Doing The Pub Quiz – Northern Comedy Theatre Zoom Live

Following on from their live Zoom show ‘Doing Shakespeare’, the new addition to the Northern Comedy Theatre’s repertoire is ‘Doing the Pub Quiz’.  Once again, The Felching Players are together, but this time they are using their free time to enter a pub quiz.  Teaming up with writer David Spicer who wrote their previous Zoom Live ‘Doing Shakespeare’, The Felching Players are taking on other pub teams in a bid to be victorious. 

Tom (Robert Stuart-Hudson) set up the team (apparently to get off the booze after his wife left him) and likes to be in the driving seat, organising everyone.  The imaginatively named ‘We are Smarticus’ pub team have got through the qualifying round and are now battling against 31 teams to be top dog of the pub quiz league; they just need to get through 8 rounds of tough quiz questions.

Tom has assigned everyone a specialist subject, he will cover History, Rebecca (Vikki Earle) Art and Literature, Jason (Rob Hardie) General Knowledge, Terri (Kathryn Chambers) Sport and Leisure, Ebon (Keiran Maleedy) Science and Judith (Lauren Molyneux) 20th Century German Philosophers.    Even more complicated are the rules, trying to navigate their way through the rule book causes more arguments.

The script uses our current situation of still being partially in lockdown to explain the use of Zoom as ‘We are Smarticus’ are doing the quiz online.  Zoom works well in the gallery view format for comedy, as the audience can see all of the team members’ banter which is the key to the success of this show.

The Felching Players really work well together, and the Northern Comedy Theatre and David Spicer collaboration has proved successful.  Shaun Chambers direction brought everything together with a seamless production without any hiccups (Zoom can be a problem sometimes when dovetailing a group).    I especially loved Tom’s indignant outrage at the thought of cheating and Jason’s cheeky cheating gizmo but Terri always has the last say with her dry sense of humour.

This is the second episode in the ‘Doing’ series which may lead me to wonder if there will be more.  They offer an hour or so of light-hearted humour and are always entertaining.  If there are more, I will be interested to see where the next one takes us.  ‘Doing Shakespeare’ has two more dates available (12^th and 19^th July) and ‘Doing the Pub Quiz’ is available with a selection of dates until 19^th July.  For details and to book go to the website https://northerncomedytheatre.com/doing-the-pub-quiz

Reviewer: Caroline Worswick

Reviewed: 6th July 2020

North West End UK Rating: ★★★