REVIEW: Thursday Night Live - The Frog And Bucket, Manchester.

Thursday Night Live at the Frog and Bucket can be a little bit of a lottery sometimes. Often there are some household names that perform and other times there are local comedians who have been on the circuit for many years, but the one constant is that there are always some new performers that you have perhaps never seen before and this occasion was no exception.

Our MC was Dominic Woodward, a local comedian from Ramsbottom although he is originally from Oldham. He has been in comedy since 2001 and his experience makes him the perfect host. Very quickly Woodward established himself with his cheeky persona, chatting to a young couple on the front row and complimenting the view of the girl’s low cut vest top from the stage! Most of Woodward’s material was local-based which felt like a good option given his local accent – running down his hometown of Oldham a lot and at one stage referring to it as a “horrible place where people’s only ambition is working out how to leave”.

Our first act for the evening was Phil Walker, another veteran comedian who in 2002 was voted the ‘City Life Comedian of the Year’ – an accolade that was very prestigious in its time and was won by both Peter Kay and Steve Coogan. Walker began a little slowly, appearing to struggle to make some of his material work with this audience but his experience started to show through as he moved through the gears to produce some very well received gags late in his set. With hindsight it may well be that Walker is a little too similar to Dominic Woodward and therefore he needed to dig deeper in his collection of material to get the laughs he deserved.

Next on the bill was Lindsey Davies who is a very interesting character. She has a day job as a sales representative in her home town of Leigh, a published author, a sitcom writer and of course a stand-up comedienne. The majority of Davies’ set focused on her life on the dating scene as a 41 year old single mother and the punchlines were very funny but the delivery isn’t something that she has yet managed to perfect. She clearly is very talented at writing comedy but in the world of stand-up the delivery of the jokes is as, if not more important. I hope this is something she continues to work on though as she has some very funny material.

Before getting our next comedian, our host Dominic Woodward was back on stage but this time with a whiteboard and a pen. He recounted the story of doing some drama workshops at a local school and took the opportunity to do some brilliant impressions of local Mancunian teenagers who were less than enthusiastic during those lessons. Woodward then gave us his party trick of doing “speed maths” which involved taking 2 numbers at random from the audience and creating a completed Sudoku board from scratch within 20 seconds - very impressive.

Next to the stage was Phil Pagett, a one-liner comedian who has been talked-up by the likes of Gary Delaney (of Mock the Week fame). Pagett appeared somewhat nervous when taking to the stage at the Frog and Bucket and this showed throughout his performance. He definitely has the talent to be very good and I thought the gags where he used music on his iPhone stood out, but tonight he just didn’t click with the audience.

Our headliner for the evening was Steve Shanyaski, another local comedian who has been doing the local pubs and clubs for the last 15 years or more. The way he delivered his material from the moment he arrived on stage, it was clear he had been doing this for some time. He is a larger than life character and he bounced around the stage for the next half an hour as he told stories about his life as a 40 year old bloke who is recently married and now trying to start a family. His comparison of the male role in procreation to bringing in the supermarket bags from the car was simply genius. 

Overall, I don’t think Shanyaski’s material was much better than Lindsey Davies or Phil Pagett but his delivery was infinitely better. This is what changed the audience reaction from polite chuckles to roaring belly laughs.

Thursday Night Live takes place every week at the Frog and Bucket and despite it being a bit of a lottery in terms of act, it is also brilliant value for two and a half hours of comedy in this historic venue.

Reviewer – John Fishpn  – 9/8/18