DDF 2026 Opening Night review
‘All forms of comedy got their chance to make the audience laugh, and most importantly it thrived off all-round creative talent.’
Kicking off Durham Drama Festival was the best of our university’s comedy culture. Shellshock! Improv, the Durham Revue, and Connie Duggan from The Stand Society reduced an audience to laughter as creative, original writing tooks centre stage. The Revue’s Isaac Slater and Bea Prescott-Khan acted as compères for the night, taking us through an endlessly entertaining evening of back-to-back jokes. Taken as a whole, these performances set a high standard for the week-long celebration of Durham’s theatre community about to unfold.
Durham’s improvised comedy society Shellshock! pulls comedy out of instinct, as every unique prompt entertained the audience with its creativity. Relying on audience engagement, actors used quick-thinking skills to make the most of the tools they were given. In one case, actors asked for two things they must physically mimic: a letter of the alphabet and an abstract concept. The audience shouted back their answer, this being the letter ‘K’ and the concept of ‘mortality’. Instantly the actors responded in character. Fast-paced actors kept an audience engaged throughout, as comedy came out of spontaneous creativity. Unique and funny, Shellshock! is well worth a watch if easy-going wittiness appeals to you.
Next was Connie Duggan, representative of The Stand Society. Held in awkward amusement, the audience struggled between laughter, confusion and gleeful suspense as Connie told jokes which thrived off her understated, conversational delivery. Stories led to entertaining places: commentaries on perfume ads, a debrief on her holiday trip to Birmingham, and even the sacrilegious act of bringing a club card to Aldi. Her delivery goes to show that anything can be made funny if it’s said in the right way, especially through her intentional techniques which make an audience feel slight discomfort at their own laughter. To make a long monologue funny requires skill, not to mention a monologue which consists of trivial details that a lesser talent would let fall flat. Here, Connie delivered through exceptional performance in a way that distinguished her as the only solo performer of the night.
The Durham Revue’s clever comedy shone through their refined sketches. Nat Pryke, Alice Barr, Sam Bentley, Ollie Painter, Miranda Pharoah, and the aforementioned Slater and Prescott-Khan: here’s a cast that consistently inhabit silly, engaging characters. Their humour ranges from slapstick and puns to certain sketches which belong entirely to a category of their own. As a result, sometimes you really can’t tell why you laugh, you just do. Sketches vary in style, being both short and long, and relying either on group dynamics or the talent of just two. Either way, each punchline has the audience respond exactly as intended, and it’s a very special thing to experience firsthand.
Highlights for physical comedy include the serious intervention for a friend addicted to stripping as a fireman. Many involved a stupid premise pushed to its limit. For example, one scene of intense romantic drama was conveyed through a pub quiz addict’s trivia-riddled brain, as she delivered fact after fact with tearful cadence. Some sketches were short and sweet. Take one which mimicked Netflix documentaries for example, as 6 from the Numberjacks leaked behind-the-scenes drama of what went on as 7 ate 9. Hugh Grant’s narration in Love Actually is shut down by Heathrow security; a man from the future haunts his co-worker to beg for kindness; Julius Caesar finds out about the secret group chat. If it’s something you’ve never thought of, chances are the Revue have written it down and made it funny.
DDF Opening Night was a showcase of effective comedic talent. All forms of comedy got their chance to make the audience laugh, and most importantly it thrived off all-round creative talent. It’s a great thing to know a scene works when the audience laughs well; even better on nights like Opening Night, where scene after scene kept you hooked.
By Ivan Deverick.