{"id":418021,"date":"2011-05-05T11:04:53","date_gmt":"2011-05-05T11:04:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ghanamma.net\/2011\/05\/05\/cleese-show-gets-lukewarm-reviews\/"},"modified":"2011-05-05T11:04:53","modified_gmt":"2011-05-05T11:04:53","slug":"cleese-show-gets-lukewarm-reviews","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2011\/05\/05\/cleese-show-gets-lukewarm-reviews\/","title":{"rendered":"Cleese show gets lukewarm reviews"},"content":{"rendered":"

5 May 2011<\/span> Last updated at<\/span> 07:04 ET<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The opening night of comic actor John Cleese’s first UK tour has been met with lukewarm reviews by critics.<\/p>\n

The 71-year-old’s show was “perfectly pleasant”, said The Times’ reviewer, but was “not full of the sort of comic vitality with which he made his name”.<\/p>\n

The Daily Mail<\/a> said the ex-Monty Python member had become “rueful – even, in the true sense of the word, pathetic”.<\/p>\n

The Alimony Tour – so-called because Cleese says it is funding a divorce – opened in Cambridge on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

Comedy website Chortle<\/a> said Cleese was “pleading penury” and had been “forced out on the road to scrape together a living when he’d rather be at home with a good book”.<\/p>\n

As such, it continued, there was “a slight feeling that with the flagrantly money-making Alimony Tour that he’s done just enough to get by”.<\/p>\n

It described the Corn Exchange gig as a straightforward re-telling of his rise to fame, full of anecdotes he had polished in interviews over the years.<\/p>\n

“He hasn’t even bothered to learn the script, reading his lines from a none-too-discreet autocue,” its correspondent claims.<\/p>\n

\n
\n
\"John<\/p>\n

Please turn on JavaScript.<\/strong> Media requires JavaScript to play.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n

John Cleese discussing his tour earlier this year<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

The Independent’s Julian Hall<\/a> gave the show three stars out of five, saying fans of his classic sitcom Fawlty Towers were “in for a treat” because of clips that feature during the show.<\/p>\n

Yet The Times’ Dominic Maxwell argued there were too many such clips, and “too little of Cleese developing intriguing ideas about craft”.<\/p>\n

He gave the show two stars out of five, describing it as “a lecture tour more than comedy tour” that was more “intelligent” than “wildly funny”.<\/p>\n

His sentiments were echoed by Quentin Letts in the Mail, who said his routine was “initially funny” but peaked after 20 minutes.<\/p>\n

“The audience tries to jolly him along, but the fizz has evaporated,” he wrote. “Topical satire has yielded to autobiographical dribble.”<\/p>\n

After his last Cambridge date on Saturday, Cleese will perform his show in several cities across the UK before closing the tour in Bath on 2 July.<\/p>\n

Speaking to the BBC in January, the Somerset-born star said the show would be “a fan show” that would steer clear of London’s West End.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Read more from the original source:
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