Impressive comedy CV: Dan Patterson[Missing Credit]
Dan was once a history student on his way to a profession in academia, like his father. But while doing his PhD he discovered how much he loved entertainment. Now he’s enjoying taking apart one of the most famous novels ever written.
“I do like a period piece and anything that takes itself seriously is quite a good thing to do comedy with,” says Patterson, who has written the show with the Park Theatre’s Jez Bond. “That’s why Airplane! worked so well – disaster movies take themselves so seriously that it’s very easy to undercut them with comedy, and the horror genre is the same.
“There have been many versions of Dracula but there hasn’t really been a successful comedy version – even the Mel Brooks one isn’t particularly good, and he’s one of the comedy gods. So I just thought it was something that was ripe for some comedy.
I wonder if I’m neurotic because Jewish males get circumcised when we are eight days old – that must do something to you, right?
“We’ve got visual gags and verbal gags, prop gags and costume gags. I think it’s very, very entertaining and that there’s something for everyone. And there are so many jokes that if you don’t like one, there’ll be another you might shortly afterwards.”
It all sounds extremely silly: a balm for a world, which is anything but.
“I think we need a comic view of the world that at the moment feels very complicated,” he says. “I do topical comedy through Mock the Week but I like doing silliness and I like the Monty Python or the Goons’ version of just silliness. And I think we particularly need that right now.
“If you come to this show, you’ll emerge thinking, ‘I just enjoyed myself. I could forget about the world for a bit.’ It is something that we need. I just had a very, very good friend who died out of nowhere, and as well as the tragedy and the devastation of it, I want to celebrate the kind of thing they would have liked.”
There is no question that Patterson, who is married to Mitzvah Day founder Laura Marks with whom he has three children, knows comedy. His inspirations range from Jewish American comedy legends the Marx Brothers and Woody Allen to British stars such as John Cleese and the stars of the Goon Show.
It is telling that his production company is called Angst. “I’m a pretty neurotic guy,” he laughs.
“It is deep within me. I do wonder whether my neurosis is because Jewish males get circumcised when they are eight days old – that must do something to you, don’t you think? Why couldn’t we have a funny little thing on our foreheads like Harry Potter instead?’
Dan honed his improvisation skills first at Habonim and later at university in America, where he began his PhD. He directed a show in which people had to ad lib, which he took to Edinburgh. In the meantime, he left academia for a job at the BBC’s radio entertainment department and he never looked back.
Whose Line is It Anyway?, which featured comics ad libbing, ran from 1988 to 1999. It was followed by the more overtly political Mock the Week, which aired on the BBC from 2005 to 2022. It has currently been picked up by Discovery’s TLC channel with Rhys James, Ed Byrne and Angela Barnes already signed up.
“The TLC is relaunching next year and Mock the Week will be one of their big shows, which feels great because the BBC has dropped so many of its topical comedy shows. They are expensive to run but they are also popular and I am glad that we will have a chance to be back on air as the news is the gift that keeps on giving. Trump is endlessly entertaining. There was a time, a few years ago, when the news was dull, but since Brexit, that has not been the case. Some of it can’t be joked about, but there is so much that is ripe for comedy and satire.”
Comedy has moved on in many ways during his time in the business.
“There is definitely stuff that we did in the early days that we can’t do now,” says Dan, who has also pledged to have at least two female comics on the panel every week. “Some of the things we said on the show were, in retrospect, awful. But it was a different time.”
At the same time, people giggling over a good joke and over wordplay, remain as popular as ever. “There are a lot of Jews in comedy because some things are so tragic that if you don’t laugh, you’ll cry. If you think about Tevye in Fiddler, arguing with God – I don’t think anybody would be doing something like that in a film that wasn’t Jewish.”
Dracapella will be at the Park Theatre until January 17
