Et Maintenant Pour Quelque Chose Completement Different
Riverside Studios, London W6
About 15 years ago, I went to see And Now for Something Completely Different at a cinema in Toulouse and found myself, after 10 minutes, to be the only person laughing in a rapidly emptying auditorium.
But Frenchness and getting Monty Python are not incompatible, as the five members of Rémy Renoux prove tonight, acquitting themselves with increasing hilarity over the couple of dozen sketches they tackle. The Gallic twist, as well as emphasising the physical nature of much of Python, adds to some of the material: only in French, for instance, could the hyperbole of the four fat industrialists out-povving one another be brought to the keening heights it scales here.
Marie Parouty's dual role as the Carol Cleveland bombshell and John Cleese - in a number of particularly psychotic setpieces - is a neat update. 'The Undertakers'; 'The Penis Song'; 'Self-Defence with Fresh Fruit' - all these sketches are here, well surtitled, and topped and tailed by a dash of male nudity. A hoot.
