DAWN FRENCH

How exciting to have to National Treasure that is Dawn French come to Newcastle for her stage show, Dawn French is a Huge Twat. 

I have loved Dawn from way back with the Comic Strip, The Young Ones, and French and Saunders. Then absolutely fell in love with her as The Vicar of Dibley. I also loved her two more recent series, Delicious and The Trouble with Maggie Cole. 

She is a wonderful comedian and a great actress, but also just a charming, and beautiful person. She always seems to be her authentic self and this tour was a perfect example of that. The tour was stories from her life, the weird and strange, and occasionally bad things she has done....to show we are all human.

And she did not disappoint.

We had decent seats about halfway back at my beloved Civic Theatre. It was also a 6pm start, which was quite lovely. The theatre was packed and there was a lot of love in the room.

She told stories in rough chronological order with a large screen for images or videos to showcase the story. What a life she has had, people she has worked with and things she has done. 

And she was bloody funny, which goes without saying, but really, she was really funny!

She looked amazing and just held the entire theatre in the palm of her hands. Stories about her starting out in television and film, and silly things that happened due to her being so young and green. 

Some were short and silly, some were long and involved and hilarious. The story of her and Lenny Henry dressing up as Michael Jackson and his chimp, Bubbles for Elton John's 60th birthday bash, was just batshit crazy but oh so funny. 

The story of her replicating her infamous disappear in a puddle of water skits from The Vicar of Dibley on morning television...against her better judgement, was funny but horribly real, spoiler...she hurt herself quite badly.

We loved her story about auditioning for Mama Mia the film, and not really being able to sing and then sending herself up with French and Saunders is a perfect example of her keeping it real.

There were stories we had heard before and many we had not, especially her being part of an opera, which was most divinely funny. My goodness, the photo of her decked out for the Opera was sensationally stunning. 

The ending of the show was also quite amazing, but that would be too much of a spoiler.

I was lucky enough to purchase the second last signed copy of her book, and left the theatre feeling like I had been given a long warm hug from a dear old friend.