Tag Archives: Alexei Sayle
Posted on 24 Nov 2019 | Leave a comment
Contemporary new Boulevard Theatre and function space, photographed by Jack Hobhouse
Friday's Late Night Scene: Kiri Pritchard-McLean and Rhys James
◼ AN INTIMATE NEW 170-SEAT THEATRE and function space has opened in Soho on the site of Paul Raymond's original striptease Revuebar from 1958 to 2004. It is named after the Boulevard Theatre which reinvented itself there in 1980 from its racy predecessor by showcasing The Comic Strip team who went on to rewrite the rules of British comedy. The stage proved the springboard to success for Alexei Sayle, Ade Edmondson and Rik Mayall, Nigel Planer and Peter Richardson and Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders.
After a £40m redevelopment of the site in Walker's Court under the shrewd business eye of Raymond's grand-daughter Fawn James, there's now an active programme of theatre and weekly late events for live music, cabaret and comedy. This weekend's unruly Friday comedy set from 10.30pm was fronted by the wry Kiri Pritchard-McLean. Stand-ups included Olga Koch, whose name struck a risqué note from the start, plus an Edinburgh Award winner who sadly didn't quite click. However, topping the bill at machine-gun speed was TV face Rhys James and he alone was worth the £15 ticket price.
The in-house theatre production playing daily is Ghost Quartet, the 2014 "song cycle about love, death and whiskey" by American Dave Malloy, directed by Bill Buckhurst. In January comes The Sunset Limited, from the American novelist Cormac McCarthy, his 2006 exploration of free will dubbed "a novel in dramatic form" and directed by Terry Johnson, the multi-award-winning British dramatist.
The Boulevard's rebirth is down to Fawn James as a director of Soho Estates, who says she intends to honour her grandfather's legacy as an impresario and property investor by helping to promote Soho as an arts and entertainment district. The Boulevard's artistic director is Rachel Edwards who founded the award-winning Tooting Arts Club.
The glorious Revuebar neon sign from Raymond's era has been faithfully reconstructed to shine out as a Brewer Street landmark though, true to neon tradition, several letters have already blacked out! The four-storey building houses an adaptable, state-of-the-art auditorium, restaurant, bar, lounge and rehearsal room. Versatility is at the core of the venue, with every space fully customisable for a range of functions embracing weddings and conferences. The Boulevard has been actively recruiting to fill a variety of jobs.
Click any pic below to enlarge
Boulevard Theatre's new facade and bridge by Soda Studio
➢ Revolving auditorium is showpiece of Boulevard Theatre by Soda – Amy Frearson reporting at Dezeen magazine, 28 October 2019:
" The Boulevard Theatre features stalls and a balcony that both revolve independently, along with a stage that moves up and down, making a wide variety of different configurations possible. The entire project is designed by Soda, a London-based studio that works across architecture, interiors and graphic design. It forms part of a new development in the heart of Soho.
The bar and restaurant is an art-deco-inspired space featuring pink panelled walls, marble surfaces, brass lighting, and leather and velvet upholstery. There are also subtle references here to the Boulevard logo, while the glass bridge features an inlay of lace, in reference to a brothel previously located on this street.
Soda worked with theatre specialist Charcoalblue to make the auditorium as functional as possible. The transformations all take less than 10 minutes, so the space can easily host three or four different types of performance in one day.
Developer Fawn James said: "One of the things that I really wanted was that element of surprise, because when you're in Soho you don't necessarily know what you're getting. Sometimes you could come to a show in the round, go downstairs, grab a bite to eat, then come back up for the next show and feel like you're in a completely different room…" / Continued at Dezeen online
Photography is by Jack Hobhouse unless otherwise stated
First published in Over21, January 1981
➢ Previously at Shapers of the 80s:
1981, At The Comic Strip, 'alternative cabaret' throws up the next generation of household names
Posted in Architecture, cabaret, Comedy, History, jazz, live music, London, nightlife, theatre, venues
Tagged Alexei Sayle, Boulevard Theatre, Cormac McCarthy, Dave Malloy, Dezeen magazine, Fawn James, Ghost Quartet, Kiri Pritchard-McLean, Olga Koch, Paul Raymond, Peter Richardson, Rachel Edwards, Raymond Revuebar, Rhys James, Soda Studio, Soho, Terry Johnson, The Comic Strip, The Sunset Limited
➤ Rik Mayall, fireball of comic energy, is dead
Posted on 9 Jun 2014 | Leave a comment
Angry Feminist Poet: Rik Mayall at Soho's Comic Strip, Nov 1980. Photographed by © Shapersofthe80s
❚ THE 56-YEAR-OLD STAR of The Comic Strip, The Young Ones and The New Statesman has died suddenly at his home in London. Long before his TV stardom, I met Rik Mayall in November 1980 in pursuit of the first magazine feature about the achingly funny team putting the Comic Strip's new wave of "alternative comedy" on the map. Here is that first feature about them, with my own pictures:
➢ 1980 – At the Comic Strip, 'alternative cabaret' throws up the next generation of household names – here at Shapersofthe80s
