Rome and Away: P-P-Pick up a penguin…
Michael Monkhouse absorbs John Peter Sloan’s ‘I Am Not A Penguin’ at Rome’s Teatro Brancaccio.
John Peter Sloan may sound like the name of a ‘Blue Peter’ presenter, but he’s actually a writer, actor, singer-songwriter, and most glamorously of all, English teacher…
Yes, the forty-two-year-old Brummie is even more versatile than me.
The guy kicked off as a singer then naturally enough hit teaching English in Rome, but understandably hit a wall because Romans are so, well, Roman: ‘Many learners get blocked precisely when they need to speak,’ he observed, hence the transformation of trad lessons into mini-shows: ‘Animating the sessions helped people unwind and relax, plus the right dose of humour in practical exercises got them studying more willingly and remembering things better.’
Fortunately the Sloan Ranger hasn’t spent the rest of his life teaching little Maurizio how to say his name. The ‘lessons’ proved so popular they spat out no less than four stage shows – ‘Culture Shock’, ‘Full Moon’, ‘Caveman’ and ‘Instant English’ – culminating in regular slots on telly’s big boy of comedy Zelig. (Editor’s note: If you don’t speak Italian – ’cos I know there are some Romans reading this – Zelig is the nation’s answer to Saturday Night Live. Only it’s on a Friday and it isn’t live.)
And this month John’s touring said nation – all right, Bologna, Milan and Rome – with his unique, fascinating and outrageously silly follow-up, ‘I Am Not A Penguin’. It’s precisely the kind of shenanigans we’re missing out here: no props, no nonsense, no gimmicks; just a bloke, a microphone and a truckload of laughs.
And where the afore-mentioned outings went for that old observation chestnut – cultural differences between the Italians and the Brits, of course – this one is a rather broader, more complex, more anarchic beast. Sure, it may start out like standard tongue-in-cheek biography (‘We were so poor they used my socks as a cradle’), but soon he’s firing more cylinders than a politicians’ privates: digressions that end up weightier than the meat of the matter, paradoxes that’d give Zeno a run for his money if he wasn’t dead, proofs mingling Pythagoras with Python. All in the best possible taste. Including everything and anything from dysfunctional families (Granddad’s wheezing told them what time it was), Great British Institutions (the Royal Family, the Houses of Parliament, the pub piss-up), the Thatcher years (‘That film aimed to show her feminine side… All characters are completely fictitious and any similarity to anyone alive or dead is completely coincidental’)… When he walks off-stage he’s sweating. And so are we.
John Peter Sloan, we salute you. You may not be a ‘Blue Peter’ role model, but you may well be the funniest Brummie since Jasper Carrot: smart, witty, deliciously infectious. Best of all, most of the show’s in Italian, so even a Roman can understand it.
