God's Pottery

Now here’s a bit of a Fringe miracle: a pair of unknown Americans who take aim at the easiest of targets and yet score a very palpable hit. God’s Pottery are Gideon Lamb and Jeremiah Smallchild, a beamingly affable New York folk duo who bring audiences the word of our Lord Jesus Christ through the power of song and sketches.

They sing against premarital sex in The Pants Come Off When the Ring Goes On. They serenade Muslims and Jews with the song A New Start with Christ. And, in their Life Skillz mini-dramas, they tackle issues such as drink and drugs. We have a motto, smiles the bowl-fringed, guitar-playing Gideon. Too much of anything is too much.

But what’s really heavenly about the show is the unwinking commitment the actors, Krister Johnson and Wilson Hall, make to their characters. Gideon and Jeremiah are blinkered boobies, perhaps, deeply judgemental behind their perma-grins and platitudes. But they mean well and sing divinely on toe-tapping tunes that are never more than an inch away from complete credibility. So they sustain the gag over an hour devoted to raising funds for the cancer-ridden black kid they met on a trip to Harlem.

Some of their mini-dramas come closest to the unwieldy irony in which, in other hands, the whole show might drown. But mostly the combination of dark comedy and joyful sincerity works wonders. What’s more, the joke is on the duo’s delivery rather than their deity — there’s nothing here that Christians shouldn’t enjoy.

While God’s Pottery are a holy unexpected surprise, Harry Shearer and Judith Owen’s show This is So Not About the Simpsons (American Voyeurs) is a real disappointment. Shearer, voice of Mr Burns and others in The Simpsons, is a super-bright commentator on American insularity. But he and his singer-songwriter wife too often tell us what we already know.

That’s a real shame, because Shearer can cut to the quick — at his best here he scythes through America’s inability to doubt its own selfishness. But a sophisticated framework then catalogues flaws that comedy has been addressing for decades — body fascism, the cult of fame, jingoism. The show is organised around Welsh-born Owen’s songs, which repeat the points the couple’s intros have already made. The end result feels like a Judith Owen cabaret show with pithy observations by Harry Shearer bolted on. - Times of London

'Hey, do we have any Jews in the audience tonight?' asks an enthusiastic man going by the name of Gideon Lamb. His musical partner, Jeremiah Smallchild, then proceeds to launch into an explanation of how a Jewish friend of theirs once asked them to write a song to celebrate Rosh Hashana, which they duly play. It's called A Brand New Start With Jesus Christ.

The concept behind God's Pottery isn't a particularly complicated one: vocalist Smallchild and guitarist Lamb are an amiable but horribly misguided New York-based Christian music duo. Their show is a concert fundraiser for LaVert, a young, black, allegedly terminally ill boy the pair met when they got lost in Harlem one day.

And that's about it. The show doesn't really satirise Christianity, it's just straight character comedy. The genius of God's Pottery is that from the pudding-basin cut of Lamb's hair, to Smallchild's freakishly fixed smile, to their abominably cheesy banter, the duo remain utterly consistent throughout.

This only serves to make their breathtakingly insensitive songs funnier. Differences begin with the very Caucasian Smallchild earnestly intoning: 'I'm black and therefore different to you.' Later on, there are such jewels as Christmas Is About The Presence, the self-explanatory Jesus, I'm Drunk and the mighty The Pants Come Off When The Ring Goes On. The latter is a cautionary song about premarital sex featuring the couplet: 'The flowers are here, the bells-a-chimin', now it's time to bust that hymen.'

If not everything in the show is quite as hysterical as the songs, it still works brilliantly. Lamb and Smallchild's deluded naivety adds hilarity to gags that would otherwise have merely seemed arch. Unfortunately for LaVert, the world definitely hasn't seen the last of God's Pottery. - Metro UK

"We save a lot of souls," confess "Christian acoustic duo" God's Pottery. "But this is the first time we get to save a life. We're jazzed! Yeah - we're amped!"

And so, with the declaration "If you've brought your partici-pants, put 'em on", and the song A Brand New Start with Christ, Gideon Lamb (lame pudding-basin hair, "Virginity rocks" on his T-shirt) and the antiseptically preppy Jeremiah Smallchild launch into their set, designed to raise "literally tens and tens of pounds" to save the life of LaVert Washington, a mortally ill New York child.
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As you'll have guessed, these are not the duo's real names, and they are not exactly in earnest - and if by some miracle there really is a little LaVert out there, he's just dandy. No, this hour is a genuinely laugh-out-loud mockery - withering but not entirely unaffectionate - of all things happy-clappy, and one that barely misses a trick. It may offend some, but it doesn't attack Christianity.

The songs are gloriously titled and groaning with excruciating verbal excursions and pathetic stabs at didacticism. Their sexually frustrated, crypto-libidinous paean to pre-marital chastity "The Pants come off when the Ring goes on" contains the Keatsian couplet "The flowers are here, the bells-a-chimin'/ Now it's time to bust that hymen", while "Christmas is about the Presence" rhymes "Jesus" and "Swiss cheeses".

