This holiday season, audiences are invited to forget standard pantomimes and crummy candlelit carols, and instead, treat themselves to the show they never knew they needed. Directed by Tom Parry (Pappy’s, Don Rodolfo, Jimmy), Adam Riches and John Kearns ARE ‘Ball & Boe – For Fourteen Nights Only’.
Needing no introduction to fans of super-smart cult comedy, Adam Riches and John Kearns are two of live comedy’s most exciting performers, both having won the main Edinburgh Comedy Award in their own right.
Adam Riches is an award-winning writer and performer who won the Edinburgh Comedy Award, Time Out Comedy Person of the Year and was nominated for The Times Breakthrough Artist of the Year at the Sky Arts South Bank Show Awards. He’s also well know to TV audiences through his guest appearances as an exaggerated comic parody of actor Sean Bean on the panel show 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown.
John Kearns is the only comedian to have won both the Edinburgh Comedy Awards for Best Show (Shtick) and Best Newcomer (Sight Gags for Perverts) in the awards’ 40-year history. John was a breakout star of series 14 of Taskmaster (Channel 4) and the co-host of Guessable on Comedy Central alongside Sara Pascoe and team captain Alan Davies. He also played the lead role in cult hit BBC3/Netflix sitcom Top Coppers.
The primetime and West End stars whom Riches and Kearns will embody for 14 nights – Michael Ball and Alfie Boe – have been working together for over a decade – their first joint album was the bestselling LP in the UK that year. Shifting over 600,000 copies in the UK alone and reaching double-platinum status, it outsold the likes of The Rolling Stones and Little Mix. What’s more, it was the Christmas number one. Since then they have had two more number-one albums, have sold over 1 million albums in the UK, won two Classic Brit Awards, and sold out two headline arena tours. On stage they chat and laugh between songs; as The Independent stated, “Their double act has enraptured crowds with warm, low-key charisma and deft stagecraft”.
Indeed, between the four of them, Adam Riches, John Kearns, Michael Ball and Alfie Boe have won countless Oliviers, achieved double platinum album sales, sold out multiple stadium tours and won two Edinburgh Comedy Awards. But audiences have never heard them quite like this. Up close and personal, in the intimate cabaret style surrounds of the Soho Theatre Downstairs.
Adam Riches says ”When Soho Theatre called to offer me the role of Adam Riches in their Christmas production of ‘Adam Riches & John Kearns ARE Ball & Boe – For Fourteen Nights Only’, I had one question and one question only. Who have you got to play John Kearns? When they said ‘John Kearns’, I knew I was in”.
At this stage the production is shrouded in mystery. All that is known is that the show comes in at just under an hour and will feature some form of business or another. But in one intriguing twist and in a nod to the National Theatre’s 2011 production of ‘Frankenstein’, the two actors WON’T be switching roles on a nightly basis to play each other’s part. Audience will only find out who’s playing who, by coming to see the show. John says “My hope is that this will encourage people to book twice.”
Stupid, silly, and full of heart. This is fourteen nights of festive joy and irreverence. Just don’t expect a fifteenth.
