Where have you been, Sarah Kendall?

I earmarked Sarah Kendall’s gig as one I wanted to see way back at the beginning of the season using, what I considered to be, foolproof logic.

I was sure I’d seen her before at the 2003 Melbourne International Comedy Festival. They had a night where comics could do short sets in an effort to get a gig at the next Montreal and I think she did a slot. I trust my memory – if something sticks, there’s usually a good reason.

So when I saw she was playing in Norwich I was keen to give it a go because – and this was my logic – any comic who not only keeps going for fifteen years but who now has a solo show in a good venue on the other side of the world, has got to have a lot going for them.

And Sarah Kendall does have a lot going for her. She’s good on the mike, comes across as easy company, and she’s prepared to find laughs in some pretty unpromising comedy territory. Like autism and death.

One of the things which drew me to the show was the fact she was described as a storyteller. I do love a good story. And if it’s a funny story too, even better. That’s why I like Daniel Kitson. His show about his Auntie Angela was the first comedy gig I’d ever been to where I’d laughed and cried. And this show of Sarah Kendall’s was the second.

But I still left at interval.

Let me explain why…

For a start off, she suggested it.

She opened with a warning that she was going to do last year’s Edinburgh show for the first half and the second half she was going to run-in material for her radio show. That, frankly, felt a bit cheap and she seemed so embarrassed about it that she went on to say something like “So if you don’t really like the first half, don’t come back for the second”.

That’s basically saying however good the first half is, the second will be worse. I actually liked quite a lot of the Edinburgh show but the whole gig didn’t have much of a chance after that.

It also made me question my logic for booking it. I’d assumed she’d kept going for fifteen years but her occasional lack of confidence suggested she’d become a bit of a stranger to the stage somewhere along the way.

Some of the stories and the laughs did hit the heights (I’ve never heard a funnier description of the weirdness of French kissing) but the basic problem was the billing. It wasn’t one full show, it was an Edinburgh show and some bits. It would also have been better to bill it as a one-women-show rather than a comedy gig since the stories were closer to monologues than stand-up routines and that would have made the big laughs a bonus.

Instead, I left at the interval asking – where have you been for fifteen years, Sarah Kendall? The show suggested she’d been getting on with her life rather than standing up on a stage – which, of course, is fair enough. But then it feels fair enough if I leave after the best bit too.

No Comfort Zone: Stewart Lee

It must be hard to be Stewart Lee.

And not because of the 150 nights he spent on the road last year or the fact that he's been doing comedy for 20 years (both of which he mentioned during the gig).

But because he's so supremely self-aware.

All the time you're watching him perform, you get the sense that he's not only watching himself with a critical eye, he's watching-you-watching-him and projecting a critical response from you too. That much apparently self-imposed criticism would be exhausting for any comedian.

But actually a lot of his comedy comes from this critical self-awareness. In fact, the last time I saw him it was even in the title of the show ("The 41st Best Stand Up Ever") which was a hard title to follow since it encouraged you to judge him against it. Even if you felt, as his ironic approach suggested, that he'd been robbed, he'd still sewn a seed of doubt in your mind.

His place in the comedy spectrum concerned him this time round too - only this time it was focused on the type of audience he attracts. The tone and title of the "41st Best" show may have suggested that the only way was down but actually his return to Norwich saw him move from the Playhouse to the much larger Theatre Royal.

You'd think he'd be happy about that but actually he just seemed uncomfortable in a different way.

This prompted him to do something I've never seen a comedian do before - he spent quite a significant part of the set working hard to whittle the audience down to a more manageable size. He dismissed a large part of the circle as "people's friends" rather than comedy fans and focused his attention on the stalls. His distinctions between those who had just 'come along' and real comedy goers were actually pretty funny - if you were sitting in the stalls.

He also gave us a good idea of his ideal audience and I discovered (somewhat to my surprise) that I didn't really fit the description. I was surprised because I'd really enjoyed the routines and I respected the sophistication of his subjects and style.

Last time it felt like the audience was too small for Stewart Lee, this time it felt like it was too large. If he does have a comfort zone when it comes to his audience, I was unfortunately left feeling like I wasn't in it.

Time and the Ten O'Clock Train

By its very existence, the ten o'clock train to London has provided a pretty technical end to several comedy gigs I've seen in Norwich.

Sometimes it's flagged from the start, sometimes a glance at the watch in the second half leads the comedian to confess that they're going to have to finish in time to catch the ten o'clock train.

I assume it's because the ten o'clock train is the last one which gets into London that night and I happen to have seen several comedy Cinderellas who want to make it back before midnight.

