Diminishing concerns

Yesterday, I was reminiscing about the time I saw a very funny show called El Coca Cola Grande at the Hampstead Theatre, done entirely in Spanish. We don't associate humour with Spain very much, but the funniest group I ever saw at Edinburgh, a trio called Peepolykus, was two-thirds Spanish, and it also had the funniest opening of any show I saw there. Shall I tell you about it? Yes, I shall.

Just as John, the English third of the trio, was about to start the show, he was handed a note to read out to the audience. It was about a car that was blocking the exit from the theatre. He read the car number out and looked strictly at us all. Nobody reacted. He read it again. Still nothing, until one Spaniard in the cast, David Sant, suddenly said: "Oh, my God! That is my car!" and rushed out of the theatre. John stood there, flummoxed. Nothing happened. John said: "Well, we can't start yet, because..." and tailed away. Nothing happened. John smiled bravely and said: "Is it anyone's birthday here today...?"

Suddenly, there was a cry from the theatre exit door of: "The car will not start! The battery has gone!" and Sant returned, lugging a huge battery. He passed John on stage, saying, "I will just plug the battery in backstage to recharge", and vanished again. Just as John was resuming his effort to engage with the audience, there was a tremendous flash backstage and the entire lighting system went out. Everyone was in darkness. I can't remember what the invisible John said next, but the audience, who were in helpless laughter, greeted it with hoots. The show hadn't started and already it was in hilarious trouble.

Now, it would be hard for a stand-up comedian to have an opening like that. Stand-up is hardly evertheatrical. There's no tension on stage, which is why lone comedians often involve the audience, or members of it, as passing partners. "You a vegetarian, love?" I remember Al Murray the Pub Landlord saying to a woman in the audience. "Well, you're a traitor, ain't yer? Cows are our enemy! It's them or us! Eat or be eaten! Anyway, how can you respect an animal with black and white splodgy markings – what kind of camouflage is that? Eh? Call that camouflage? All right, in an open cast coal mine, with melting snow, maybe, but otherwise...?"

Wonderful little fantasy, conjured up in several lines, but only because Al Murray, lacking a partner, had used the vegetarian as a straight person. The two-man National Theatre of Brent used to use the whole audience as extra characters. Once, in a performance of The Messiah, Patrick Barlow was off-stage, and the other, I think it was still Jim Broadbent, said to us: "Now, in a moment he's going to come back as a messenger from Rome, and he's going to address you all as the crowd, so we're going to give him a bit of a surprise. When he says 'Rome', I want you all to hiss. Shall we practise that? And when he says, 'I bring a message from the Emperor', you must all shout out, 'You know what you can do with your Emperor!' Right, let's practise that..."

Sure enough, when Barlow came back on as the messenger from Rome, he met with a hostile crowd, booing, groaning and telling him what he could do with his Emperor, and more besides, which was funny because we were all in it together, being part of the show, swelling the two-man cast to a cast of hundreds.

And yet, in reality, comic acts have shrunk in size over the years. It would be hard to imagine a group as huge as the Crazy Gang or the Marx Brothers come along now. Beyond the Fringe was four people! Reckless extravagance! And whatever happened to all those university revues that used to throng Edinburgh? All gone, all gone... You're lucky to get two people in a show in recent years – Kit and the Widow, the Right Stuff, Miles and Milner, but not many others.

Yes, I know.

The League of Gentlemen. Nearly half a dozen of them.

I saw them in their first year at Edinburgh. They were great.

But they are the exception that proves the rule.

What rule? What exception? Will all this be resolved tomorrow? I certainly hope so.