Theatre

Craig Murray's Really Honest Travel Show

Alan Hindle | Saturday 13 August, 2011 16:14

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Via Romania, Hungary, and Florida’s Disneyworld, Craig Murray takes us on a tour of Yorkshire Sculpture Park near West Bretton along the A637. With the help of a powerpoint projector and an unflappable ‘Northern comic’ demeanor, Murray does for UK domestic tourism what Judith Chalmers apparently did to support the panties industry. Very little. Murray has an instant rapport with the audience, delivering brilliant, straight-up observations. With his flat, phlegmatic tones he seems like those comics from the 70s who survived the Yorkshire Gentlemen’s Club circuits and no longer requires any shit, thank you. (At one point a woman in the audience was foostering on her Blackberry when he suddenly, and with a bit of steel in his voice, told her in no uncertain terms to put it away. And I suspect they were actually friends.) Yet he revels in the details and nuances of this crappy world in which we live. Possibly because they provide fodder for his act. But also because I think he genuinely gets a kick out of the magic that happens when things go wrong. Murray manages to seamlessly blend his comedy with his slideshow and film clips, and isn’t difficult to imagine him someday having a TV travel show telling us firsthand where not to go.

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