Sunday, 6 January 2019

A Comedy On This Day: The Two Ronnies (6 January 1979)



 Watching Ronnie B in the opening jokes and the monologue, I'm struck by how he registers each lexical double entendre to the audience with the same expression and eye movement every single time.
 
 Ronnie C is wearing an off-white blazer with thick black piping this week.

 Call me perverse, but the section that I derive by far the most pleasure from is The Manhattan Transfer's synthy interpretation of 'On a Little Street in Singapore', enhanced by some role-playing and dramatic mime. On a small set of stock BBC Chinosarie, the ManTran play two couples, one a pair of inter-war American tourists who admire a canary in a cage, the other a pair of native Singaporeans (the man in yellowface, the woman coyly hiding behind a fan). The Chinese couple kiss, which is broken up when the tourists, who take their photo, hail them. This shonky but sincere routine has a degree of charm that the sketches lack, and made me laugh more than any of the jokes.

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