{"id":6313,"date":"2016-06-01T13:00:53","date_gmt":"2016-06-01T12:00:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=6313"},"modified":"2017-03-10T10:35:22","modified_gmt":"2017-03-10T09:35:22","slug":"live-at-the-opera-house-with-adam-buxton-manchester-opera-house-reviewed-by-edmund-chapman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=6313","title":{"rendered":"Adam Buxton at Manchester Opera House, reviewed by Ed Chapman"},"content":{"rendered":"
Live at the Opera House – with Adam Buxton<\/em>, Manchester Opera House; May 25 2016.<\/h5>\n

This event promised one of those hard-to-believe, all-star line-ups that only ever happen in London. And so it proved, with three-quarters of the bill changing. While the reconfigured line-up may not have had quite the star power originally offered, this was nevertheless a great evening showcasing several styles of comedy.<\/p>\n

The evening\u2019s MC, Canada\u2019s Mae Martin, has a slightly thankless task, as the venue is an odd one for this sort of event, and makes crowd-work difficult. It takes the audience a while to warm up, meaning that some of Martin\u2019s best material doesn\u2019t get the laughs it deserves. Her only round of applause is for a two-word impression of Brian Cox (sorry, Professor<\/em> Brian Cox). Nevertheless, Martin\u2019s blend of warmth, openness and fragility, combined with real writing chops, mean that she\u2019s won round at least some people by the end of the evening.<\/p>\n

Liam Williams\u2019 understated style allows him to carry the audience with him through imagining his mother describing being pregnant with a comedian, to incisive and genuinely political material. Often, \u2018political comedy\u2019 simply means making jokes about figures in the public eye \u2013 but Williams has real points to make, and never sacrifices laughs to make them. His final bit, about sustaining a serious injury but trying to get some material out of the event, is cleverly self-aware without becoming smart-arsed. Unassuming he might be, but Williams seems to make a big impression on the audience.<\/p>\n

Adam Riches is a very different proposition. He switches between three equally brash and energetic characters \u2013 \u2018Daniel Day-Lewis,\u2019 a creepy pick-up artist and \u2018Sean Bean\u2019 \u2013 in one set. While Bean presumably wouldn\u2019t be flattered by his portrayal as a deluded miseryguts who regularly kills horses (!), he might still be happier than the audience members who are brought onstage to help play Riches\u2019\/Bean\u2019s hair, and then each others,\u2019 like harps. The audience\u2019s laughter might be as much to do with wondering what the hell is going on as with humour. Riches\u2019 set is exhausting, down to his explosion of energy as well as the amount of laughter it provokes.<\/p>\n

Headliner Adam Buxton \u2013 the sole remnant of the original line-up; \u201cno \u2018filming commitments\u2019 for me,\u201d he mock-complains \u2013 is obviously who the audience have really come to see, as he gets huge cheers for simply saying his name or the phrase \u201cYoutube comments.\u201d While Buxton is probably now best known for his delivery of Youtube comments as mini-monologues, there\u2019s far more to his act than that. While everything is couched in his familiar charm and silliness, there\u2019s a narrative and subtle sense of sadness underlying Buxton\u2019s set, particularly in his repeated reflections on aging. His use of technology \u2013 his set largely consists of a slideshow and videos \u2013 is also more innovative than it might seem. His references \u2013 Coke bottles with people\u2019s names and the John Lewis Christmas ad \u2013 suggest that this is material he\u2019s been performing for a while, but it doesn\u2019t seem to matter at all to the audience here. It\u2019s hard to imagine they would have given a warmer reception to anyone \u2013 and when most of the audience leave the venue still laughing, what else matters? <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Live at the Opera House – with Adam Buxton, Manchester Opera House; May 25 2016. This event promised one of those hard-to-believe, all-star line-ups that only ever happen in London. And so it proved, with three-quarters of the bill changing. While the reconfigured line-up may not have had quite the star power originally offered, this […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":45,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[311,283],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\nAdam Buxton at Manchester Opera House, reviewed by Ed Chapman - The Manchester Review<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=6313\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Adam Buxton at Manchester Opera House, reviewed by Ed Chapman - The Manchester Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Live at the Opera House – with Adam Buxton, Manchester Opera House; May 25 2016. 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