"Awful news about Rik Mayall – a fireball of creative comic energy and inspiration. Such brilliant raw talent" – Rory Bremner
"Rik Mayall was just pure wiry, energetic, unpredictable humour poured into the shape of a human. You couldn't not watch him" – Charlie Brooker
➢ Ade Edmondson said: "There were times when Rik and I were writing together when we almost died laughing … They were some of the most carefree stupid days I ever had, and I feel privileged to have shared them with him" – Independent
Twentieth Century Coyote, 1980: Rik Mayall's coruscating double act with Ade Edmondson, seen backstage at Soho's Comic Strip club, within Raymond's Revue Bar. Photographed by © Shapersofthe80s
➢ Rik Mayall may have died after fit in wake of bike accident – Telegraph
➢ Mark Lawson pays tribute to a dangerously funny man … "The savage charisma that Mayall projected in his TV comedy roles led the director Richard Eyre to cast him, in 1985, in a National Theatre production of Gogol's political satire The Government Inspector"
➢ Rik Mayall: tributes from comedians, fans and celebrities – Telegraph
Posted in London, Social trends, Youth culture
Tagged Ade Edmondson, Alexei Sayle, alternative comedy, cabaret, Comic Strip, London, Over 21, Raymond's Revue Bar, review, Rik Mayall, stand-up, Tributes, Twentieth Century Coyote, Young Ones
1980 ➤ Rik and pals detonate a timebomb beneath another kind of strip for Soho
Posted on 7 Oct 2010 | Leave a comment
On this autumn day 30 years ago, a handful of comics in their twenties broke free from the bear-pit formula of the Comedy Store, which had opened in London in 1979, modelled on its Hollywood precursor. These soon-to-be-famous clowns were angry with Britain's complacency in the face of recession and decided to define a new kind of comedy. First news of the breakaway faction that would eventually make household names of French & Saunders, Rik Mayall, Adrian Edmondson, Nigel Planer, Peter Richardson and Alexei Sayle appeared in the Evening Standard's On The Line page …
First published in the Evening Standard, October 2, 1980
❚ SOHO HAS LONG ENJOYED A GOOD GIGGLE and now, cheek to cheek with the king of strip Raymond's Revue Bar, the Comic Strip opens on Tuesday in the tiny Boulevard Theatre off Brewer Street. Billed as London's "newest anarchic cabaret", it could be called Son of the Comedy Store, a nightspot already well established as a Gong Show for would-be comedians.
"The Comic Strip's going to feature the best of the Comedy Store and more," explained Peter Richardson, one of a comedy duo called The Outer Limits, who are launching the enterprise with West End impresario Michael White (the man behind the musical Annie). "There was too much experimentation in the Comedy Store. We want to establish a certain standard at the Comic Strip."
Angry Feminist Poet: Rik Mayall at the Comic Strip, Nov 1980. Photographed by © Shapersofthe80s
He and the comedians he has brought with him — including the Comedy Store's acerbic compere, Alexei Sayle —believe the traumas of the 1980s have brought a sharper cutting edge to comedy comparable perhaps to the satire Germany fostered in the 30s. "Who wants to see Kafka on a stage when it's all round us in real life? People want to laugh," said Rik Mayall, one half of an act called 20th-Century Coyote. "There's a growing interest in political cabaret too."
This self-styled "alternative" comedy isn't all heavy social comment by any means, its roots going back more to clowning. What these comics are attempting is deliberately to shake off the influence of the Footlights clan who have shaped British humour for the past 20 years. Mayall himself has a talent for the merciless lampoon. One of his sketches, a punk commuter lamenting his daily lot, is the funniest invention since John Cleese's Ministry of Silly Walks.
Last weekend he and The Outer Limits were playing to packed houses at the Three Horseshoes, a pub theatre in Hampstead, as if to prove that alternative humour is booming. The Comic Strip promises a varied line-up which this month includes Pamela Stephenson from BBC-tv's Not The Nine O'Clock News. Entrance will cost a flat £3.
➢ 1980, A new decade demands new comedy
— Birth of the Comic Strip
Posted in Culture, London, Politics, Social trends
Tagged Adrian Edmondson, Alexei Sayle, alternative cabaret, Comedy, Comic Strip, Ello John, Evening Standard, French & Saunders, Michael White, Nigel Planer, Peter Richardson, Raymond's Revue Bar, Rik Mayall, satire, Soho
1980 ➤ For an angry new decade a new breed of comedy puts trendiness itself within its sights
Posted on 20 Aug 2009 | Leave a comment
The satire boom of the Sixties chose as its targets politicians, church, unions. The world has moved on, and in 1980 so-called "alternative cabaret" is gunning for rock entrepreneurs, media manipulators and a pre-packaged youth culture inherited at second hand . . .
➤ Click here to read on
Airline disaster movie: Nigel Planer and Peter Richardson as The Outer Limits at the Comic Strip, Nov 1980. Photographed © by Shapersofthe80s
➢1980 ➤ Rik and pals detonate a timebomb beneath another kind of strip for Soho
Posted in Culture, London, Media, Social trends
Tagged Adrian Edmondson, Alexei Sayle, alternative cabaret, Comedy, Comic Strip, Ello John, French & Saunders, Michael White, Nigel Planer, Peter Richardson, Raymond's Revue Bar, Rik Mayall, Soho, Tipping points