Thursday 14 November 2013

GLASGOW KULTURE: 51 SHADES OF MAGGIE

A night out in Glasgow is never dull!  And last night was no exception.  Mairi and I went to the Pavilion Theatre for, as they advertised, "the perfect girly night out", namely a one woman  comedy show called "51 Shades of Maggie".  They warned "Prepare for the funniest, sexiest (and maybe dirtiest) show of 2013."  It's basically a spoof on "50 Shades of Grey".

Well, having enjoyed Calendar Girls some years ago I was up for a night out with a Glasgow audience (always guaranteed to be memorable in some way or other).

I wasn't wrong ... it was quite a night! As someone who only ever attends concerts or the ballet this evening's entertainment was right at the other end of the Spectacle Spectrum.  No it wasn't dire but it certainly was all the R's (actually that is a bit of a pun what with the evening's colourful vocabularly): raw, rauchous, raunchy and ribald.  It's bascially about a really rough sexy mamma who gives as good as she gets. The comedienne, Leah MacRae, had the Glasgow patter going non-stop for 2 hours solid and only one intermission. 

The audience - all women, naturally - was equally the best feature of the night.  You may not like Glasgow audiences but my goodness they are (a) up for it ... whatever "it" is ... and (b) are there for the craic (fun, entertainment, chat) and repartee.  I am here to say this comedienne got full marks for every minute of her fizzy, gyrating performance and that included dealing with idiots in the Gods who were (presumably) drunk and disorderly.  They were 5 seats along from us and it took awhile to get the problem sorted.


For the whole evening she had a theatrefull of women laughing literally non-stop.  Unbelievable! (I confess I missed a lot of it as it was going so fast and being up in the Gods the sound was lost at the end of the punchlines.)

This very professional actress/comedienne had to deal with the whole audience chanting at the beginning of the second half, "Out ... out ...out" when the miscreants along from us made no move to exit themselves.  (The poor theatre male attendants did their best!)  She got a standing ovation at the end of the evening ... definitely well deserved.


Before the theatre filled up I took this photo of the hall and its ornate plasterwork. (I noticed that I have new software on my iPhone. This is the Panorama function .... Wow! It works!)

This show seems to be on lots of places around the country.  I guess each area has its own take on it.   Go and see it?  Not if your a man, frankly.  It is pretty "gross" [rude, offensive in a Billy Connolly sort of way] but to sit in that type of audience (not knowing if things were going to turn nasty - a bit like "mob behaviour") was ... well ... certainly showed a slice of life which had both the elements of theatre one associates with that image of the Shakespearean face masks, namely comedy and tragedy.  On our particular evening it had both, i.e. humour and the ugliness of a potentially volatile and dangerous situation.


Reading the comments of folk who have been:  they loved it e.g. "it was knicker elastic fantastic"!






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