Everybody's a comedienne

As you might have read, Sarah Silverman, an accomplished and very funny American comedienne currently enjoying quite a bit of popularity in the States, was critically panned following her UK debut here in London on Sunday night.

As one of the thousands of people who bought £45 tickets ($70ish) to attend the show, I am not particularly surprised for the following reasons:

1. Due to technical difficulties, the theatre held us mashed together in the atrium for an hour and a half before letting us in, a fact that made her paltry 40 minutes of stand-up seem particularly inadequate.
2. When she left the stage abruptly, the audience refused to leave until she finally came back on in her slippers, told everyone to go home, and claimed she was out of material.
3. When the audience still wouldn’t leave, she subjected us to a painful Q&A session that actually made me embarrassed for her and resulted in someone yelling, “you’re overhyped!” and another someone saying, “I want my 45 quid back!”
4. British people don’t understand American Jews or Puerto Ricans or Mexicans, so even though that’s her shtick, using those jokes over and over again doesn’t really work here.

But still, I thought she was pretty darn funny. Yes it was too short; yes, she should have had new material more catered to her audience; yes, she should have been better organized and equipped with something—anything!—additional should the situation present itself, but still, she was funny. The reviews claiming she “bombed” seemed a bit unfair.

On the other hand, in Sarah’s defence, the Brits can have an odd sense of humour—perhaps not so much odd as utterly uneven. One minute they are creating masterpieces like Monty Python or the original The Office, and the next minute, they are laughing uproariously because someone said, “poo.” For a country that invented sarcasm, they seem to have a high tolerance for toilet jokes.

Anyway, all of this took me back to another comic bombing in jolly old England, only this time, the audience was a group of Alex’s friends I’d just met that night and the American comedienne was yours truly.

I was sitting in a pub, sipping some potent cider and someone had just brought up Arnold Schwarzenegger (as they do). I’m not sure why (possibly the aforementioned cider), but I started to go off on a bit of a tangent about him. You know, I said, he seems to be the only successful actor in Hollywood who has never been asked by a director or production company to change his accent. He’s just an Austrian (update: for those of you who read this before, I had a momentary nationality confusion with Van Damme) guy in every movie he’s in, whether it makes sense to the plot or not.

Sensing I was onto something, I started to cite examples: The man-made robot from the future sent to protect some kid in California says, “I’ll be back” with an Austrian accent; a cop who goes undercover as a kindergarten teacher says, “It’s not a tumour” with a Austrian accent; Danny Devito’s twin brother…I mean, in addition to looking not a thing like Danny DeVito and being totally different in age, he’s also inexplicably Austrian.

While Renee Zellweger and Russell Crowe are off with some voice coach 20 hours a week to prepare for a role, we are just supposed to accept that any one of your average, everyday American firefighters, scientists, FBI agents, barbarians, etc, could also be an Austrian bodybuilder. And I don’t know, I guess I thought that was kind of funny.

Alas, I was alone. I looked around the table mid-rant, realized that everyone looking back at me had blank, stony stares. It was my first comedic strike out in Britain—but considering the fact that in general, I cannot figure out the method to the comic madness here in the UK, it will likely not be my last.

That said, I suppose the Americans have hits and misses when it comes to comedy as well. After all, the U.S. made Talladega Nights a box office hit, but also created Seinfeld and Arrested Development (granted, no one watched the latter, but it was American-originated genius nonetheless). I don’t know, maybe the important lesson du jour here is that “funny” is not so much a British or American thing (and god knows it's not an Austrian thing), but a human thing. Ahh...the many lessons of the OckleShow*.

*This post is dedicated to my dad, who told me that I needed to "get back to the observations between British and American culture" and "stop writing a travel log." Since I'm currently attempting to write these posts while also nurturing a severe over-scheduling habit that consists of morning boot camps, weekend writing classes and evening drinks with anyone from America I've ever met who happens to be in London, the best I can offer is spurious comparisons and half-assed insight. But because it's my Dad, and I don't want to disappoint him, I'll try to be better from now on. Or at least funnier. Whatever that means (see prior blog post that you previously skimmed because it's stupid).