The League of Gentlemen: Live at Drury Lane (Also called A Local Show For Local People in touring version) was a Stage Show done in 2001 in-between the Christmas Special and Series 3.
The Show allow the cast to return the show to it's Stage Roots and also give tribute to the Monty Python live show that clearly is a forerunner of The League. In tribute the original Video was presented in a box shaped like the famous Theatre Curtains on the Python Album.
Plot[]
Note: As the show used old and new sketches, the old Sketches will be underlined and if the sketch has been changed a description is in brackets. The new sketches have a sentence about them. Also Act 1 was done with an empty stage, with the cast wearing suits and Act 2 had costumes and sets.
Act 1[]
Scene 1 All 3 sing Voodoo Lady.
Scene 2 Mark and Steve are wearing Football scarves but the game is Hamlet and the football chants are lines from the play.
Scene 3 Go Johnny Go Go.
Scene 4 Pam Doove (however instead of Orange Juice she quotes Isabella's Plea from Measure to Measure)
Scene 5 Scott of the Antarctic. As Scott and his 2 remaining crew members prepare for the end, one suggests a threesome as a way to die with a smile, clearly Scott is horrified but the other is happy to do as nobody will find out and after denying it Scott agrees in the end.
Scene 6 As 2 guys break up, Trish the annoying fag-hag friend cuts the mood. She then add salt to the wound and as the one guy leaves she tries to comfort only for her phone-call to spoil it and finally she annoys the one guy enough for him to yell at her.
Scene 7 Stump Hole Caves
Scene 8 Charlie and Stella (The Tony sketch as done on Stage before).
Scene 9 Two men in Stuart times (Gatiss and Shearsmith) are chatting when a devilish man (Pemberton) catches Gatiss' eye and after showing he is cocky the devilish man asks then he bets his soul in a game of cards, turns out it's Go Johnny Go Go Go Go so he's going to lose.
Scene 10 Legz Akimbo, do a play about the North called Scumbelina which is completely about bashing the playwrights who profit which he wants to do.
Act 2[]
Scene 1 Tubbs and Edward rise from the ruins of the Local Shop, they are in are in Hell (London) but they can redeem themselves, Edward explains it Tubbs clicks her heels and says "I can, I can't" to return to Earth.
Scene 2 Dr Chimney does a magic show... enough said.
Scene 3 Mau Mau.
Scene 4 Herr Lipp plays Blind Man's Buff with a man from the audience.
Scene 5 Judee and Iris (The sketch has lines from earlier version but it has a twist, as the alarm clock goes off and the two swap roles then the real owner comes and they returns to their cleaning roles then it's discovered not only are they playing the roles they are male).
Scene 6 Pauline is shot and the detective questions Ross, Mickey and Cathy Carter Smith. Ross' story is the Egregious, Mickey had a interview and Pauline rudely punishes him. Cathy had a fight with Pauline before they had Sex but Mickey hurt killed Pauline and the audience is asked to find Mickey is guilty or not.
Scene 7 Papa Lazarou Hello Dave.
Scene 8 It's Bernice (A Radio Sketch revived she "helps" an obese woman)
Scene 9 Les McQueen's first solo concert is killed by the microphone.
Scene 10 Tubbs and Edward return to their shop but after revealing who they are to a historian, Edward goes to kill him but Tubbs tells him that it doesn't matter if he isn't local to them as everybody is local to somewhere in the world, hen gives up and the man it turns out is God who allows Tubbs to go to Heaven but Edward is forced back to Hell.
Deleted Scenes of the Video Version[]
When the video was made it was chosen to cut 2 scenes for timing. Each was presented on the DVD:
From Act 1 there was the scene of Pop and the Maverick Bars.
From Act 2 was The Dentons with the Aqua Vitae.
Productions[]
After the end of Season 2 and the taping of the Christmas Special yet to happen, the team chose to return to the live theatre as they missed it's feeling and so began looking for Theatres in London to take their live show. Thankfully a lot of flops left the League with the pick of the best theatres, so they chose Drury Lane to homage Monty Python. For Reese Shearsmith he found being in a harness for the Tubbs and Edward sketch painful as he said in the DVD Documentary (Mayonnaise and Yoghurt) sometimes he spoke in a higher pitch. There would be a couple of close shave when the costume changes where they were wearing clothes that they walked into and only lipstick for make-up. Characters like Judee Levinsion looked like Miss Piggy but it worked as the characters are larger than life.
London Run[]
The Show opened on the 13th of March 2001 after touring it across the UK in 2000, to good audience and critical reception. There was a couple of times the cast would corpse due to them looking at each other and sometimes the audience would add their own dialogue or boo Pauline. However during the Herr Lipp sketch, Steve Pemberton went to pick a guy and the audience went quiet, the tall guy he chose was an 14 years old, since the sketch was filled with innuendos it wouldn't work but thankfully Steve took control and got the older brother up on stage instead. The Show closed on April the 21st.
The Last Blackpool Show[]
During the Pre London Tour the League performed 111 shows and on the final show in Blackpool they chose to have fun that night, but to their surprise Mark Gatiss decided he would have some fun which scared the other 2. Gatiss doesn't enjoy improvising so his surprises were going to out of nowhere. When it came to Mau Mau when Reece pulled out the gun as Geoff does, Mark as Brian pulled out a gun as well shouting "I've told this joke 110 f**king times now you tell it!" Reece lost for words tries to keep control and finishes the joke. Other things that happened was chairs breaking, Bernie lost her wig when she jumped up, but Mark added a final joke. For the Aqua Vitae sketch it opened with Val giving Harvey a blow job and Benjamin enters in shock Mark spat out a mixture of Mayonnaise and Yoghurt which is seen in the DVD Doc of the same name.
Trivia[]
- During the interval an answering machine message was played. It's for the Obese woman who the caller keeps trying to speak to only to find out she was on TV and apologies in the final call for calling her when she wasn't home. The whole thing is on the DVD.
- The obese woman was to appear in Series 2 as a way to add Bernice to the series, in this version she would confess to Bernice and Bernice began to insult her and finally the woman left in tears.
- The Wig Mark Gatiss wears as Dr Chimney would be used in the third series as Keith Drop's wig.
- The Stuart period sketch was to be used as a scene in the third series that ended up abandoned before filming (The scene is in the Script-book) however it would finally appear in the Movie as The King's Evil.
- The Judee and Iris sketch is based on Jean Genet's The Maids which has the titled characters playing Madame when, she's not home and the drag element is based on the fact that Genet wrote the play for men in drag to do.
- During one of the shows the gunshot effect to kill Pauline didn't go off and despite a crew member saying Bang, the scene carried on. When Mickey was asked where he got the gun? Mark improved the line "What gun I used poison".
- On the commentary The League were scared of the reaction of The Scott Sketch, when they did it on the tour there was a gasp in the audience it was Sir Robert Scott's descendant who when they met him afterwards didn't mind the sketch which restored their confidence.
- Clips from the Drury Lane Show was used in the third series in Geoff's dream scene with a couple of edits to change it around to reference Geoff's jokes by adding a group fans in the audience.