BWW Reviews: NEIL INNES LIVE, Greenwich Theatre, October 30 2011

Neil Innes has had a hand in some of the most celebrated comedy of the twentieth century - he worked with the Pythons on the television shows and films, wrote The Rutles songs (oh yes he did) and played Ron Nasty (John Lennon) in various film and television appearances. He was also a founder member of the Bonzo Dog Band and made the seminal, and still astonishing, Innes Book of Records, a series of short musical films that bubbled over with invention and wit and production values that today's budgets would never allow. He has done plenty more on television and in music, but has always sat slightly outside the mainstream, never courting commercial success at the expense of artistic vision.

Now 66 years old, the last date of his current tour saw him pitching up at Greenwich Theatre round the corner from his old stamping grounds of Deptford Market, where he would scour the 78s for the kind of silly songs that the Bonzos parodied, and Goldsmiths College, where he took an art degree and became imbued with the counter-cultural sensibility that still informs his work. The show is rather old-fashioned in its staging - just Neil and a selection of instruments - with no back projections of video, no support musicians and just enough patter to introduce the songs and their jaundiced take on twenty-first century life. There's affectionate satire about the internet (he's a fan really) and rather more biting stuff about the banality of television and the venality of bankers. The overarching theme is Neil's continuing disenchantment with people's inability to simply get along and do what's decent with respect to one's fellow man. The world is awry and his is a wry take on it.      

There's plenty of fun too, with an audience largely drawn from those who can't remember the Sixties (because they were there) lapping up crowd-pleasers like the uncharacteristically crude Philosophers' Song and the Black Knight's Song from Holy Grail. There's a medley of Rutles' stuff too, reminding us of how talented a parodist Innes was - so good is the Rutles' material that it has spawned a set of tribute acts performing the songs that were intended to be nothing more than spoofs, an unexpected development which has tickled Neil's funny bone.

It's a friendly, charming show, with singalong sections, comic diversions and the chance to meet the man himself later to chat and have stuff signed (even stuff the audience have brought along with them). With over 40 years of material to call upon and a hugely varied body of work that has reflected the unplanned character of his career, Neil can pretty much do what he likes these days - and his public wouldn't have it any other way.

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