BWW Reviews: THE HORNE SECTION, The Criterion Theatre, October 15 2011

Piccadilly Circus is seldom a welcoming place for a local and, heaving with tourists unsure of where they are going and regaled by the dubious pleasures of street-entertainers, it's a pleasure to enter the grand old Criterion Theatre and descend its old staircase, walled with ornate tiles, into a traditional, if somewhat cramped, West End venue. And tradition is the name of the game for The Horne Section's Saturday late night residency this Autumn (until November 26). 

Backed by a talented band of musicians, Alex Horne is conductor, comedian and compere, indulging in some gentle banter with the audience and band, spinning a wheel of fortune to propel the musical improvisation and introducing a changing roster of topline cabaret acts. I'm not a fan of dragging the public up to act as stooges, but Horne does it without malice and the handful of civilians called up did a decent job - though, even with the band jamming to fill, repeatedly waiting a minute or two for a member of the audience to edge past fellow showgoers, avoiding spilling their drinks and treading on toes, sapped a little energy from the evening.

The Horne Section's support will change every week, so it's worth checking who's in the line-up for any particular Saturday, but they have attracted some very well-respected acts for the billboard. I saw Nina Conti, whose foul-mouthed, uncannily self-aware monkey puppet got big laughs with its uninhibited observations; Ali McGregor, an Australian cabaret singer, who gave Tainted Love the torch song treatment to great effect; and Al Murray, the Pub Landlord, barking out his usual mix of wisecracks with the audience and monologues on the state of the nation. 

Wrapping up after 90 minutes (and in time for the last tube home), The Horne Section's show is neither a thousand-seater venue stand-up mega gig, nor an intimate half dozen sets in a room above a pub, but something in between. With a band fronted by a gag man, a ventriloquist, a singer and a comedy actor, it's actually an end of the pier show, updated for 2011 and a sophisticated audience who have grown up as the generation that never knew anything other than comedy's role as "the new rock 'n' roll". Next week - of course - it might be different!

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