Review: Comedy Connoisseurs at Cambridge Junction
Comedy Connoisseurs, a new series of stand-up gigs from the team behind the popular Jesterlarf comedy nights, held its first event at Cambridge Junction’s J2 on Friday, March 3. The concept involves comedians revisiting some of their ‘greatest hits’ and tonight we had two: Alexis Dubus and Dan Antopolski.
Alexis, taking the night off from his wonderful French alter ego Marcel Lucont, performed A R*ddy Brief History of Swearing, which he wrote in 2009 and which won the Top 10 Edinburgh Fringe Experience award. He also performed the piece at the Cambridge Comedy Festival on the river as part of the Silly Punt shows.
The presentation, complete with slides, was entertaining and informative, without really being laugh-out-loud funny, highlighting the history of certain swear words and phrases, as well as obscene gestures, and looking at concepts of swearing and insults in other countries and cultures.
I never knew where ‘berk’ and ‘Gordon Bennett’ came from, for example, and it was also eye-opening to see the list of words the BBC deemed most offensive back in 2000. The audience seemed to very much enjoy it and actively participated throughout.
Dan Antopolski took over in the second half, presenting Old Gold (Remix), from his Second Coming and 2000 shows, interspersed with bits from other old shows and some new material - and it was absolutely hilarious.
Jokes, raps (I particularly enjoyed the one about sandwiches), anecdotes and a mathematical formula explaining the Bob Marley song No Woman No Cry were all part of the fun, but what had me doubling over with laughter was when he read excerpts from two of his erotic novels. Again, the show drew an extremely positive response from the audience.
[Read more: Alexis Dubus and Dan Antopolski dip into their archive material for Comedy Connoisseurs]
The next Comedy Connoisseurs night is on Friday, April 7, and features, among others, Ninia Benjamin and Mike Gunn. Tickets, priced £20, are available at junction.co.uk. For more on Comedy Connoisseurs, go to jesterlarf.com/event/comedy-connoisseurs/.
