HITTING FUNNY is a new play from Volcano Theatre Company
It is written and performed by Philip Ralph and directed by Paul Davies.

A manifesto for the show by writer/performer Philip Ralph:

HITTING FUNNY - Why?

"Never apologise, never explain."

On the surface this is an eminently sensible maxim. But is it simply an excuse to avoid responsibility for one's actions? I for one would relish an apology and an explanation from some of the world's politicians. With that in mind, what follows is the latter: Hitting Funny was born out of anger. A deep and strongly felt anger that I believe is not simply personal to myself but is shared by many people in this country and around the world today. It is as an attempt to address a part of that anger and to articulate it in a dramatic and 'entertaining' way that I wrote and now perform this play.

You'll notice that I placed the word entertaining in inverted commas in the previous sentence and this is because the notion of entertainment, its definition and purpose, is at the heart of what I am trying to express. I'll start by looking backwards. When I was a young man, I worshipped stand-up comedians. The word worship is apposite since I decided from an early age that I didn't believe in God and that no organised religion provided me with the answers I was looking for regarding life and its meaning. I was born in the early seventies and my political sensibilities were formed under the long Thatcher government following the dark days of the winter of discontent. I recognised that many believed that what she was doing was evil and wrong but that nobody seemed to want to stop her. So-called 'alternative' comedy came into being as I entered my teenage years and I embraced it for its anti-establishment stance, as any good teenager would. Thatcher was the 'baddie' and the alternative - The Labour Party (I was too young to grasp the notion of socialism) - were the 'goodies'. If we could only get rid of Thatcher and vote in Kinnock then all would be well.

I bought and adored the stand-up comedy of Ben Elton, Alexei Sayle, Rik Mayall, the Comic Strip etc. What they were saying felt vital and important to me. Whilst this was happening I fell in love for the first time. With theatre. Initially it was a love of the art of acting but as I have aged I realise that it is actually with the artform of theatre that my true affection lies. It is unique in its ability to touch us and to move us. The live interaction between performer and audience is to be found in no other form of entertainment and the march of technology and the disassociation that comes with it proves this time and again. I embraced this new love with a passion and was fortunate enough to win a place at the prestigious Royal Academy Of Dramatic Art and, in 1992 after three years training, I entered the acting profession where I have remained ever since.

In the meantime, Thatcher was ousted by Major and finally, in 1997, right thinking people everywhere dragged those corrupt, self serving people from the seats of power and the Labour party took their place. Truly, 'things could only get better' … And then the scales really fell from my eyes…

My political education began on that gloriously optimistic day and it has been in exponential growth ever since. I realised that we had replaced the Tories with something far worse - a bunch of middle management marketeers whose sole purpose is to hold onto power by any means possible. They outflanked the Tories on the right to make themselves electable, they went much further in the direction of capitalism and consumerism than the Tories would ever have dared, they lied and cheated to get what they wanted, and their mastery of the communication of their message meant that there was no longer an alternative voice for their opponents. But despite all this I knew that all would be well because the stand-up comedians that I had worshipped as a teenager would be there to speak out and to tell us the truth about what was really going on. Wouldn't they?

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