The Bungay show was a weird one this year, what with having a theme and all. I wasn’t all that certain how well having Britain’s Got Talent style judging would work, but the usual ‘let’s all chill out and be nice to each other’ feel was still there. Kind of…
Rob impressed me with newly thought out stuff (+1), although at times it felt meandering and long-winded (-1). It was painfully obvious just how new the whole thing was too; the lack of music, grindingly slow intro and disjointed feel of it all making me wish he’d saved it for next year (-1). But there were some nice touches in there, including a couple of club flourishes that made me bleat with appreciation and a general dab-handedness at the whole juggling thing (+1).
Just Shameless (?) lived up to his name. The only positive thing I can think to say about the boy was that he was on mercifully early on in the show and thus didn’t sap a whole evening’s worth of energy out of the room. Just one act’s worth. The very notion of standing up in front of a room of people and getting them to sing together just appalls me and it certainly wasn’t an appropriate thing to have in the show (-1). He came across as pretentious and naive (-1) and was, I’m quite sure, instantly disliked by the vast majority of the audience, who justifiably didn’t want anything to do with it and would have maintained a stoney silence if it hadn’t been for the one or two people (probably Bungay locals) who felt like, under the circumstances, they should condescend to partipate. To make matters worse, this lad chose to further scupper himself by picking a song which no one else in the world knows the words to, not to mention one which (I have to agree with Alby) smacked of religious/new age/hippy bullshit sentimentality (-1). I feel that it’s worthy of note that I actually began to feel physically sick as the whole cringingly embrassing charade went on with no sign of ending(-1). To be fair to the boy, I can kind of see the predicament he was in. He had reached a point, quite early on in proceedings, where it was obvious that the audience wasn’t prepared to join in, but the longer he was stood up the harder and harder it was for him to admit his mistake and sit back down again. Especially so because technically he was supposed to be waiting for the judges to tell him to stop. It was, however, rather apparent that the judges were taking the piss (-1). What turned out to be a nightmarish, never-ending and exquisitely embarrassing act should realistically have lasted about five seconds.
The idea of a judged talent show does suggest a come-one-come-all mentality so I suppose the lad was perfectly within his rights to have a go, but surely-if only to save the respectability of the show-the reasonable expectation is for Ewan to vet the acts beforehand. It seems rather cruel to put a young lad (naive/retarded as he may be) through such a painfully humiliating experience in terms of firstly allowing him on stage and then secondly having the whole thing dragged out by the judges. (-1)
By this point in the show I was growing tired of the judging breaks between acts. Aside from a few particularly witty remarks there really didn’t seem any justifiable purpose in the question/comment sessions, and certainly not Al running on and off stage with oversized comedy props, which I couldn’t help but feel was included to give Al something to do and/or to get cheap laughs for using oversized comedy props. It certainly felt incongruous to the talent show theme. (-1)
Martin and Paul did passing. w00t. (+1) And did it very well. w00t. (+1) There was a nice mix of old skool stuff and fancy 7 and 8 club bits. Mandy was spot on though: they needed to add a dollop of freaky lefty-righty stuff as a bit of spice. (-1)
Sean did his Singin’ In The Rain routine again which brought back nice memories of how much I’d enjoyed it at Leeds. (+1) It was as tidy and entertaining as ever and not particularly droppy (+1), but did suffer from his ending just not working (-1).
By the end of the first half I’d had enough of Monty. Again, I felt like having set pieces like this went against the grain of bothering doing the proper talent show thing, and every time he came on stage it just looked like padding. (-1)
James did some rockin’ hard shit, innit. (+1) He had a shaky start and suffered really badly from nervous droppiness (-1) but his routine was interspersed with some completely cool stuff that made me smile. Broadly. (+1) James is definitely someone I want to go away and perform lots somewhere else and then come back and wow me. I’m looking forward to seeing him somewhere again. (+1) Oh, and he smashed a little kid in the face with a club. Shot, Sir. (+1)
Sam is a very cool kid and it was nice to see him get involved this year. And yes, he’s dead good on a pair of stilts and can keep a diabolo going competently. (+1) But applauding small children for being, at best, of average talent bores me. And when it goes on for five minutes it irritates me. (-1) Particularly as Sam is an intelligent enough kid that patronising him like that is just embarassing. Again, I was disappointed with the judges for not getting him off the stage. (-1)
Blake struck me as an older, hairier, not quite so agile Jon Peat. His manic throwing himself around the stage and is intermittantly smiley face entertained me very well (+1) and he finished a really three ball body-moves routine with a fancy bit of two devil stick work (+1). But then it all went very Norbi (although with possibly a tad more innovation). Coat-hangers aren’t pretty looking and are evidently an agonisingly unworkable prop to do anything on stage with. (-1) It was unfortunate that what had been a very competent act spiralled into a droppy horrible mess of turning things upside down and round in circles. (-1)
Monty came on, finally, to do the Bungay trick. He did it. It was good. (+1) He unfortunately felt the need to preface it with a bit of rubbishy balancing on a beer barrel though. (-1)Then he just started dropping things. It would have been nice if his grande finale trick had worked. But it didn’t. And frankly wasn’t going to. It made the Bungay trick look a bit rubbish without actually satisfying the audience with anything better. (-1)
Grant Goldie did a Butlins-perfect, slick and shiny hat routine which was boppy and entertaining enough for me not to be too worried that the final act involved hats (+1). He certainly had the most energy and style of anyone in the show (+1). He shouldn’t have bothered with the hat/cane/chin/foot thing though. It was never going to live up to last time. (-1)
I couldn’t make up my mind what I thought of the show for a long time. I think Ewan was quite brave to try out a theme, but I’m not convinced it worked very well. The whole thing felt bitty and disjointed for no real purpose and I couldn’t reconcile the mock-serious judging stuff with the Al/Monty/dragging bad acts out stuff. It just didn’t fit well together. Having said that, I did enjoy myself. A bit of an informal arse-around is perfectly welcome once or twice a year. It just doesn’t happen to score very well.
It was nice to get Farmer Paul involved at any rate. I think he enjoyed it.
The Bungay show scores: (-4)
Corrections: “Just Seamus”, “Seán” & “Monte”.