Review: Simon Munnery, Hats Off To The 101ers And Other Material, The Basement, City Screen, York (From York Press)

Review: Simon Munnery, Hats Off To The 101ers And Other Material, The Basement, City Screen, York

7:59am Tuesday 7th February 2012 in Comedy By Jonathan Wilkes

Who in the world would know about the R101, let alone write a musical on the ill-fated aircraft? Answer: the eccentric genius, Simon Munnery.

Even with, shall we say, limited musical ability his “one-man punk-musical” about the eponymous R101, a British airship which crashed in 1930, is a beguiling opening to the anarchic hour that is Hats Off To The 101ers And Other Material.

Experimental maverick Munnery – having entered wearing a top hat spluttering bubbles – offers a stumbling compendium of monologues, poetry, songs and sage aphorisms disguised as one-liners.

His stage is littered with homemade props (although the low Basement roof prevented his metallic arch being erected) and his comedy is unstructured and certainly not universal.

All this is epitomised by his puppet show depicting the two criminals on the crosses after Jesus has been taken down. Crudely drawn, long and obscure but hugely rewarding.

Munnery is the piquant antidote to pedestrian observational comedy.

He has a mastery of the English language; playing with words with a bewitching, consummate skill.

Whether it is a monologue told as Sherlock Holmes or a poem called “What London would say if it could speak”, Munnery’s expertise never wavers.

Most evidently, his densely packed “lecture on woman studies” as a chauvinistic professor is painfully funny, highly intelligent and deliciously provocative.

Hats Off To The 101ers And Other Material is shambolic, frenetic, amateurish and esoteric. And jaw-achingly hilarious. “They say” Munnery quips, “laughter is the best medicine. No it’s not, medicine is.” No it’s not, Simon Munnery is.