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Synopsis British Comedy Award winner Bill has enjoyed success on the live stage for many years. In 2001 he took his show Bewilderness to New York for an eight week run at the Westbeth Theatre. The New York Times wrote of him, "Bill is an unalloyed pleasure, a treat for the funny bone, the brain and the ear" and The Telegraph pronounced him "a hobbit with a wicked sense of humour". In 2004 he performed his show Part Troll at over fifty venues around the UK, culminating in an extended run at London’s Wyndhams Theatre. In 2007 he embarked on a sold-out UK arena tour with his audio-visual, comedic extravaganza, Tinselworm. He took the show down under during the summer of 2008, touring Australia and New Zealand, before returning to London in December 2008 for a ten week run of the show at The Gielgud Theatre. The summer of 2009 saw Bill tour the UK once again with his live show, Bill Bailey Live. Last autumn, following his performances at London’s Royal Albert Hall and the resulting critically acclaimed BBC2 television broadcast, Bill enjoyed a very successful UK tour of his musical comedy extravaganza, Bill Bailey’s Remarkable Guide to the Orchestra. Performing alongside some of the UK’s finest orchestras, the show provided fans with the opportunity to see Bill’s surreal comic and musical imagination at its best and was described by The Telegraph as "a glorious achievement," The Guardian as "sublime hilarity" and Stephen Fry as "wonderfully enjoyable... like driving a Rolls-Royce off-road." As in any Bill Bailey show, the subject matter is broad ranging; tattoos, marketing, doorbells, Emo, creationism, post-war banking secrecy, travellers' tales and the alternate reality that is Bill’s world - spun together with the sparkling thread of a seasonal invertebrate.
What is a tinselworm? It’s something I can’t stop thinking about since seeing Bill Bailey’s latest highly entertaining solo show of the same name – but it’s not the only thing.
To call what Bailey does simply stand-up – he doesn’t stand still for a minute - or even comedy seems reductionistic in the extreme.
Fans will be happy to see various Bailey trademarks all present and accounted for – albeit moved on a bit – in this new show, which comes to the West End following dates Down Under and a UK arena tour last year. It’s two Scientologists now changing the lightbulb, for instance, while The Killers are amongst the current pop music parodies, the audience chanting along to Bailey’s version of the “All the Things That I’ve Done” chorus: I’ve got ham but I’m not a hamster…
Putting his musical skills to further good use (Bailey is a classically trained musician), there’s also plenty of tinkling of the keyboards, pounding of the synthesiser (creating some very spooky doorbell ringtones) and strumming of numerous string instruments, not least an Iranian oud.
This is all interspersed of course with Bailey’s free-wheeling ramble through self-deprecating jibes and a wide range of big and small topics: from bouncy castles to the Obama moment, elements of the psyche, potential Olympic parade embarrassment, job interview questions, tattoos, conspiracy theories, the Haydon Collidor, Emo, panini and security at the Trocadero Centre.
For the most part, it’s delightfully silly fun, but what I love most about Bailey’s performance is that he doesn’t shy away from making you think – and dare I say it, feel – at the same time as he’s making your belly ache. The day after the show, I was Googling away to find out more about Kant’s Categorical Imperative, the novels of Thomas Pynchon, French philosopher Jean Baudrillard and UBS’s links to Nazi gold.
And I was also recalling the show’s closing: a short wordless film of Bailey and a potted plant in Hyde Park that, while whimsical, also seemed to me an incredibly moving portrait of the modern malaise, the loneliness of humanity.
I’m still not sure what tinselworm is, though I imagine it has something to do with Joe Magee’s quirky animations, another of the evening’s nice touches, and Bailey sticking a cheerful two fingers up at those pesky Creationists.
Originally opened 27Dec 1906 as The Hicks Theatre. Formerly The Globe, renamed in 1994 in part in tribute to Sam Wanamaker, so that his dream of a new Shakespeare Globe would be the only Globe in London. 983 seats. Society of London Theatre member. In 1999 Delfont Mackintosh Theatres Limited acquired the freehold of the Queen s and the Gielgud Theatres from Christ s Hospital, Horsham. The lease of the Gielgud Theatre will revert back from Really Useful Theatres to Delfont Mackintosh Theatres in March 2006 after which there are plans to refurbish both venues and to build a 500-seat theatre, The Sondheim, above the Queen s. This will be the first new theatre in Shaftesbury Avenue since 1931.
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