will be club nights with a few acts and then we’ll be into the Edinburgh preview season, which traditionally goes well.”

Toby favours the tour-show format. “It suits Sunday nights and it suits being an hour-long set, because it becomes more of a storytelling night as comedy is not just about jokes, believe it or not,” he says. “It’s good to be able to put on shows that stretch the word ‘comedy’ and aren’t just about somebody standing there for 20 minutes telling jokes.

“Look at Simon Munnery, who’s playing here on February 5; what he does is astonishing, pushing the envelope every year with something completely different.”

Already Toby has good reason to smile.

“Robin Ince’s Happiness In Science show on January 29 has sold out even before we’ve advertised it in print. That’s never happened before, but he has such a track record here, so we’re adding a matinee.

“Robin is finding ways of connecting science with comedy, and that made us decide to do a 4.30pm show specially aimed at the 14-plus age group. It’s a clean show, with no swearing, and we just thought we’d like to try to get a younger audience that couldn’t go to the evening performance.”

Ince is not the only act to be selling well. “Everything this spring is way ahead of what it was at this stage for last spring,” he says. “Josie Long is half way to selling out– she was last here in November 2010 and she’s doing only 15 dates on this tour – while Steve Hughes and Chris Ramsey have sold 60 per cent of their tickets.

“What we have is a season that’s accessible, with someone like Chris Ramsey, who got nominated for an award at Edinburgh last summer, and must have played here 15 times, and is now being called ‘the new Russell Howard’.”

Next month’s programme comprises Andrew O’Neill’s Alternative on February 12; Gunn& Collins, Still On The Roadshow, on February 19; and Patrick Monahan, Hug Me I Feel Good, on February 26.

“Andrew is doing his new show here before he goes off to Australia; it’s sort of goth comedy, a new brand of comedy that’s grown up in reaction to what’s going on in the comedy world, where stand-up comedy has gone to the arena level, which doesn’t suit it though there’s this element of people playing safe by ‘going to see him off the telly’,” says Toby.

Mike Gunn, from London, and Sean Collins, from Canada, are comedians in their mid-40s who have been around the block and had their profile boosted by appearing on Michael McIntyre’s Comedy Roadshow on the Beeb.

“They tour together, doing their own set each, and then coming out together in the second half to take ideas from the audience and riff on that, maybe doing ten minutes off the cuff on one subject if one of them gets into a flow,” says Toby.

“Patrick Monahan is part Irish, part Iranian and comes from Middlesbrough. That says everything you need to know.”

Tony Law’s Go Tony Law opens the March diary and it really is all systems Go for Tony, as can be discovered on March 4.

“Tony had his breakthrough at Edinburgh last summer after years of ploughing his own furrow,” says Toby. “He sold out his shows, won an award and finally he’s got his own audience. It’s wonderful to see him having the success he always deserved.”

Toby anticipates adding a matinee to Steve Hughes’s evening performance of Big Issues on March 11 and describes Chris Ramsey’s Offermation, a March 18 show built around round-robin Christmas latters, as “really lovely”.

Two more shows seen by Toby in Edinburgh last summer, Andrew Maxwell’s The Lights Are On, and James Acaster’s Amongst Other Things, are booked in for April 29 and May 13.

“James’s comedy is more about ideas and thoughts and lengthy routines,” says Toby. “There’s definitely something happening in comedy that’s a reaction to Michael McIntyre. Mainstream comedy has become a little too distilled, very panel and game-show orientated, and that’s not where comedy should be at.”

Further dates will be added to the new season. As ever, doors will open in The Basement on Sundays at 7pm for the 7.30pm start and 10pm finish. Tickets can be booked on 0871 902 5726 or online at ticketweb.co.uk

Only One Question for… comedian Simon Munnery

Would it be wrong to assume that your “overly ambitious one-man punk musical” show, Hats Off To The 101ers, And Other Material, is about the late, great Joe Strummer and his group pre-Clash days, Simon?

“It’s actually about the R101 airship of the 1930s… but it’s in the style of Joe Strummer. It’s kind of a metapun.

“Did you know he specifically changed his name to Strummer because he couldn’t play any chords. I’m with him there!

“But the show’s now called Hats Off… And Other Material, and it’s mainly other material. Only seven minutes on the R101, though I’m quite happy with those seven minutes. When I was preparing my Edinburgh show last year, after choosing the title, I read everything I could about the R101 airship tragedy but I still ended up with only seven minutes and that’ll do for now!”

Indeed it will, in a show that will be an “extravagant mess of foaming bubble hats, superlative jokes, bad guitar riffs, delightful monologues and hand-made engineering feats”, featuring an expandable proscenium arch built by Simon.

• Simon Munnery presents Hats Off To The 101ers, And Other Material at the Hyena Lounge Comedy Club on February 5.