count arthur strong tour 2022 review

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Count Arthur Strong: And It’s Goodnight From Him – Lawrence Batley Theatre, Huddersfield

Reviewer: jay nuttall.

Part one of Count Arthur Strong’s farewell tour is most likely part one of many! Self-appointed doyen of light entertainment, raconteur and bon vivre, the Count is once again on the road spouting his usual tripe to anyone that will witness his ramblings. And they do! A sold out show on, most likely, a sold out tour is evidence enough of the popularity of the inner workings of Count Arthur’s befuddled brain.

After several series on Radio 4, Steve Delaney’s alter ego crossed the airwaves to prime time TV sitcom before failing to be recommissioned. The Count’s true home, however, is onstage. Delaney has been performing his creation for over thirty years, embodying every sinew of Arthur’s physicality. Previous tours have included subject matters that, of course, the Count rarely strays towards but in And It’s Goodnight From Him , he is left to free wheel through a stream of consciousness that goes everywhere but the point of what he is attempting to convey! It is this muddle that is the foundation of Delaney’s comedy.

Watching The Count stumble and stutter through stories in a quagmire of confusion is exhausting to watch. Delaney’s physical and verbal dexterity is so seemingly ramshackle yet performed with pin point accuracy. Every word slip is honed for maximum gag potential. To watch The Count is a masterclass of spoonerisms and malapropisms. He can hardly get through a sentence without slipping on a banana skin, each time sending him down another wrong path, side-tracked to the hilt until he no longer knows what he is talking about – never mind the audience desperately trying to keep up!

After watching great comedians it is often the case that it is very difficult to remember much about the show and that is very much the case. However, this is because there is very little in the show itself. Delaney treats us to two hours of mostly nonsense. The Count’s nonsense is very much that – no sense. We go round in circles as he attempts to tell us about his grudge with the new vicar or his journey through the kings of England. To watch The Count is not a passive experience. After several attempts of trying to link non sequitur to non sequitur it is sometimes easier to give up and simply let the madness in.

With no structure at all to keep the thoughts together the first half feels a little too loose. And with the second half beginning with, inexplicably, a performance of Firestarter by The Prodigy you would be forgiven into thinking we are in for more of the same. However, Count Arthur’s retelling of the story of The Beatles with just about every detail incorrect is inspired. Delaney invokes waves of laughter as John, Paul, John and Ringo’s names become more and more ridiculous and Brian Epstein somehow seemingly morphing into Albert Einstein! The end of the show becomes so surreal that it is impossible to fathom how The Count, and us, get there. Yet we do. And, as ever, it is joyously silly.

Delaney has delivered another show that will keep his faithful audience amused until he comes around again. Unstructured though it may be, there is enough gold in his wordplay to keep you giggling throughout.

Reviewed on 9th February 2024.

The Reviews Hub Score

Unstructured brilliance.

The Reviews Hub - Yorkshire & North East

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Live Review: Northern Soul 2022

STOCKPORT PLAZA Andy Murray May 30, 2022

Steve Delaney’s comic creation Count Arthur Strong is so unique, so distinctive and so perfectly-formed that it must be a constant head-scratcher thinking up new things to actually do with him.

At heart, Arthur is is a forgetful Northern showbiz veteran on a short fuse, perhaps best summed up by the glorious term ‘puddled’. For forays into other media – radio, TV – there’s been a careful balance between Arthur holding forth and a cast of supporting characters for him to bounce off, or simply perplex. Recent live shows have tried different approaches, from drafting in radio and TV colleagues to incorporating filmed inserts. The most recent tour, 2019’s Is There Anybody Out There?, boiled things right down, with Delaney in character alone on stage throughout, as Arthur fumbled his way through assorted scenarios and routines around the jumping-off point of astronomy. It was glorious stuff and it raised the bar high.

It’s admirable that the new tour, And This is Me!, doesn’t sit on its laurels and churn out the exact same formula. Again, it’s essentially Arthur on his tod, with routines dotted through it, but perhaps fewer of them so it’s much more a case of Arthur rambling on at length. Now, Arthur rambling on is a delight to behold but, as mentioned, it does need some careful framing to work at its best. In truth, this doesn’t always hit the heights of Is There Anybody Out There?, but it’s all relative. Maybe the flights of fancy don’t always take off with such hilarious effect, but it’s still a fine and funny show. Delaney has a great comic gift, and he could stand there and read the proverbial phone book and bring the house down. Sure enough, one of the rib-tickling moments here involves the chemical contents of Toilet Duck.

