Theatre News

Comedians Back Horne Section Mondays at Lyric

The Horne Section, comedian Alex Horne’s comedy-jazz “performance party”, will receive its West End debut at the Lyric Theatre with a series of fortnightly dates, running every other Monday at 7.30pm from 31 January to 14 March 2011.

Horne mixes jazz musicians with some of the UK’s top stand-up comics to “create some unique and hilarious noises” in an evening of entertainment that’s described as “part improvised, part honed, part performance, part party”. The comedians are invited onto the stage with Horne and his band to deliver a short piece, sing a song or do whatever they please.

The results to date in The Horne Section – which has had runs at the Edinburgh Fringe and Soho Theatre – have included Tim Minchin making up a song about cheese, Al Murray playing drums to Stevie Wonder’s “Superstition”, and Jimmy Carr telling one-liners over a Russian gypsy polka.

Also at the Lyric Theatre, Michael Jackson tribute concert show Thriller Live!, opened in January 2009, continues into its third year in the West End this month. It runs Tuesdays to Sundays weekly and is currently taking bookings through to 5 June 2011.

The Horne Section is not to be confused with American composer Lance Horne and the one-off West End concert of his work, First Things Last, being presented at the Garrick Theatre on Sunday 30 January with a stellar line-up including Alan Cumming, Hannah Waddingham, Emma Williams, Julie Atherton, Paul Spicer and Broadway’s Norm Lewis.