Review: Steve Coogan at Civic Theatre

Steve Coogan. Photo / Supplied

During interviews in advance of his show - perhaps aware he's best known here for his Alan Partridge television character - British comedian Steve Coogan warned his stage humour would be more "broad".

If you didn't get that from his first character - the blowsy, sexually voracious and frequently filthy Pauline Calf for whom no innuendo is too base, no double entendre so obvious it couldn't be simplified further - then it was howlingly apparent in his final turn.

He delivered a cheery, x-rated c-word inclusive song (modelled on Dick Van Dyke's chipper Cockney sweep in Mary Poppins) which set a new, hilarious and very low threshold for comedic song. If it weren't for that largely forbidden word - here through gross repetition it became absurdly funny - Coogan could have a hit like Monty Python's Every Sperm is Sacred and Always Look on the Bright Side of Life. It's that catchy, but many times more offensive.

However other than that song'n'dance routine, it was Coogan's Partridge character who stole this show for its nuanced depth and multiple layers of parody: his Forward Solutions of self-help, the conceit of a radio show beamed between the Civic and Norfolk, the slide show going horribly wrong ...

But even here Coogan was going through familiar motions.

At other times, this performance made too much of ingratiating local references (the Topp Twins, the Viaduct, various retail outlets), and his characters of boozed loser Paul Calf and sleazy, Portuguese lounge-singer Tony Ferrino are one-dimensional, and thin to the point of transparency.

Despite its best - Pauline's novel She Shat Herself so gauche, rude and referenced in pop culture you'd hope Coogan would actually write it, much of Partridge and that finale - this came off as a slightly faltering show punctuated by great moments rather than a sustained comedic performance.