The (supposed) subject of this show, which traditionally gets abandoned before long anyway, isn’t quite clear, but really it’s just a hook to hang various daft shenanigans, from a ventriloquist interlude with ‘Old Charlie’ to a routine about the imagined joys of having a dislocatable jaw. Each half of the show ends brilliantly, whether with Napoleon writing a letter or Arthur staging a song-and-dance tribute to Elvis. Possibly the show as a whole, the first half in particular, could do with more of these little set pieces to channel what makes Arthur so funny, though.

Really, though, it’s all down to a wonderful, cherishable character doing his thing, and even if that thing has been done marginally better before now, it’s still marvellous. It’s an old-school treat for all the family – particularly fitting to the wondrous old-school environs of Stockport Plaza, in fact – and there are times when Count Arthur literally has them rocking in the aisles. Whether you’re already a fan or whether you spent the last two years longing to be back among people having a laugh, on balance And This is Me! is a absolute sodding tonic.

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Review – Count Arthur Strong: And This is Me!, Stockport Plaza

Posted by Andy Murray | May 30, 2022 | Arts , Theatre

Steve Delaney’s comic creation Count Arthur Strong is so unique, so distinctive and so perfectly-formed that it must be a constant head-scratcher thinking up new things to actually do with him.

At heart, Arthur is is a forgetful Northern showbiz veteran on a short fuse, perhaps best summed up by the glorious term ‘puddled’. For forays into other media – radio, TV – there’s been a careful balance between Arthur holding forth and a cast of supporting characters for him to bounce off, or simply perplex. Recent live shows have tried different approaches, from drafting in radio and TV colleagues to incorporating filmed inserts. The most recent tour, 2019’s Is There Anybody Out There? , boiled things right down, with Delaney in character alone on stage throughout, as Arthur fumbled his way through assorted scenarios and routines around the jumping-off point of astronomy. It was glorious stuff and it raised the bar high.

It’s admirable that the new tour, And This is Me! , doesn’t sit on its laurels and churn out the exact same formula. Again, it’s essentially Arthur on his tod, with routines dotted through it, but perhaps fewer of them so it’s much more a case of Arthur rambling on at length. Now, Arthur rambling on is a delight to behold but, as mentioned, it does need some careful framing to work at its best. In truth, this doesn’t always hit the heights of Is There Anybody Out There? , but it’s all relative. Maybe the flights of fancy don’t always take off with such hilarious effect, but it’s still a fine and funny show. Delaney has a great comic gift, and he could stand there and read the proverbial phone book and bring the house down. Sure enough, one of the rib-tickling moments here involves the chemical contents of Toilet Duck.

Really, though, it’s all down to a wonderful, cherishable character doing his thing, and even if that thing has been done marginally better before now, it’s still marvellous. It’s an old-school treat for all the family – particularly fitting to the wondrous old-school environs of Stockport Plaza, in fact – and there are times when Count Arthur literally has them rocking in the aisles. Whether you’re already a fan or whether you spent the last two years longing to be back among people having a laugh, on balance And This is Me! is a absolute sodding tonic.

By Andy Murray

The tour continues into June: www.countarthurstrong.com/events/

About The Author

Andy Murray

Andy Murray is Northern Soul‘s Music & Film Editor. He has been an arts freelancer since 1999, initially for City Life magazine and more recently for Big Issue North, among others. He edited a story anthology for Comma Press, and currently teaches Film Journalism at the University of Salford. Originally from Timperley, Andy can’t recall ever seeing Frank Sidebottom down the local Spar. But he does have vivid childhood memories of being menaced by big boys when trying to cross the bridge onto the local field – boys who are now better known as key members of The Stone Roses. He is, needless to say, not the Scottish tennis guy. But he did once receive a publicity photograph of him to sign by mistake.

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COUNT ARTHUR STRONG: AND THIS IS ME!

May 22, 2022

DATE / TIME: Sunday, May 22, 2022 8:00 pm

A twentieth anniversary tour!

