Having acquired a certain amount of fame and gained celebrity status for their turns on the reality TV show Made In Chelsea, Francis Boulle and Jamie Laing have now teamed up to broadcast what is becoming a highly successful and popular podcast titled Private Parts. This evening as part of a nationwide tour, at Sale's Waterside theatre, they presented their first stage show based on the first podcast they made together in 2014 whilst in the south of France.
The stage show follows the same format as the podcast, and sees straightman and pseudo-intellect Boulle despairing at Laing's highly charged antics and lewdness. Indeed the whole show starts with an apology from Boulle that his partner has not yet turned up at the theatre, only to be shown video footage - supposedly from a live video feed on his mobile phone - of Laing still lying on his couch, completely naked, and hung-over from the night before's party. He 'dresses' in a small towel and runs to the theatre, running down the central aisle of the auditorium onto the stage completely naked, an spends the next few minutes on stage standing there with just a hand covering his modesty! Something you wouldn't get to 'see' in a podcast!
It is clear that these two have a good rapport with each other and spark off and from each other well. Boulle completely unable to keep straight-faced the whole time ends up smiling and smirking a lot, which is all part of the comedy [think of Peter Cook's deliberate efforts to make Dudley Moore corpse!] and the live show still includes the favourite regular slots from the podcast such as reading from their diaries and 'Question Of The Week'.
Where this show falls down somewhat though is in the timing. Comedy relies on split-second reactions and responses, and far too much time on stage this evening was spent building up to a joke which when it finally came didn't quite find its mark. Smut, lewdness and crudeness seemed to take precedence over humour, and certainly Laing seemed to be living completely off his latent celebrity status and contributing little or nothing else to the team effort other than this and his naked backside!
Both unashamedly talk about their rather dubious pasts, again, especially Laing who was caught shoplifting in Leeds as a student and had a hair transplant when he perhaps didn't really need one. Both talked of their childhood aspirations to be pop stars; Laing wanted to play Sandy in 'Grease' whilst Boulle wanted to play guitar for the pop-rock band 'Hanson'. Their finale was just this - they donned silly wigs and using the screen at the back played out their pre-pubescent fantasies milking and manufacturing applause to end on a high!
Disappointingly short of laughs and unappealing to anyone who isn't already a huge fan of Made In Chelsea or Private Parts Podcast. The stage show will do nothing to bring them new fans.
Reviewer - Matthew Dougall
on - 27/10/18
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