Paul Merton’s Silent Clowns Live – Leeds Town Hall

Reviewer: S. E. Webster

The Public Reviews Rating:

As part of the 25th Leeds International Film Festival, in a one night event only, comedian Paul Merton collaborated with a group of musicians, including Neil Brand, Romano Todesco, Denis Biason, Frank Bockius and Günter Buchwald, to present Silent Clowns. The title itself being self-explanatory, the audience knew what to expect as Merton presented an evening devoted to silent comedy.

Leeds Town Hall, with its opulent carvings and grand architecture was a setting well-suited to this particular performance. The large screen erected on the stage, in addition to the surroundings, meant that the venue was reminiscent of an old cinema. The hall itself was filled to near full capacity with a diverse audience of young and old, and there was a clear feeling of togetherness.

Merton entered onto the stage with his usual relaxed confidence, instantly setting the audience at complete ease with his own dry humour, which he is so famous for. Interspersing such humour with interesting contextual background about the famous silent comedians, he neatly presented each comic extract in turn, before stepping to one side and leaving the stage clear for the live music and the big screen. Comedians who graced the screen included, Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd, and Stan Laurel & Oliver Hardy.

The band members were truly skilled musicians. The hall, with its high ceiling and wide open space, was acoustically ideal, and the music projected well throughout the hall. All of the musicians played the music unsighted; considering the volume they had to play this in itself was impressive. Meanwhile, their ability to multitask in not only keeping perfect time with one another, keeping time with the action on the big screen and playing with great dynamics and sensitive expression, was phenomenal. Music and comedy were synchronized perfectly, an essential factor in executing any successful silent comedy performance. Indeed, the music was so professional that the audience were able to truly lose themselves in the performance as a whole.

Perhaps most importantly, Silent Clowns was not a reminiscence of long lost silent comedy, a sombre mourning of the loss of comedians like Charlie Chaplin as part of a by-gone era. Instead, the evening was a celebration of pure comedy and musical genius, that still today, raises many a smile and laughter, even applause from an audience. The location, music and programme structure of the evening all combined to bring silent comedy to full life. Indeed, had we blinked, we might have been sat in a 1920s cinema and not batted an eyelash.