After many years of giving his wonderful lecture talks of his he does, Count Arthur Strong has at last bowed to substantial public demand and allowed himself be talked into making the show about himself for once. And that had never occurred to him before because of him being highly magnanimous.

From his breakthrough Edinburgh Fringe show ‘Forgotten Egypt’ in 2002, to talking about himself in 2022. Arthur has two decades of memories from his ten national tours, 15 years of his multi Award winning radio show and three series of his BAFTA nominated TV sitcom.

“Pure genius and pure tribute to the golden age of vaudeville”  –  Bruce Dessau, Evening Standard

‘At every turn, his performance gives us something to marvel at’  –  Brian Logan, The Guardian

AGE: Adults

GENRE: Comedy

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Looking for something in particular, count arthur strong | stage review.

COUNT ARTHUR STRONG: IS THERE ANYBODY OUT THERE?

Sherman Theatre, Cardiff

There is no question that Count Arthur Strong – the legendary comedy creation from the mind of Steve Delaney – is an acquired taste. His malapropic, mixed-up logic (which forms the basis for many of the ageing variety star’s shows) has the potential to exasperate audiences as much as delight. The character has developed something of a cult following, whether it’s through his long-running radio show, his BBC2 sitcom, or his toe-curling literary works (see his latest mystery novella Codename Rattlesnake ). But it’s only by seeing him in his original habitat, on stage, that audiences can experience Arthur in his purest, daftest form.

His latest tour Is There Anybody Out There? is supposed to be about astronomy (or astrology?) – as you can tell from my interview with him, he’s not even sure himself. But very quickly, we learn that the Count cannot stay on one subject for more than 30 seconds, before his mind wanders somewhere else entirely. Opening with a tuneless rendition of the song Starman (famously sung by “David Essex… from Mutiny on the… Buses!”), Arthur meanders around the subject of stargazing and outer space, illustrating his apparent expertise on these matters through shoddy ventriloquism, pathetic balloon modelling and his utter contempt for Professor Brian Cox. The perplexed silence of some audience members is cancelled out by the roaring, tearful laughter of the rest. I found myself guffawing along with the latter camp.

What is remarkable about the character is that his thoughts and actions appear so spontaneous and random, and yet they are written and performed with careful, calculated precision. A one-act play about Galileo changes to being about Take That ’s Gary Barlow, who then morphs into Barry Garlic, the “Stephen Hawkwind” of whichever century the Count exists in. It all makes for an exhaustingly funny evening, taking inventive linguistic comedy to the absolute extreme.

Across two hours of sophisticated silliness, Is There Anybody Out There? is so densely packed with jokes that it merits scholarly analysis. Blending classic vaudevillian slapstick with postmodern, avant-garde wordplay, Steve Delaney emerges – in both writing and performance – as a humorist of the highest order.

words SAM PRYCE photo ANDY HOLLINGWORTH

Count Arthur Strong is currently touring the UK. Tickets and info can be found here .

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Count arthur strong – and this is me.

Venue: Middlesbrough Theatre

Date: Mar 25th 2022

Time: 20:00

Price: £22.50

After many years of giving his wonderful lecture talks of his he does, Count Arthur Strong has at last bowed to substantial pubic demand and allowed himself be talked into making the show about himself for once. And that had never occurred to him before because of him being highly magnanimous.

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Count Arthur Strong: And This Is Me!

Wed 4 May 2022

£15 - £21.50

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A twentieth anniversary tour!

After many years of giving his wonderful lecture talks of his he does, Count Arthur Strong has at last bowed to substantial public demand and allowed himself be talked into making the show about himself for once. And that had never occurred to him before because of him being highly magnanimous.

From his breakthrough Edinburgh Fringe show ‘Forgotten Egypt’ in 2002, to talking about himself in 2022. Arthur has two decades of memories from his ten national tours,15 years of his multi Award winning radio show and three series of his BAFTA nominated TV sitcom.

" Pure genius and pure tribute to the golden age of vaudeville " Bruce Dessau, Evening Standard " At every turn, his performance gives us something to marvel at " Brian Logan, The Guardian

www.countarthurstrong.com  // @arthur_strong

Count Arthur Strong: And This is Me! // Trailer

Epsom Playhouse

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Count Arthur Strong 20th Anniversary Tour 2022

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A twentieth anniversary tour!

