I’m starting to wonder if Pappy’s will ever be able to get their onstage magic to transfer to the small screen. The second series of Badults seemed to slip by relatively unnoticed on Twitter. I’m not sure whether this is an improvement on the bile directed at the first series, but somehow I can’t see a third series happening.
Yet on the stage in the Literature Tent at 11.30pm on a Friday night their gooning, looning sense of fun and stupidity was well and truly back. There was an end-of-school, pressure-off, demob happy feel to their nonsense. They didn't seem to have a care in the world. It reminded me of Thatcher’s speech in the Commons after she had resigned and she showed a human side for once, remarking “I’m enjoying this.”
From the moment they scrambled onstage Pappy’s seemed to be liberated by the fact that they weren’t being judged (except by me). They took the piss out of themselves, each other and the audience, threatening at one point to do a two-hour set. Though actually I suspect nobody would have complained if they had.
The material was drawn from their entire career, giving the show something of a valedictory-cum-celebratory feel. I’m not sure how much they had rehearsed, but Tom Parry, always a bit of a show-off and limelight hogger, milked his appearance dressed as Julius Caesar during their old folk band reunion sketch (don’t ask) so much that Ben Clark decided to walk offstage because he had nothing to do.
One of their themes is pushing things to the limit, whether it is Parry’s accidental anti-semitism when he kills Crosby’s Vampire-Rabbi (I said don’t ask) or in their note-for-note rendition of Bob Dylan’s Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again, underlining how overlong and repetitive the song is. Like a King Midas of Mirth everything they touch onstage turns to laughs. So why oh why couldn't they do it in Badults?
Matthew Crosby, meanwhile, was the moral compass of the trio throughout the gig, keeping things on track when they threatened to veer too wildly off script. Ben Clark did return for his high point from last year’s Foster’s-nominated show, in which he played a cross between a Werewolf and a priest. Clark also excelled in his Up-style birth-to-marriage-to-death montage with a member of the audience.
Oh, and did I mention that Tom Parry and Crosby (picture © Bruce Dessau) both donned dresses to pay homage to that night’s impromptu music headliner Lily Allen? The show was deliciously daft, gloriously chaotic and the perfect way to round off the night. That single niggle now remains, however. How the hell are they ever going to crack being this good on television?