(And I'd say this was a Norwich phenomenon but I suspect it happens anywhere within a roughly two hour "I-can-still-get-home-tonight" radius of London.)

So what, you might say?

Surely it's fair enough that a comedian - who presumably spends many nights on tour - takes every opportunity they can to get home, sleep in their own bed and spend time with their families?

And yes, that is fair enough.

But is it fair that the comedy gig I'm watching in Norwich is tainted by the slightly awkward sense that the comedian literally needs to get off so they can go somewhere else? At least Mark Watson, who has announced he's leaving on the ten o'clock train both times I've seen him in Norwich, tries to use the possibility of missing the train as a way of building the tension at the end of his set - but usually mentioning the train is about managing expectations and explaining the comedian's awkward clockwatching.

All I'm saying is it's just not that relaxing to watch someone glance at their watch while you're laughing at their jokes.

Of course, clockwatching isn't confined to comedians who want to get home that night. A lot of comedians, especially support acts, seem to struggle with how to keep track of time on stage without looking like they don't want to be there. Pulling a mobile out of your back pocket to check the time is right up there with pulling out a CD and telling us it's on sale in the foyer when it comes to awkward moments on stage.

But what can a comedian do?

Simple stuff like writing and rehearsing the set so it fits into the time slot and builds to a satisfying climax rather than a dash for a taxi. Or sorting out a signal with the technical crew which means 'ten minutes to go'. Or at least wearing a watch rather than pulling out a mobile or awkwardly asking the audience to keep track of time for you (this is the worst and is usually accompanied by a chirpy "How are we doing?").

They say comedy is all about timing - but if you really want the set to flow I think it's about elegantly keeping track of time too.

Have you seen Glenn Wool?

It's dark, it's crowded, it's probably about 2am and it's Melbourne.

This is the after-show cabaret at the 2003 Comedy Festival, Adam Hills is compering and he's just shown off his fake foot.

A Canadian cowboy pushes his way between the red velvet curtains, pushes back his curtains of dark hair and starts a short set.

It was Glenn Wool, it was fifteen minutes long and it was unforgettably funny.

Since then Glenn Wool has been firmly on my list of comedians-I-will-go-to-see-whatever. (Adam Hills is still on that list too). I've seen him in a cavern in Edinburgh, in a converted church in Norwich and now I've seen him at the Norwich Playhouse. One of the reasons I find him so watchable is his uniquely dramatic, almost Shakespearean, delivery style - from rich bellow to falsetto whisper, sometimes within the same sentence.

So given how good I think he is, I suppose I should be surprised that I haven't seen him on the telly. In his latest set he mentions going out to LA to try to get into films and I could definitely see him in the kind of comedy film roles which Russell Brand, Simon Pegg and Ricky Gervais have cornered, so why don't I?

It may be to do with the material - which, while very funny, is not exactly made for television (he joked that you don't see his sort of stuff on "Live at the Apollo"). Having said that, on several occasions at the end of a routine which, on the surface, could appear to offend pretty much everybody he pointed out that he had crafted it so carefully that it wasn't actually offensive to anybody.

So it may be to do with the man - quite a lot of the set involved brushes with authority from which Glenn did not emerge as the kind of man who would take well to being asked to do another take.

Whatever the reason, over the course of the evening I got the impression that I'm not the only one who's surprised he's not more well-known, the rest of the audience and Glenn Wool seemed to be surprised too.

Mark Watson: Wouldn't want to sit where you're sitting

Mark Watson gives the impression of being the kind of person who wouldn't enjoy going to a comedy gig. If he didn't happen to be onstage being the comedian, I don't think he'd be there at all.

Which might seem a strange thing to say about a comedian.

But I've seen Mark Watson at the Norwich Playhouse before and, as I waited for the show to start, I was looking around me. Because last time I saw him there he started off the gig sitting in the audience. He's not the most unusual-looking bloke and literally no-one realised he was there. To his obvious joy he had been able to eavesdrop on several 'settling-down-to-watch-comedy' conversations before speaking up and starting.

And the start was a very amusing and reassuring soliloquy about how we could all relax because the show was going to be funny. The general gist was that it was going to be moderately funny in places, very funny in others - but, basically, funny. As I remember it, it wasn't until he'd set these expectations that he actually took to the stage.

Of course, he can't do that anymore.

Now he's on the telly, he'd be spotted straight away if he sat in the audience. But I had a hunch he would do something similar - and he did. I won't spoil it and say what, in case you're going to see the show. Suffice to say I felt very smug for working it out. And, as before, when he revealed himself he spent the first part of the show managing our expectations again.

