Seeing Sarah Silverman
This evening, Vee and I – together with our American Jewish friend Eric – went to see a show at London’s Hammersmith Apollo by the American Jewish comedienne Sarah Silverman. The British – and here I include myself – have really only just discovered Silverman.
It probably started with her video called “The Great Schlep” about the US presidential race. Last weekend, she was the subject of a colour supplement profile and this weekend she was on the “Friday Night With Jonathan Ross” show (where strangely there was a lack of connection between the two).
Now the tickets for the event gave no start time but stated that doors would open at 6.30 pm. I’ve been to the Apollo before and guessed that the event would not in fact start until 7.30 pm so we rolled up about 7 pm. However, it was 7.45 pm before the audience was allowed to take its seats and around 8.30 pm before the event started.
I think that there was supposed to be a support act from an American comedian but apparently he was ill and we just had a very short video link with him. Then there was a video advertising season two of a Silverman comedy programme in the States that was unintelligible to anyone – virtually all the audience, I guess – who has not seen the first season.
At last, around 8.40 pm, Sarah Silverman herself appeared. Her material – scatological monologues broken up with little songs – was always politically incorrect and totally outrageous but only occasionally really funny and the unevenness of the performance was oddly amateurish.
Then, about 9.30 pm, it was suddenly and surprisingly over. There had been slow hand-clapping while we waited for the event to start and now there was more slow hand-clapping as the audience virtually demanded more.
Eventually Silverman reappeared but astonishingly insisted: “Go home. I’ve got nothing more”. She was pressed by the audience to come up with something and she struggled to find a joke or two and even faltered badly with one of her own old songs. Eventually she resorted to inviting the audience to field her with some questions. This might have worked with a much smaller audience and a performer with more depth, but she just couldn’t hack it. One woman screamed out: “You’re over-hyped, Sarah!”. Sadly this was true.
Our tickets were £42 each with a handling charge of £5.75 each. That meant that we paid more than a pound a minute for a show that was not even that funny. I think it will be a while before Silverman dares to take to a British stage again.
But, heh, she’s cute – and she supports Barack Obama.
Footnote 1 (20/10/08): A review in today’s “Times” – and the comments from others at the show – confirms everything I’ve written as you can see here.
Footnote 2 (21/10/08): A review in today’s “Guardian” is not much kinder to Silverman and concludes “a trader in racial insensitivity narrowly escapes a lynching”.
Footnote 3 (26/10/08): Today’s “Observer” carries a broadly supportive review.
Oh, Sarah – come back with more material and a more polished performance.