On Tuesday evening myself & Mrs B went to see comedian Alex Horne at The Carriageworks in Leeds. I’ve seen Horne on TV a few times before and found him very funny and engaging and so was looking forward to the evening. The show he is currently touring is called “7 Years in the Bathroom” and looks at how long we spend doing various aspects of our life.
This was actually my first time seeing a show at The Carriageworks, I’d heard a few negative comments on the theatre not being very atmospheric and to be honest it does not have the same character as some other theatre & comedy venues. However, unlike many of its older counterparts the seats are spacious and comfy and I’d come to see a comedy show to provide the atmosphere so I settled into my seat quite happily.
The show was not a standard stand-up performance and Horne himself described it as “fun, but not fun fun”! After a brief introduction Horne started recreating all the aspects of the average man’s life (79 years) condensed it into one intricately planned hour. Starting with 7 years in the bathroom Horne kept the show moving swiftly with props, PowerPoint style projection, voice over and a significant amount of audience participation.
I was surprised that the show was not a sell out with lots of empty seats, maybe the nice weather had kept people away. However, the audience that were asked to participate in the show were all good sports and really helped with the enjoyment of the evening. Various people were asked to come on the stage and help recreating the various aspects of life from cleaning, queuing and sleeping (yes someone was asked to lay on the front of the stage and have a sleep for 20 minutes). Even the guy asked to spend a few years (or 5 minutes in the show) in the outside was a good sport and duly went outside to Millennium Square.
The show is not a new concept, I remember seeing Jasper Carrot doing something very similar many years ago. Horne’s style of performance is very reminiscent of Dave Gorman, not least in Horne’s appearance, but this is no bad thing.
Overall the show was very entertaining, I definitely found it fun fun and leaned a few interesting, if worrying, statistics along the way on what we waste our lives doing; we spend more time at traffic lights (2 months) than having sex (55 days)!
Sorry about the poor quality of the photo and it not actually showing Horne on stage, I am not one to draw attention to myself at a comedy gig as it would more than likely end up with my embarrassment so I waited for him to be off stage to take a quick snap on my phone.
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