After many years of giving his wonderful lecture talks of his he does, Count Arthur Strong has at last bowed to substantial pubic demand and allowed himself be talked into making the show about himself for once. And that had never occurred to him before because of him being highly magnanimous.

From his breakthrough Edinburgh Fringe show ‘Forgotten Egypt’ in 2002, to talking about himself in 2022.

Arthur has two decades of memories from his ten national tours,15 years of his multi Award winning radio show and three series of his BAFTA nominated TV sitcom.

'Pure genius and pure tribute to the golden age of vaudeville' Bruce Dessau, Evening Standard

# Once purchased: Tickets cannot be exchanged or refunded, unless the show is cancelled.

'At every turn, his performance gives us something to marvel at' Brian Logan, The Guardian

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Count Arthur Strong 2022 Tour Dates

09-Feb-22 Wimborne Tivoli 10-Feb-22 Epsom Playhouse 11-Feb-22 Milton Keynes Stables 12-Feb-22 Peterborough Key Theatre 16-Feb-22 Mansfield Palace Theatre 17-Feb-22 Harrogate Theatre 18-Feb-22 Crewe Lyceum 19-Feb-22 Dorking Halls 24-Feb-22 Leeds City Varieties 25-Feb-22 Ilkley Kings Hall 26-Feb-22 Lincoln Performing Arts Centre 27-Feb-22 Wellingborough Castle Theatre 03-Mar-22 Redditch The Palace Theatre 04-Mar-22 Monmouth The Savoy Theatre 05-Mar-22 Derby Theatre 06-Mar-22 London Leicester Square Theatre 11-Mar-22 Maidstone Hazlitt Theatre 12-Mar-22 Leamington Spa Royal Spa Centre 13-Mar-22 Winchester Theatre Royal 17-Mar-22 Reading Hexagon 18-Mar-22 Tewkesbury The Roses Theatre 19-Mar-22 Taunton Brewhouse 20-Mar-22 Exeter Northcott 24-Mar-22 Scarborough Spa Theatre 25-Mar-22 Middlesborough Theatre 26-Mar-22 Glasgow The Pavilion Theatre 27-Mar-22 Newcastle Tyne Theatre & Opera House 30-Mar-22 Runcorn Brindley 31-Mar-22 Lancaster Dukes 01-Apr-22 New Brighton Floral Pavilion Theatre 02-Apr-22 Shrewsbury Theatre Severn 07-Apr-22 Tunbridge Wells Assembly Hall 08-Apr-22 Isle of White Shanklin Theatre 09-Apr-22 Bexhill De La Warr Pavilion 02-Jun-22 Bridlington Spa Theatre 05-Jun-22 Salford Lowry (Lyric) 09-Jun-22 Southend Palace 10-Jun-22 Brighton The Theatre Royal 11-Jun-22 Richmond Theatre 12-Jun-22 Birmingham Alexandra

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Count Arthur Strong: And This Is Me!

Show type: Tour

Starring: Count Arthur Strong

After many years of giving his wonderful lecture talks of his he does, Count Arthur Strong has at last bowed to substantial pubic demand and allowed himself be talked into making the show about himself for once. And that had never occurred to him before because of him being highly magnanimous.

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Count Arthur Strong is leaving behind his ‘meticulously researched’ lectures of old. 8/03/2022

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0203 356 5441, count arthur strong.

• EVENT INFORMATION
• Date : Fri 3 Jun 2022

A twentieth-anniversary tour!

After many years of giving his wonderful lecture talks of his he does, Count Arthur Strong has, at last, bowed to substantial pubic demand and allowed himself to be talked into making the show about himself for once. And that had never occurred to him before because of him being highly magnanimous.

From his breakthrough Edinburgh Fringe show ‘Forgotten Egypt’ in 2002, to talking about himself in 2022. Arthur has two decades of memories from his ten national tours,15 years of his multi award-winning radio show, and three series of his BAFTA-nominated TV sitcom.

“Pure genius and pure tribute to the golden age of vaudeville” - Bruce Dessau, Evening Standard

'At every turn, his performance gives us something to marvel at' - Brian Logan, The Guardian

• Date: Fri 3 Jun 2022
• Sorry, this event has now passed and ticket sales are no longer available .
• EXTRA SHOW INFO

Venue Doors - 6:30pm

Show Starts - 8pm

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Count Arthur Strong review — the formula is looking frayed

Challenge yourself with today’s puzzles.

