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Julian Barratt And Noel Fielding's first Edinburgh Show in 1998 Won them "Best Newcomer" Perrier Award. "Arctic Boosh", their second earned a nomination. |
Their chemistry together is magical, Seeing them for the first time is like hearing your first Frank Zappa record or watching your first episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus. It's hard to know just what is going on, where their going or what the hell they're talking about, but you are aware that you are in the presence of genius. Once you acclimatise, it's as though there is no other way of going about it. They create an alternate universe on stage for the duration of the show but were I to tell you about it, I'd scare you away. If comedy really were the new rock 'n' roll, Arctic Boosh embodies its coolest elements. I assume that seeing them now is akin to seeing Peter Cook and Dudley Moore during the mid-sixties. I leave the best comment to Will Anderson, who said that "although it sounds a bit dodgy coming from me, those guys are just too beautiful to be comedians".By Demetrius Romeo |
Comedy cellar October 20
Let me take you on a journey, a journey which begins 10,000 years ago on the
Arctic tundra but quickly moves to a small post office somewhere in England.
It's staffed by Howard ("special feature: mastery of the jazz idiom") and
Vince ("special feature: beautiful hair of a '60's girl"). This is their
world, the world of Arctic Boosh. We're only visiting.
Don't expect it to make sense, though, for here lies madness - though it
rarely has looked so attractive. Sure, there is a sweet, childlike feel,
but it is the childishness of Lewis Carroll, somewhere where the new postal
routes are through Spain and the Arctic, where polar bears are shaved and
dinner tables are made from rice.
The flow of off-centre material is steady and you think at first that you
can always step back from it and just laugh at the silliness, but its
drip-drip nature wears away at the veneer of realism which you walk in with.
Imagine The Twilight Zone written by Captain Beefheart and Jonathan
Richman and you are somewhere in the right area.
Both Julian Barrat (as Howard) and Noel Fielding (as Vince) maintain looks
which hover somewhere between innocent and demented. You may hover there
too, by the end of the night as you consider the truth of their warning that
one "should never underestimate the power of the postpak".
Well, one answer is Boosh. Formerly Mighty Boosh, the two strange ones are about to land on the Sydney Comedy Festival with the latest cockeyed comedy adventure as Arctic Boosh.
Boosh, aka Julian Barratt and Noel Fielding aren’t your average stand-up comedians. No Republic jokes for these goonish visionaries. From their strange and twisted imaginations have come Vince Noir and Howard Moon, tow Royal Mail posties who invite you to join them for "an epic journey to frozen wasteland where the old men dance with tigers. Witness Alan the Bingo Moose as he flies around shooting numbers out of his hoof. A furious blend of whippy beats and icy dreams. Catch the power, smell the frost."
Or so the publicity blurb goes. I don't know about you, but it's a clear as mud to me so far.
Intrigued by the prospect of what has been billed in the UK as "the funniest Fringe diversion in decades, I sought elaboration from onbe half of the Boosh, Noel Fielding. (He is memorably referred to as a "squashed Elvis" if anyone wants to know which one he is.)
According to Noel, he and Julian were destined for each other primarily through his persistent stalking of Barratt during college.
"I kept hassling him and he thought that if I was shit it was going to be really difficult because we were friends by then, but he ended up really liking what I was doing," says Fielding in a gentle South London slur.
"He phoned me up out of the blue and said 'Do you want to write a show?' So we started to write something for a TV company and they kinda liked it but they said it was a bit mad - and it would cost about 12 million an episode to make."
"They also said they didn't really understand how the dialogue worked so we thought 'Let's do a live show and show them how it worked.'"
By this stage, stand-up was a bit passé and their own peculiar artistic proclivities called for something a little more spectacular.
The whole Arctic idea started with a bit of little Boy Scout im
Reviewed by BERNARD ZUEL
Jazz VS Arts
JAZZ VS FINE ARTS
What do you get when you put a freeform jazz musician in the same room as a fine arts student with a penchant for surrealist images.
Arctic Boosh interview by Elizabeth Bentley