| Chesham Comedy Festival | Elgiva Theatre, Chesham May 30 2007 7:30pm
Short & Curly: Sandi Toksvig & Bonnie Langford May 31 2007 7:30pm
Jo Caulfield May 31 2007 9:00pm
Michael McIntyre Jun 1 2007 7:30pm
Count Arthur Strong – the Musical? Jun 1 2007 9:00pm
Many ways to play your lover: Rebecca Carrington Jun 2 2007 7:30pm
Trippplicate Jun 2 2007 9:00pm
Rainer Hersch: all classical music explained Jun 3 2007 2:30pm
Kit & The Widow Box Office: 01494 582900 |
A small village hall in Buckinghamshire may not seem like the most obvious venue to accommodate top performers from the Edinburgh Fringe, but for the past four years that's exactly what has happened, as Little Missenden has played host to the Chesham Comedy Festival. Now, flushed with success and bursting out of the hall, the popular festival is moving to the 300 seat Elgiva Theatre in Chesham. This week co-producers John Griffiths and Annie Hamilton-Pike told us what audiences can expect, but first they revealed how it all came about. You've known each other for 25 years, but comedy festival a relatively new and has been going for four - how did it come about? John: It's quite an unlikely beginning really. A mutual friend of ours brought me to see a production that Annie did of the Reduced Titantic which sent up the film. Flushed with success and a large brandy at the interval, I grabbed her and my friend asked if she would produce my one man show. Without even asking me what it was she said 'of course darling'! Eventually a theatre producer who takes people like Berkoff to the Fringe in Edinburgh saw it and took us to the Edinburgh Festival. I was busy doing the show but Annie had lots of time on her hands and saw lots of shows and came up with a bright idea. Annie: I did. I thought 'well, we've done some open air shows, let's do something different'. My local village hall at Little Missenden was delightful, small but very intimate, so we decided to bring it there in 2003. Our biggest star, and she was wonderful, was Ruth Madoc. Her show, the Dylan Thomas piece 'Under Milk Wood', sold out and we had to put in another performance because it was so popular and it's just gone on from there. Since then we've had Rosemary Leach, Kit and the Widow, Dillie Keane from Fascinating Aida and some wonderful new comedy. And that's how it began - in 2003. So basically it was the Edinburgh Fringe comes to Little Missenden?! John: That's exactly it.
 | | Michael McIntyre |
Annie: Absolutely, we couldn't have put it better ourselves! It did! We also had two wonderful boys called Topping and Butch who had done remarkably well at Edinburgh. They shocked Little Missenden to the core! They were the only gays in the village really! And because of initially having all those high profile performers, we've now been able to bring bigger, better and more high profile performers to the Festival. But we were bursting at the seams at Little Missenden, it only sits 120 so for 2007 we've gone to the Elgiva Theatre which is a 300 seater! What was the atmosphere like at Little Missenden because the Edinburgh Fringe is massive and you've brought it to a little village - presumably it was quite intimate?! Did people get the same sort of Edinburgh feel? John: I think it was like Edinburgh, as it was before Edinburgh got so big and really specialised in comedy and mainly stand-up. There was a great variety that first year because some of the acts were from the previous Fringe but others were shows like 'Under Milk Wood' and a pantomime for children. We tried to do shows, not completely 24/7, but three or four shows a day at different times, appealing to children and family audiences and then very, very adult audiences like with Topping and Butch. But it was just too much for a small company, both in terms of our staff and also the facilities there, so we want to get bigger and better. What was the general experience?
 | | Kit and the Widow |
Annie: One experience is that we booked two girls called Gavin and Gavin. They are very raw, very clever but very rude and the first show we did at Little Missenden we had about 20 walkouts. So I thought if they walked out they'll tell people they walked out so I booked them again! And then again - and so it went on! It's very interesting with the audiences at Little Missenden, they're not quite sure because it's quite intimate, but they warm to them. The Elgiva is still quite intimate though isn't it and that's good for comedy? John: Yes - it feels like one room. I think as soon as you put a circle in the theatre it always feels like them and us on two levels. But the Elgiva is just one big sweeping space like a Greek theatre so you're all very much part of the same audience. Was it very villagey or did people come from all over? Will it be easy to get them to Chesham?
