ON STAGE
What: John Cleese
Where: Royal Theatre
When: Monday, Nov. 4, 7:30 p.m.
Tickets: $101.50-$151.50 from the Royal & McPherson box office (250-386-6121) or online from rmts.bc.ca
Given the amount of time he spends in Victoria, it would make sense for British funnyman John Cleese to put down roots on Vancouver Island.
In an interview with the Times Colonist, Cleese admitted it had crossed his mind. “Victoria is wonderful,” Cleese said. “It’s a great city. Victoria and Vancouver, I really would live in one or the other if it wasn’t for the rain and a bit too much cold. Why live in a Trump-dominated United States when you can have the West Coast of Canada?”
Cleese, who turned 80 on Oct. 27, lives on the island of Nevis in the Caribbean, but he’s rarely there. The actor-comedian from Monty Python’s Flying Circus, Fawlty Towers and A Fish Called Wanda has been a road warrior in recent years, with 44 weeks of live shows on his annual agenda.
His tours often bring him to Victoria, where he has appeared more than a dozen times in recent years, including a sold-out performance at the Royal Theatre on June 3.
Cleese will return for another expected sell-out on Monday as part of his current tour, dubbed Why There is No Hope. “We’ll never have a very sensible society, because of the sort of people who get to power,” Cleese said of the show’s title.
“But it doesn’t mean we can’t have thoroughly enjoyable, satisfying, deep, joyful lives. You can have a lovely life, without becoming rich and powerful, which is a message a lot of Americans have forgotten.”
The performance features both pre-recorded clips and off-the-cuff quips. Cleese has an endless supply of both, having spent nearly 60 years in show business.
The on-stage resurgence of a TV icon and film favourite (Fawlty Towers, which he co-wrote and starred in, has been voted the greatest British TV sitcom in several polls, while A Fish Called Wanda earned Cleese an Academy Award nomination for co-writing the screenplay) is surprising, but not unwarranted. Known for his sharp, often acerbic wit, he has increasingly delved into politics in recent years, to the dismay of some — including the British press, with whom Cleese often battles publicly.
“We have a very unpleasant press in the U.K. — I don’t think I have to prove that to you,” he said. “And they are relentlessly negative, partly because their editors think that sells newspapers.
“The thing about British journalists, they are desperate. They’ve got to be up to date, they’ve got to be in touch, and, therefore, they are really interested in what’s new. And 90 per cent of what is new in the arts isn’t any good. But they have to build it up, otherwise it would be like going into a gallery and saying: ‘What should I buy?’ and the gallery owner saying: ‘Well, there isn’t much in here.’ ”
Cleese has another beef when it comes to the handling of the Monty Python legacy in Britain. Based on streaming totals, there seems to be more enthusiasm for classic episodes of Monty Python in the United States, Canada and Australia than there is in the United Kingdom. That certainly rings true to Cleese, who notes that Britain’s national broadcaster, the BBC, has not run Monty Python for nearly 20 years.
“A lot of the young people don’t know about Python, for that reason. But when their parents brought them to the O2 arena in London [in 2014], there were lovely reports of young children saying: ‘This is hilarious. Where did it come from?’ They didn’t know about it.”
That series of reunion concerts, which marked Monty Python’s first live performances in 34 years, was expanded to 10 shows due to the high demand for tickets. And yet, the British press treated the founding members of the world’s most celebrated comedy troupe like also-rans, according to Cleese.
“They want to be negative, they want to cut people down all the time. So when they talk about Monty Python, it is very frequently in quite negative terms. When we were at the O2 doing 10 shows to 16,000 people every night, the Telegraph ran a piece asking if Monty Python was ever really funny. It’s fine if people don’t find it funny, but you can’t pretend that a lot of people didn’t find it funny.”
None of this has curbed Cleese’s enthusiasm for comedy. He often takes shots at U.S. President Donald Trump on Twitter, where Cleese is more active than most comedians and actors his age, favouring humour over harm. But he genuinely fears what will happen if Trump is re-elected in 2020.
“Comedy, in many ways, is at its most useful when society is functioning reasonably well, because it means a certain amount of society really is fine, then you make fun of the other bit and hope it gets better. When it gets bad, I’m not sure comedy is strong enough. When the chips are down, it’s the angry people who get things done, not the funny ones. But it doesn’t mean you want to have dinner with them.”
