If you like your comedy with a hundred tangents, Law is your man. It is one thing to poke fun at its format, but another to be enchanted by the self-irony of its material hovering in view. On his own stage, his unaffected absurdity is a joy, and he’s a great companion for the hour.
Anyone familiar with Mr Laws’s addictive silliness will know that he was right. After turning the corner last year and again this year, Mr. Law returns to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival to experience the typical tangential madness for an hour. Enter The Tonezone is the perfect tonic as an antidote to the predictable, smooth and polished.
If you think that the sight of floppy whiskers, a Canadian black onesie with bows and a tattered headscarf will prepare you for the show that follows, think again.
After a sold-out Edinburgh Fringe in 2011, 2012 and 2013, Tony Law returns with his brand new stand-up show Enter the Tone Zone, the award-winning and critically acclaimed comedian Tony Law. After a sold-out tour and a mammoth West End run in 2013, the multi-award-winning nonsense maker is touring this autumn with a brand new show of life-affirming, life-changing comedy from one of the world’s finest comedians.
In an interview with Giggle’s Beat, Tony Law talks about why he hates writing a new show, the mythical Tone Zone, his Edinburgh Fringe lunchtime slot and why he loves panel discussions. Tony Law is a stand-up comedian from Canada you may know from television appearances, not to mention Buzzcocks, and I have news for you, Russell Howard’s good news.
I would like to invite the polite, damaged kind of people who are trying to do good to take a journey into the psyche of themselves and get to a place where we can be ourselves. I love getting a new show halfway through, but I know it has to be like that to be able to strut around the country for a few months, have a ball as a clown and meet all sorts of people on tour.
I visited comedian Tony Law at his live comedy show Enter the Tonezone at the Soho Theatre, a comedy club. Claire Hill provided the live subtitling (Claire Live Subtitling with Tony Law). “This is a thought that comes to me as an elliptical joke at the expense of everyone else.
What followed was one of the most bizarre, confusing, if not unpleasant comedy sequences I’ve ever seen: Tony Law sang, he danced, he threw an entire dance routine with members of the audience, an inflatable beach ball and a frisbee. I was very excited to see comedian Tony Law as I had enjoyed his live comedy shows last time. In fact, this was the third time I had seen him stand up at Labour Comedy Night, and my first chance to do so in four years, since I began to lose my hearing due to illness.
It’s a touching story without embellishment, which makes Law vulnerable in a way you’ve never seen before. It’s a gruesome detail that dates back to the time when laws worked in an abattoir where a bystander stood up and tried to start a vegetarian revolution.
If you had seen the show of the last few years in a nonsense overdrive, you would think that the material of the previous hours would be normal in relation to that.
From the sound of a foghorn, he embarked on a surreal adventure that covered a range of absurd topics, from Viking quests to the death of pets. There was shouting, playing wind instruments, throwing beach balls, swinging plastic snakes, dancing and the fear of audience participation was great.
The game consisted of catching a beach ball alive with his dog that had gone to puppy heaven. He chuckled a few words, hoping the audience would find its own punchline. There was a moment when the bearded 45-year-old beachball fan was playing trombone, which was funny.
A few nights later, she started getting audio recordings of his shows at the same location. For example she wrote things like “East End Cockney Gangster” and described strange noises he made, which was difficult.
Blogs for the show are usually submitted in February, at which point the cast aren’t sure what the show will be about. When Tony Law did the 10 shows he ran, he had to use his notepad to determine what he was going to do and how he was going to set it up.
Over the years, Tony Law has acted with an unpredictable form of surrealist whimsy. He is known for his surreal material delivery and eclectic period attire, favouring boots, turn-up jeans and Viking-style hair. From an expert in Viking karate, as you and I fend off trolls on Twitter in the guise of Roman emperors, to one of the most explosive haircuts in comedy, one wonders if he will ever find the time to digest everything he stands for.
The freedom of stage may not apply to everyone, but creating Tonezone was a life-affirming, life-changing stand-up art show for a Canadian nonsense maker who settled in the UK.
After the death of his beloved dog last year, Tony Laws “stink is preoccupied with mortality, a sensibility that lends an unexpected undercurrent to his usual wild career. Entering the tone zone, one sees more of this freewheeling form of surrealist whimsy, more glorious stuff, sometimes with an introspective atmosphere. Enter The Tonezone is the place to experience the magical form of original songs and heartbreaking nonsense of the Canadian nonsense-maker who has long settled in the UK.
The most surprising thing about seeing a recognizable face in the flesh is how different its appearance feels from what I saw on the small screen. As I said, over the years, you’ve changed a lot in your looks, your hair, your beard, the way you dress.