 | | Count Arthur Strong |
Annie: They came from about a 15 mile radius but I would think it would be easier to get them to Chesham because the parking's good and it's on the tube as well. Little Missenden was tiny, there was no room to go anywhere between the shows, but at the Elgiva there's a foyer and you can get a drink or have a fag! I hope it will be very successful! And we've actually booked for next year as well! So you're not planning on an even bigger theatre?! Annie: No! There are lots of festivals all over the country but I don't think there's a festival that has actually been based on a small market town in South Buckinghamshire. It will be fascinating to see what the reaction is. John: It's a very personal thing though comedy. We have different likes and dislikes and we try not to go with our own personal feelings but what other people find funny.
 | | Jo Caulfield |
Annie: Booking performances is like buying clothes for a clothes shop. If you just bought clothes that you liked then they might not like your taste so as a producer and booker I have to think would 16-year-olds like this or would 90-year-olds like this? So we do try and gave a mix that will appeal to everybody but comedy is terribly subjective. People say to me ' what's the best?' and I say 'it's impossible to say what's the best, what makes you laugh?' Come and have a look at the lot please, that would be marvellous. In Edinburgh people go to see shows because it's been recommended or because they are free at a certain time and this is what we want to try and engender in the people of Chesham. Try what we've booked, come and look at what we've booked and see if you like it. We want people to trust our judgement and just give it a go! So, who's coming to the Festival this year? John and Annie explain! Short and Curly Firstly we've got the most unlikely combination really in one of the best titles for a show - Short and Curly starring Sandy Toksvig and Bonnie Langford! It's the combination of the dry incisive wit of Sandy and the showbiz pezzazz of Bonnie Langford. Jo Caulfield Women are very well represented, they always have been in our festival and we've got Jo Caulfield, who writes for Graham Norton but who is a brilliant comedian in her own right. She's very suave and sophisticated, very glamorous and queen of the put down, hecklers beware! That's not a challenge by the way! Michael McIntyre
 | | Rebecca Carrington |
We read a recent review in the Telegraph and would kill for a review like that! It's rather posh comedy, very middle class, just perfect really for this area! They are calling him the new Jimmy Carr. Count Arthur Strong Count Arthur Strong is just simply a one-off! It's just extraordinary, zany, Harry Worth-ish humour, very old fashioned, a bumbling old codger. When you see him the visual comedy combined with the verbal makes him a sort of Mr Malaprop! It's the essence of British comedy really, which is self-effacing and self-denegrading. We find it very appealing when people run themselves down and it makes a change from lots of the arrogant stand-up that was around in the 80s and 90s. Rebecca Carrington We've been trying to book her for two years! Her show's called 'Many Ways to Play Your Lover' and her lover is a very old cello called Jo. She makes Jo sound like a cello, a sitar, a banjo, a guitar and she does a wonderful Bollywood set in her 60 minutes and she also amazingly makes it sound like a bagpipe! her story is Jo going around the world and playing at different places. In December 2006 she was a awarded the equivalent of a Perrier at a comedy festival in Switzerland and we've been trying to get her to perform for two years! She is very unusual, she has a stunning soprano voice and is also a brilliant cellist, but most of all she is a very clever commedian and we're delighted to have her. Trippplicate
 | | Trippplicate |
A brilliant new sketch comedy act that's been going for about three or four years now. It's made up of Katie Lyons who was in Channel 4's Green Wing, and Morgan Lloyd Malcolm and directed by Verity Woolnough. We've just been to see their preview show at the Pleasance in London and it was very good and it wasn't even finished! Rainer Hersch Rainer is a favourite performer of ours and been with us four or five times. He reminds us of those circus clowns who walk the tightrope - they've got to be able to do it brilliantly to be able to play around with it and dice with death! He's a brilliant classical musician who plays the piano to concert standard but he explains all classical music and sends it up in the process - and it is quite pant-wetting actually! What does a conductor do? Well, he thinks not a lot! And one of his party pieces is doing the most extraordinary thing with a vacuum cleaner! Kit and the Widow
 | | Rainer Hersch |
Topping the bill we've got Kit and the Widow. Last year in the Little Missenden Hall we could have sold their show several times over. There's more hilarity per cubic metre than the EU would normally permit so in the interests of health and safety they've got to move to a bigger room really! But Britain isn't big enough to contain Kit and the Widow they are a national treasure! They've been in Edinburgh for 26 years now and they don't even bother to perform in the centre of the city and still every show is packed for three and a half weeks! | 
