30 November 2013

Please note: this news article is in our archive. Articles were correct at time of publication, but should not be relied on for accuracy after the passage of time.

FRESH from their recent triumphs in Oliver! musical comedy duo Marks and Kennard were back at Chequer Mead this week with their hilariously risqué double act.

Their deliciously indecorous performance last year played to a packed foyer, so it was good to see them centre stage in the main theatre this time around for their latest show After A Decent Interval.

The pair are a perfect performing partnership.

Julian Marks on the keyboard is the bespectacled straight-ish half of the duo, his impish charm being the foil for Michael Kennard’s more outré persona in an act which echoes the on-stage relationship of Morecombe and Wise.

It probably isn’t an entertainment for maiden aunts – although there is more tap-dancing  on the draining board of innuendo than actual plunging into the sink of iniquity.

But Marks and Kennard deliver their infectiously funny routines with such gleeful effrontery that their audience was pleased to be corrupted not offended – as evidenced by the positively shameful community singalong of  “b******s” at the end of the evening.

The new material in their show included clever re-workings of Gilbert and Sullivan’s A Policeman’s Lot and the updating of some music hall favourites, while Kennard’s lovely performance of David Foster’s Grown Up Christmas list was a thoughtful pause in the non-stop hilarity.

It was hard to say in the end whether the pair were more audaciously impudent,  facetiously humorous or saucily waggish.

But they were certainly very rude.

And very VERY funny.

Geraldine Durrant