PRIORITÉ À GAUCHE

The Platform, Morecambe Box Office 01524 582803Thursday 10 April 2003 £12/£10
reviewed by satori

It's a temptation to write this review in Franglais but I hope you appreciate my self-restraint, especially as, when you read it, I won't be here any more to translate. Those of you who have a bit of French would have laughed your socks off at this remarkable couple, Didier and Jean-Francois. Those without it also laughed, but less often and at different times.

Except you probably weren't there. In fact very few people were - about 30 tickets sold. It's a recurring problem at the Platform - they consistently pull in high quality entertainment but can't always pull in the audiences who can afford to watch them. In this case, finding people who were both attracted by the cross channel concept and willing to fork out the £12 was just too much of a stretch. It's worth noting that the only local entertainments at the same price level are full-on touring bands, top of the range orchestral concert tours and the Dukes theatre in the park season. So not everyone is psychologically prepared to pay £12 for 90 minutes of comedy. Unless it's a big name they recognise. It's also worth bearing in mind that while audience members have been known to travel in from as far afield as Crewe for big names like Rich Hall (also £12), they rarely come from Morecambe itself.

Arnold Widdowson and Justin McCarron play Didier and Jean-Francois - completely convincingly - it was only when I checked the PR that I realised they were in fact English. I don't know which is which, so I'll use the french names. They gave their all and completely had us eating out of their hands - or rather, drinking from their bottle of Piat d'Or (les francais adore….. etc)

Arnold is responsible for the scripts and songs - 'Ecouter - repeter' got the audience warmed up nicely as we chanted back at them. Jean-Francois' emotional rendition of Piaf's 'Je ne regrette rien' rearranged to sound alternately like King, Agadou and several others I forgot to note was fiendishly clever.

For me the high point of the night was Didier's 'improvised' romantic poem to a selected attractive young woman in the audience (he was lucky to find one!) was hysterically brilliant - the verses becoming more explicitly obscene - the translations by the nervous Jean-Francois becoming more bland as he gave up the struggle to bridge the cultural gap. The physical gags at the end of each verse demonstrating an escalating form of emotional warfare, beginning with the delivery of a cupid arrow - ending with a mime of a full on bombardment were all delivered with the sexual swagger, arrogance and strangely tailored trousers that parodied our stereotypes of the mainland male.

The pair are a high energy mix and play warmly off each other - J-F the skateboarder from a good home, with unacknowledged bi-tendancies, Didier the stereotypical sex-obsessed shade-wearing smoothie. J-Fs difficulties in coming to terms with his sexuality are a running gag in the show culminating in a spoof crossed-lines correspondence between him and a 15 year old pen-pal fan - the fan's letters being instantly recognisable as classic school pen-pal fodder - JFs take on them being perverse. The linkage of homosexuality (a hilarious concept in itself, apparently) and poedophilia was clever, wittily executed and ultimately depressing. Possibly a bit on the hopeful side to pitch your show at an educated bi-lingual audience and then expect them to go for standard tabloid bigotry. OK it wasn't standard, it was engaging and creative bigotry. Still, it's a downer. Political correctness gone mad? I don't think so, not for £12.

Despite this we warmed to the pair - they pulled out all the stops to give their tiny audience a good night and certainly succeeded.

The verdict: Another quality comedy night from the Platform. Nice work. Just the pricing policy needs an overhaul.