An Evening With Noel Fielding

Review: Noel Fielding – An Evening With Noel Fielding

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Symphony Hall is a beautiful venue in itself, but walking into the room last Thursday evening meant stepping into a fantastical world that I never wanted to leave.

Symphony HallAn Evening With Noel Fielding is an incredibly diverse spectacle, beginning with an announcement from The Moon, quickly followed by around forty minutes of intelligent yet ridiculous stand up from the secret king of observation himself. Noel is a natural performer; confident enough to be comfortable doing an impression of a herbal teabag in front of 2000 people. In other words: when this man starts a sentence with “I had a dream I was a teabag,” you know it’s going to be an interesting night.

The stories were far-fetched to say the least, but it was surprisingly easy for the audience to get on board with any zany idea that the group presented to us and the atmosphere was remarkable. Both Tom Meeten and Mike Fielding had multiple hysterically funny roles that were all superbly acted (give or take a few giggles here and there, but I think they made the show even better).

Judging by the shouts and cheers, the crowd was clearly delighted to see the abundance of plenty of well-loved Luxury Comedy favourites, particularly Fantasy Man, Joey Ramone and New York Cop. We were also introduced to many new characters, played by Tom and Mike, that are already so intricately well-developed and brilliant that they may as well have been around since the The Mighty Boosh.

A striking aspect of this variety-style show was the impressive animation and fluency of its integration into the evening, to the point where I began to believe that a giant plasticine Joey Ramone could actually walk straight out of his plasticine world and onto the stage. I guess a horrifically creepy and violent human version would have to suffice. Everything about An Evening With Noel Fielding has been made with stunning quality, from the efficiency of New York Cop’s audience interrogation (minus a nearly broken toe) to the fantastic music and choreography throughout the proceedings.

Noel Fielding

Thanks to Noel’s lovely managers, Anna and Sean, I was reserved a backstage pass which meant I actually got to meet Noel, Tom and Mike after the show, and it was truly an honour to be able to speak to these lovely people. Anyone who knows me will know that Noel is my absolute hero, so this was a massive deal for me, and I couldn’t be more grateful.

It’s strange to look back over events and realise the vast expanse between the show’s humble, low-key beginnings with just Fielding on stage, to a mission in a plasticine world with a couple of deluded nitwits riding on a unicorn. But we didn’t even notice the transformation as it happened; that is how skilled these comedians, and everyone working behind the scenes, have been in creating this absolutely wonderful evening of quality entertainment and madness.

Information and tickets are available here

NOEL FIELDING’S MOODYCOMEDY INTERVIEW

Noel Fielding Interview, Part One: An Evening With Noel Fielding

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An Evening With Noel Fielding

Noel Fielding has recently embarked on his first live tour since the second Mighty Boosh tour over five years ago, and this time he’s got a whole new agenda. Noel is my comedy hero, and I was honoured to be invited to talk to him about his tour, An Evening With Noel Fielding.

How’s the tour going so far?

It’s going well. Well, it’s alright. It started off well and then I got a bug so I was really sick… but you can’t really stop, that’s the problem. You’ve got to keep going; got to keep doing the gigs! The tour won’t stop so you just have to sort of get on with it.

But it’s going well. The best one, so far, was Halifax.

You’ve added more dates recently as well.

Yeah, tonnes more, I think there may be another thirty or forty, and then twenty after Christmas. I think we’re going to Australia and maybe America, even some parts of Europe or New Zealand, we don’t know yet.

I’d love to do something in America at some point; something completely different. But this is going to be quite a big tour. We’re only at the beginning of it really.

Artistically speaking, what were your aims for this tour?

Well, I wanted to try and make something good, and have it be interactive and have animation so I could make a show that showed all aspects of what I do. But something you’d still be able to enjoy without you having to have seen the Boosh or Luxury Comedy or my stand-up.

I wanted it to be funny for people that hadn’t seen me before and have some audience interaction as well as stand-up, some music and a narrative. We’ve been working on it religiously all year. My brother’s in it, Mike, from The Mighty Boosh and Tom Meeten, who’s a really great comedian.

What kind of ages have your audience members been this time?

I think it was pretty broad even with the Boosh. There were lots of young screaming teenagers but that’s okay, and there were lots of older people in the audience as well. This tour has been quite mixed. There’s a bit where I go into the crowd as a character called New York Cop and I have to interrogate the audience and I chat to them. It’s much more mixed than I thought it would be, which really pleases me.

How have you found the process of writing for a tour compared to writing for television?

It’s a different thing really to writing a TV show; I wrote TV shows back to back so I was getting stir crazy.

I like working with an audience and I love the energy of live gigs so when you’re making TV shows, you don’t really get much feedback other than on the Internet and a few reviews. It’s a bit like working in the dark or in a tunnel so when you come out and do live stuff it’s great to get a reaction straight away.

I had a lot of ideas for the tour show already because I hadn’t toured for a while and I just sort of brought them all together to make one show and made sure it wasn’t too lumpy or too much like a collage of different ideas. I wanted to try and make it flow.

Are there any comedians that you’d like to work with in the future?

I love Tony Law, Paul Foot and James Acaster. Being on Buzzcocks means you get to work with them, but, yeah, I’d love to do stuff with Paul Foot. He’s brilliant and so underrated. He should be a household name.

Russell Brand’s just written a book and I’d quite like to do something with him as well; an improvised show, something unplanned. I like working with Russell. He’s very brave.

What else would you like to do?

I’ve fallen in love with stand-up again whilst doing this tour. There’s about forty minutes of stand-up in the show, and I was very scared because I hadn’t done stand-up for a while, but I managed to do it and I was really enjoying it much more than I thought I would be.

I would like to do a pure stand-up show now as well. And with the Loose Tapestries, Serge and I are always talking about going on tour so that would be fun. I’d like to write children’s books too, so maybe I could do that. I want to do everything!

Information regarding Noel’s recently added tour dates for 2015 are here.

COME BACK NEXT WEEK TO READ PART TWO OF MY INTERVIEW WITH NOEL, FOR EXCLUSIVE INSIGHT INTO THE WRITING AND RECEPTION OF LUXURY COMEDY SERIES TWO.