Unlike Reginald D.Hunter's "My comedy isn't as cuddly as I look on the telly" warning, Mark Watson wanted to tell us that he was trying out new material. This was a good warning - not just because it was funny but because it was necessary. Instead of seeing the "Request Stops" show we were expecting, he was taking the opportunity afforded by his success in Norwich to try a new show called "The Information".

The set included some great sections and even, to everyone's surprise, a song. Like all 'new material' shows, some of it worked and some of it didn't (in my opinion, the song didn't) but the weird thing was, that after significant success on stage and screen, Mark Watson seemed to be trying to find his "thing" as a comedian.

And the thing is, I think he's already found it. No other comedian I've seen approaches a comedy gig with so much empathy for the audience. Unlike Adam Hills, who seems to be focused on making sure everyone has a good time, Mark Watson seems to be focused on making sure no-one has a terrible, possibly even psychologically damaging, time. It sounds odd, but it can be very, very funny. And it's a unique perspective which provides him with some wonderful material and a unique style of delivery - full of fabulously self-doubting asides. I say stick with it.

Beautiful Lies is beautifully wrought

The promising plotline of "Beautiful Lies" is based on anonymous love letters - an idea which has its own cinematic lineage in the French classic "Cyrano de Bergerac" and Steve Martin's 1987 American update "Roxanne".

The difference here is that the letter writer's desire to remain anonymous has more to do with the pain/pleasure of unrequited love than a desire to conceal their appearance. Jean, the writer, is handsome but shy while the intended recipient is Emilie, the confident co-owner of a beauty parlour.

Emilie receives an anonymous love letter from Jean, who works as her maintenance man while hiding a tainted but illustrious academic career as a translater. Emilie assumes, from the literary way the letter is written, that it must be from an older man. In a misguided attempt to stop her lovelorn mother continuing to hold a torch for her long-gone father, she redirects it to her mother and the beautiful lies begin. 

Part of the delight of this film is that Audrey Tautou's gamine looks and dark elfin locks hide a genuinely manipulative character and Sami Bouajila's Jean is smart enough to both recognise it and reflect it back to her. The comedy and the romance both spring quite naturally from Emilie's evermore complicated efforts to sustain the deceit and the awkward confrontations which result from its unravelling.

While the film might go one plot twist to far, it never becomes farcical and that is a tribute to both the writing and the acting. In "Beautiful Lies" Audrey Tautou teams up again with "Priceless" Director Pierre Salvadori and it is proving to be a fruitful partnership in terms of creating great French films for international audiences - even if some of them have to stop laughing long enough to read the subtitles.

A mike stand and a bottle of water

Apart from the comedian, that's all you normally see onstage at a comedy gig.

Which is fine if you're in a comedy club but in a theatre it can look a bit effortless - as in, lacking effort. The lights pick out all the shabby spots on the bare stage - the slightly ripped curtain, the duct tape marks on the floor, the unused trap door. And when the comedian comes on, the lights pick out all the shabby spots on them too - the ill-fitting jeans, the cig packet in the back pocket, the crumpled flat-dry jumper.

The whole thing is danger of looking a bit unloved - not a great start if you're setting out to make the audience love you.

So should a comedy set have a set?

It depends on what, as a comedian, you're trying to do.

If your act hovers in the rich borderland between comic routine and theatrical monologue then it might make sense. Which is probably why the last time I saw Daniel Kitson telling his entrancing stories onstage he was surrounded by suitcases which he had personally turned into tiny houses with windows which lit up. Depending on your perspective, this was either a beautiful visual accompaniment to a story about moving house or an intricate demonstration of an alarming amount of creative displacement activity.

If you really wish you were a rock star but your songs keep turning out funny, you might still want to go to town on the back-combing, stadium lights and wind machines when you sing them (step forward, in your bare feet, Tim Minchin). A Tim Minchin gig is arguably a comedy show not a comedy set and it is created for the arena as much as for the theatre - I am not sure how many comedy clubs come with grand pianos.

On the other hand, if you don't even want a microphone to get between you and your audience you might just pad on stage dressed for a night in front of the telly and in your (did I dream it?) socks. Reginald D. Hunter was clearly here to chat and his informal start set the stage in a very different way for a remarkably intimate show in a 1300 seater theatre.

The point is that whatever they were, or weren't surrounded by, it was clear that all three of these comedians had thought about how they could create a conducive atmosphere for their comedy. They didn't just go for the default setting: that mike stand and that bottle of water.