Laughing out loud: French and Saunders!

We made it into South Bank on Sunday night to see the French and Saunders show at the Brisbane Convention Center. What a great show!

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

The evening started with dinner at Kapsalis in the South Bank parklands. The food was good, and they were more than generous with the portions. None of us went hungry, that's for sure. Just a tip - don't order the Seafood Platter for Two unless you plan on having at least two people to eat it. It was huge. I mean it - huge. My friend barely made a dent in it by himself. Anyway... I had the mezethes platter, and even that was more than enough for one person.

We wandered over to the Convention Center after dinner. There were crowds of people going in the same direction, as you'd expect for such a famous pair of comedians. But this led to the one disappointment of the night - I'll get it out of the way first, because the show was excellent.

The seating was horrible! We paid for A reserve seating, which was the mid-priced seating. The expensive seats had all sold out before we booked, so we went for what we thought would be the next best thing. But we were wrong. The cheap seats were actually the best seats in the house, so sometimes you don't get what you pay for. We were in row K, right at the back of the A reserve section. The problem was that the floor is level in the Convention Center so we couldn't really see the stage at all. We were below the stage level so had to look up to see Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders, but because the floor was level we couldn't see over the people sitting in front of us. It was very poor planning on the part of the center. After a few minutes, we got up and complained to an usher. He then showed us to some free seats up in the side sections that are raised and on a slope. Even though these seats were not sold because they supposedly had an obstructed view they were much better than the seats we actually paid for. We weren't alone, too. Throughout the show people were constantly moving from the floor seats to the raised seating around the side of the venue. I would say there were a lot of unhappy people that night.

Still, once we'd moved, the show was fantastic. I love both Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders. Absolutely Fabulous is an amazing TV show, and I still get the dvds out to watch it now and then. The Vicar of Dibley is just as good, although I've never gone so far as to buy it. They are both very talented comedians.

They did a lot of live performance, but broke it up with some pre-recorded videos. Here's one of them from YouTube. Take a look - it's hilarious. A very funny spoof of Mamma Mia, the movie.

So apart from the debacle with the seats (which we are complaining about!) it was a lovely night. It was great to see them live after enjoying them on TV for so long now. I can't believe they've been working together for 30 years - seems like such a long time, and they've done so many fantastic things in that time. I'd love to see them again one day, but this is their last tour together (hmmm - heard that from plenty of other artists, though, so we'll see!).

A great night - 4 stars from me.