Review: Slapstick Gala 2024, Bristol Beacon – ‘A fabulous feast of fun’

Back at its spiritual home after six nomadic years, the Slapstick Festival Gala pulled a full house of punters desperate for relief from the seemingly relentless tide of depressing news.

Fittingly, this year’s fest was dedicated to festival patron Ian Lavender, who died last week, and the Gala included a brief video by Matthew Sweet of him performing the Dad’s Army theme song with Neil Innes on ukelele backstage at a previous event.

After a swift intro from festival director Chris Daniels, who’s clearly gratified that so many people have bought tickets, genial host Hugh Bonneville takes over for a series of Wikipedia introductions leavened with dry wit (“Many of us are used to working with live bears,” he quips while serving up some background to The Gold Rush).

First up is the 1921 Buster Keaton two-reeler Cops, with magnificent piano accompaniment by veteran John Sweeney. It’s an absolute masterpiece of stunts and comic timing, in which old Stone Face finds himself pursued by a city’s entire police force. The whole hall is swiftly roaring with laughter.

Next up is Cheryl Knight, performing a truncated version of her Joyce Grenfell show, which acts as a perfect live trailer for her hugely popular Ode to Joyce songs and monologues event.

Günter A. Buchwald then joins forces on piano with percussionist Frank Bockius for a festive-themed accompaniment to Laurel and Hardy’s last silent short film, Big Business, in which the duo play the world’s worst door-to-door Christmas tree salesmen.

It’s difficult not to describe this one as a cracker, as L&H’s feud with the great James Finlayson, who declines to make a purchase, swiftly degenerates into gleeful tit-for-tat house-destroying violence.

As Bonneville remarks afterwards, this was clearly a key influence on the comedy of Rik Mayall and Ade Edmondson.

 

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After an interval, it’s time for the main attraction: the original 1925 version of Chaplin’s masterpiece, The Gold Rush.

Not only does this still have the power to make audiences roar with laughter after nearly a century, but it also remains a challenge to list all the comic highlights without feeling that you’ve missed something: Charlie’s first appearance with the bear, the brilliantly executed fantasy chicken sequence, the bread roll dance, the precarious clifftop cabin sequence, cooking and eating the shoe, Charlie’s mishap with the dog in the dancehall, Charlie attempting to dodge Big Jim’s wildly swaying shotgun during the fight with Black Larsen . . .

Günter is back to conduct Chaplin’s original score, played by the clearly well rehearsed Bristol Ensemble. This isn’t the easiest piece of music to play, with lots of tricky cues, but they absolutely nail it, receiving a well-deserved ovation at the end.

And that was it for another fabulous feast of fun. Shame we have to wait a whole year for the next one.

Main photo: Robin Askew

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