The London Calling Club Tour rolls into Rijeka for the first time

Fast-paced, racy, English speaking stand-up comedians from the club and corporate circuits to tour Croatian theatres!? You wouldn’t have thought this would be a success but surprisingly it has. The London Calling Comedy Club Tour has been packing out venues in four of Croatia’s major cities: Zagreb, Varaždin, Rijeka and Osijek. Organiser Nino Bantić (a Croat living and working in London) took a gamble when he arranged a multi-night tour of the country with some of the UK’s hardest working comedians on the club and corporate circuits. I was fortunate to catch the tour’s show in Rijeka at the Sušak Cultural Hall (Hrvatski kulturni dom).

Stand-up comedy in Croatia is not a big audience pull and so the prospect of presenting three hardened comics in front of an audience whose grasp of English comes mostly from watching US movies and crime series on TV seemed quite daunting, but Croats do have a fantastic sense of humour and surprisingly enough British comedies such as ‘Allo Allo’, ‘Only Fools and Horses’ are regularly screened on Croatian television to great admiration, even the cretinous ‘Mr. Bean’ raises a smile!

For me, a Brit who has lived in Croatia for the last 8 years, this was a real treat. Before the show I had a brief chat with the comedians. They’d all travelled the world and performed in front of audiences from Japan to Saudi Arabia to America, so they were prepared for anything. I was interested in how different crowds reacted to different jokes and how they had to curb their accents and language for the various countries they visited. They said that they have to tone-down their language and expressions for non-English speaking audiences from what they would use on their home turf, but at the end of the evening they had found common ground with the Croatian audience through situational comedy and everyday relationship jokes which cross all cultural and linguistic barriers.

The MC for the show was Sully O’Sullivan from New Zealand and he warmed-up everyone excellently with his audience interaction, although at times finding it tricky to get a reaction from them as they were obviously just expecting to be entertained rather than actually participating. Next up was the Mohican haired, goaty-bearded, Paul B. Edwards from Letchworth, with guitar slung around his neck which he used to comic effect superbly, even when just strumming out a song he had written which eventually had no lyrics and then the superb ‘Everybody Dies Matthew’ ditty which he sung at his little nephew’s birthday party, bringing down the house with its nihilistic lyrics – reminiscent of Bill Bailey. Following him was a young home grown stand-up comic from Rijeka named Elvis, who unfortunately was only given a few minutes to recant his comedic encounters with the beautiful girls of the city. Last up was Nick Wilty from Whitstable who came on stage with a bottle of the local lager and regaled us with his tales of his worldly travels some of which were a little close to the edge – knob gags and jokes about lesbians may have missed their targets with the conservative audience a little.

It was the first time that the city of Rijeka was a stopping-off point for the tour and Nino and fellow organiser Peter Hopwood, from Varaždin, were a bit unsure whether its people would be willing to venture out on a Tuesday evening for such a previously unthought-of event but as ever the open-minded and cosmopolitan folk of Rijeka proved once again that they were ready try something new and although some of the comedians language may have gone over their heads a splendid time was had by all.

http://www.londoncallingclub.com