Zoe Lyons at Duke Studios Sheaf Street on 13 December

When I was asked to review the Zoe Lyons gig at Duke Studios I must admit that two questions sprang to mind. The first was ‘Who is Zoe Lyons?’ and then ‘Where is Duke Studios?’ Thanks to modern technology I was able to answer both in a few minutes.

A search of YouTube revealed a part of Ms Lyons’ stand-up routine which looked to be rather amusing and Google maps indicated that Duke Studios are located on Sheaf Street just over Crown Point Bridge. Taking both of these nuggets of intelligence into account I agreed to go along for an evening of double discovery.

Arriving at Duke Studios, aka Sheaf Street, I was amazed to find an intimate bar selling a range of beers and wine, which is a permanent fixture, but this being Thursday MorMor Streetfood were in attendance with their pop-up facility. MorMor are at Sheaf Street on Fridays and Saturdays as well so this is a great place to spend an evening in the latter part of the week. I was also pleasantly surprised when the Cauliflower Wings I ordered came with a 10% discount as it was comedy night. Duly fed and watered I entered the space where the concert was due to take place and settled down.

I feel a bit embarrassed about not knowing who Zoe Lyons was as she has been in lots of the kind of Radio 4 programmes which I would have listened to in the days when I used to do a lot of driving and needed company on long journeys. Anyway, I certainly know who she is now!

All photographs by James Abbott-Donnelly, Sheaf Street.

The name of the tour is Entry Level Human, the meaning of which had me puzzled, but eventually everything was explained after a story about her computer refusing to connect to the internet. When the IT engineer arrived and looked at the machine he said that she was lucky that it had behaved so well for so long as it was only an entry level model. This got her thinking about life in general, but people who behaved like entry level humans in particular. The thing about anecdotal humour is that there needs to be a common denominator between the artist and the audience members.  I am a somewhat elderly, white, straight, middle-class Yorkshireman and was worried that I might not be able to identify with a younger lesbian from Brighton, but it is amazing how many times our experiences crossed.

The list of behaviour which qualified someone to have the title of entry level human bestowed upon them ranged from public transport users who take up the seat next to them with a bag of some description, to air passengers for whom security clearance comes as a surprise every time. There were diversions from the theme, with riffs on airport passengers in general, a subject close to my heart as I have been known to travel from Bradford to Harrogate via Leeds Bradford Airport, where I would break the two bus journeys for a coffee in order to spend a jolly half hour watching passengers milling about, being well outside their comfort zone, dressed in shorts, flip-flops and Hawaiian shirts ready for the Costa del Sol, whilst trudging with their luggage through the slush on a bleak January day in Yeadon.

I must say that I enjoyed the performance very much and at two hours, including a fifteen minute break, it was excellent value for money. The narrative kept pace and, being such an intimate space, there was plenty of interaction with members of the audience, which was done in a familiar fashion without any intention to embarrass. If I were to criticise anything, a phrase which signals the fact that I am about to, it was that she tended to laugh at her own jokes a little too often. I am sure that a fair bit of the monologue was ad libbed but not that much. I draw this assumption from the well-constructed way in which the strands of the stories interwove, referencing earlier observations, notably about a rogue fly and a particularly irritating hotel.

Now that I have discovered both Sheaf Street and Zoe Lyons I will be revisiting them both, although I do draw the line at watching Cats Make You Laugh Out Loud.

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