★★☆☆☆ If Count Arthur Strong can get something wrong, he will get it wrong. This has been his charm for the more than 20 years that Steve Delaney has been playing this dilapidated, vexatious old showman from Doncaster. Yet Is There Anybody Out There?, Arthur’s third stage show since his BBC sitcom ended in 2017, shows the formula looking frayed.

It’s majestically performed, as ever. With Arthur’s rasps, blinks and shuffles across the stage in his dinner suit and trilby, his ineptly concealed gin habit and disputes with his unseen stage manager, Delaney doesn’t let a crack of daylight between him and his creation. Heavens, though, that creation needs something to do beyond mounting a masterclass on a subject he’s ill-equipped to tackle, then proceeding

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Count Arthur Strong review – fuzzy logic and cosmic nonsense

Leicester Square theatre, London At every turn, the confused ‘astronomer-in-chief’ gives us something to marvel at – from crap ventriloquism to the films of ‘Dustbin Hoffman’

A t least in the colloquial sense, Count Arthur Strong has always been a space cadet – floating as far from reality as ever Illya Kuryakin did from Earth’s sugar-free gum. If that doesn’t make the slightest sense, the Count’s fuzzy logic – abundantly on display in this new show about the cosmos – must be catching. Is There Anybody Out There? is another wonderful set from Steve Delaney as the malaproping “nutty old bloke” , now bidding to supplant Brian Cox (or should that be George Formby?) as the nation’s astronomer-in-chief. One doubts the BBC’s “director-colonel” will take the bait, but there’s no question that this is another stellar performance by the confused Count.

If there is a criticism you could level at Delaney’s shows – beyond the backhanded compliment that they can be as excruciating as they are entertaining – it’s that they work to a familiar formula. The Count will struggle to perform unlikely songs: tonight, he opens with Starman by “David Essex from Mutiny on the … Buses!” There’ll be vaudevillian physical comedy, like the business with the spectacles in his pockets. His crap ventriloquism will feature, as per a chat with Captain Sulky, the first monkey in space, which descends into a sub-Planet of the Apes interspecies bun fight.

But within that frame, Delaney keeps finding funnier settings for the Count’s bewilderment and curmudgeonliness. He performs a one-act play for schoolchildren about Renaissance astronomer Gary Barlow, who invented the telescope, “as well as painting the cistern in the chapel”. Verily, Barry Garlic is “the Stephen Hawkwind of whichever century it is that I’m in”, blithers the Count, before educating the kids about the planets in our solar system with a clothes rail and eight balloons. His trouble with the phrase “just a couple of puffs” brings proceedings to a near halt; his accidental ingestion of helium forces an emergency interval.

Throughout all this nonsense, the real, gruesomely compelling joke is on the Count’s state of mind, and his mortal combat with the Queen’s English. Even with constant stoking, his train of thought derails repeatedly and ends the show a wreck. How did I get here? his eyes scream at us. Where did I start? How did his lecture on Newtonian physics lead to a role-play about a pineapple falling on a bat? However did a list of space-related chocolate bars end up featuring Ursula Andress, the Four Tops and the films of “Dustbin Hoffman”? It would be tragic, if the Count weren’t so cantankerous (blaming everyone but himself for his confusion) and, finally, so indomitable. Yes, the eyes flash with terror, but soon he’s off on another tangent, explaining “the Big Bump”, imagining Lulu’s guest slot on his TV astronomy vehicle, or reminiscing about the forgotten music-hall icon Lenny Long-Arms.

At every turn, Delaney’s performance gives us something to marvel at, whether it’s the Count’s clenched physicality, would-be cut-glass vowels or the fierce concentration he brings (you can almost hear the synapses cranking into position) as he fathoms where Ed Sheeran stops and Alan Shearer begins.

There are still moments of claustrophobia; it’s part of the Count Arthur experience to feel trapped with him in ever-decreasing circles. But Delaney pays for your discomfort with great wads of laughter, as the Count’s lecture on cosmology falls to Earth with a very big bump of its own.

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