The Guardian from London, Greater London, England • 40

THE GUARDIAN Friday October 28 1994 Rob Newman, with ex-partner David Baddiel watching in the audience, triumphs in a solo show at the Queen Elizabeth Hall Disarming Robbery fanatical followers, this is a core element of his shamanist appeal. His most inspired polemic the dick is hard, the mind is repays a generous debt to the manic preacherman delivery of the late great Bill Hicks. In a few such flights of fancy he fantasises about exploring sexism by dressing up as a woman and unites the French Resistance, the Criminal Justice Bill and the Common Agricultural Policy in a single stream of consciousness. tonically; the hype that envelops him' runs counterto.his discursive muse; The whoops and applause that filled this auditorium set up an air of frustrated anticipation which his hesitant manner and tangential material-could not hope to satisfy. Despite a rousing finale as Jarvis, his pertinent caricature of an amoral aristocratic pervert, Newman failed to whip his audience into a frenzy.

He's actually far better than that William Cook 13 December, Robert New man and David Baddiel became the first comedians to play the Wembley Arena. Last Wednesday, they were reunited at the Royal Festival Hall. Admittedly, Baddiel was only sitting in the audience, but the queue for his autograph still stretched along the si sis. Reports of the death of their working relationship were greatly exaggerated, yet they haven't collaborated publicly since their Wembley swansong. And while Baddiel has mastered the more mainstream format of apres-pub TV (Football Fantasy League), Newman has written a novel and his stand-up style has subsequently become more literary.

Here's Newman on modern hooligans: "What would it take to make their pinched, puckered faces flicker into any life at all?" Indeed having begun his career as Robert Newman plays Bristol Colston Hall (tonight), Poole Arts Centre (tomorrow), Cheltenham Town Hall (Sun), Worthing, Pavilion Theatre (Mori), Cambridge Corn Exchange (Tues), and on national tour to Dec 3. an immaculate yet fairly conventional impressionist, Newman is now more beat poet than comedian per se. Much of what he says is funny, but very little of this set actually made me laugh out loud. All the better. Newman's wit is so slow-burn that some of his punchlines don't kick in until the morning after.

It makes a welcome break from belly laughs already forgotten before they've even died away. Newman's dark, dangerous good looks create a dramatic tension which both drives his act and impedes it. Beautiful people are dismissed as boring, wags are neutralised as ugly woe betide the handsome man who can also entertain. "There's a bra on the stage for you," shrieked a heckler. "Well, I know I'm a bit overweight, but he replied.

Even when, ad-libbing, Newman never talks down to any punters and for his hordes of Greta Scacchi David Edgar's Pentecost, an epic play unashamedly takes on a range of big themes at the Other Place, Stratford one unatiooDD "Albert Finney in truly masterful Scacchi is excellent." Barry Norman Film '94 "Mike Figgis powerful direction and the dignity of Finney performance make this a moving film." G.Q. Magazine Matthew MODINE Albert Finney The PARAMOUNT PICTURES PSEMS A PERCY HHEfflfllMNGVERSK "RONALD STARTS TODAY East European country. A hidden fresco is discovered that may be an imitation of Giotto or could be the work of an earlier, unknown genius thereby changing the history of Western art. With great skill Edgar shows how the fresco, rediscovered by a local curator and restored by a British scholar, opens up the divisions within the state and Europe itself: the Orthodox Church, the Catholics, the Ministry of Culture, not to mention art historians and the German-Italian sponsors of the restoration, all have a vested interest in the fresco. It becomes a means of Deliberately tinny guitar chords, staccato rhythms, spy-theme flourishes, and the rubbery bounce of gladdish choruses haven't been this prominent in a pop band in nearly IS years.

Where the story deviates from the script, however, is in the fact that Elastica are a long chalk better than many of the originals. Heresy, perhaps, but facts are facts: this sharp, monochromatic music is undeniably thrilling. As a result, Elastica are already immoderately successful and correspondingly confident, a mere three singles later and a debut album still to come. A lean, 45-minute set scarcely paused between past favourites like Vaseline, new songs of which Blue is a fierce highlight, Edgar's Pentecost is an epic play in a tiny space. It covers a vast array of themes: art history, the refugee crisis, resurgent nationalism, the contradiction between cultural and linguistic diversity and Eurocentric political ideals.

The play eventually buckles under the weight of so much cargo but it's refreshing, in these parsimonious times, to find a writer taking too much on board rather than too little. I found the first half entirely gripping. Edgar's setting is an abandoned church near the border of a South- I III Jl if tut is a ET3 TTgTI one ages, inevitably, new bands sound like pastiches of the past. Unsurprisingly, tins apparent bad faith goes unnoticed by breathless younger fans, for whom the heady buzz of adolescence in their ears will always be louder than any power chord, and for whom ancient pop history extends backward from about 1989. Such is the case with the three-quarters female quartet Elastlca.

Those in the packed Cambridge Junction audience not 16 and boggle-eyed doubtless spotted that, of all of the so-called New Wave of New Wave bands, Elastica's revision of the nervily catqhy, menacingly sussed economies of the original is the most uncannily faithful. Browning Version GRETASCACCHI MATThWMODINE FIGGIS BRICHMOID FIURHOUSE QD81-332 0030 FULHAMRD, Ml t70 6011mm MAIN PRDW.CTK)N AHWBYMIKEFIGGiS A18ERT FINNEY HARffOOD "TRIDLEYSCOTTwi MIM! POLK WAJRTTCR WEST END UK2STER SOUAU 071 439 0791 ADVANCE BOOKING 071 494 3001 3M, MS, 11.00 HAYMARKET I 001 T0t0lw 8IRMIHGHAMSI10WC4M BRIOHIOMCuibm BSTOlShwon IIMWWimu CMUHF CwMOfcM COVENTRY SHOtfUU EDINBURGH MGM EWWJRGHUCI MTE8HEMIUC1 GUSGOWMGMISuchlttnllSMn HaMPJTEAO MGM LEEDS ShMCIM LIVERPOOL SlMwcttfl MANCHESTER Stou NEWPORT HOW) Picture HwiM NORWICH Clon NOTTIMHAN Stom mtmHtZnua POOLE UP SHEfHELOWinw STOCKPOKTMCM STOOnOMSMmmt STOK-OH-TBEKTOllW YORKWOTtl WESTOM 8WEB MARE Ofcoo.