From the earnestly raised eyebrows, beatific grins and crunching attempts at urban hipness, to the awful guitar-and-xylophone music-making, the satire is spot-on. My one suggestion would be that the pair make more of the occasional flickers of disagreement that appear between the characters. But this is exceptionally sharp stuff, richly deserving of a newcomer or even main-gong nod. - London Telegraph

The unknown comedy duo God's Pottery have lit up the Edinburgh Fringe. Praise the Lord, says Dominic Maxwell

*******

The American writer Whitney Balliett once described jazz as “the sound of surprise�, and if you add in sight and smell it’s not a bad description of what Fringe comedy is all about, too. Those of us clogging up the streets of Edinburgh this month all want to see the names we know, of course — and there are some very effective hours of comedy up here from Fringe favourites developing their craft.

But what you really want is to find that small, imperfect but inspiring show that couldn’t exist anywhere else. Something like seeing . . . ooh . . . two unknown American comics mounting, of all the hackneyed notions, a spoof of a happy-clappy Christian folk duo. And finding that it is a little piece of Fringe magic: an inventive, brilliantly sustained, brilliantly sung hour of character comedy that’s not quite like anything else you’ve seen before.

The duo in question are God’s Pottery, one of the word-of-mouth hits of this year’s comedy shows. The clean-cut, affable Gideon Lamb and Jeremiah Smallchild hope to bring us educational entertainment with religiously minded numbers such as The Pants Come Off When the Ring Goes On, a wag of the finger against pre-marital sex, and the anti-booze number Jesus I Need a Drink.

Gideon and Jeremiah’s creators are, respectively, Krister Johnson and Wilson Hall, a pair of 33-year-olds who live in New York. Overnight success has taken them 14 years. They first met at college in Philadelphia in 1992. Between then and now, they did improv and tried other characters, and for their own amusement they used to invent imaginary bands together. There was the eco-active Conservation Conversation. There was the randy hip-hop act Threeway, whose imaginary achievements included the song Ding-Dong Let’s F*** A Clock. And there was this show’s most obvious precursor, Community Unity, a socially inclusive folk group.

But God’s Pottery came about after both, separately, watched a Christian infomercial on American TV one night. “It’s inherently comical stuff,� says the dark-haired Hall. “You’ve got people saying things like, ‘Yeah, my nose is pierced for Jesus!’ You don’t need to tweak it too much.�

They introduced their characters at a comedy night in New York four years ago. But it took their British producer, Olivia Wingate, who saw them in New York last year, to suggest that they find a director and flesh out a song-based act into an hour-long show. The end result is beautifully observed, filled with cherishable couplets and toe-tapping tunes. What takes it beyond the realm of the one-joke wonder, though, is its lack of cynicism. “Although the duo are ridiculous, they are winning and sincere,� says Johnson. “We don’t want to mock anyone’s beliefs. We like the sense that in a different context they could pass for the real thing.�

Their short-term aim is to quit the day jobs — Johnson works at a law firm, Hall designs PowerPoint presentations for a financial firm — but nothing is for sure after becoming a Fringe talking point, of course. This city is littered with comics whose first show got them noticed, and who are now back with conspicuously less inspired follow-ups. But there’s something about this pair’s devotion to duty, their devotion to the characters, that makes you think that this should be more than a one-off.

“There are people who like God’s Pottery who have an agenda about the whole Christian issue,� says Johnson. “There was this guy in New York early on, he had made money on the internet boom and he wanted to set up a tour for us. He wanted to book us into churches in Middle America, then film us putting one over on them.� “And that,� adds Hall, “is really not what we’re about. We’re not out to mock the mom and pop churches of America.� A spoof of happy, smiling Christians that never descends into a sneer? It’s the kind of nice surprise that makes the Fringe worth the bother. - Times of London

Getting Shitfaced with the Lord

Gp_publicity_shot__waving_ Last night, on Day 2 of the Comedy Fest, a small contingent of enlightened City Paper staffers joined a throng of eager audience members at Charleston Ballet Theatre, just across King Street from Basil and a few short steps from AC's, for the first show from Upright Citizen's Brigade tongue-in-cheekers God's Pottery. If you've seen the cover of this week's paper, you'll have some idea what these two actors are selling — and make no mistake, Krister Johnson and Wilson Hall, aka Gideon Lamb and Jeremiah Smallchild, are actors in every sense of the word. The earnestness they brought to their schticks as a hopelessly square neo-Christian folk duo bringing the Word to today's "youth" through songs and lesson-imparting skits was as convincing a turn of acting as any I've seen from a SAG card-carrying A-lister in a cineplex this year. Accompanied by possibly the world's cheesiest Powerpoint presentation, the two comics skewered Christian councelor types like marshmallows while singing songs encouraging audience members to avoid premarital sex, drugs, alcohol, and to always be polite. Highlights are too numerous to list here, but they'd have to include a song called "Stained Glass," about a divorced woman whose virginity has been spoiled: "A weathered oyster still contains a pearl; I'm a carpenter, so let's rebuild your world." And in their warning against the perils of alcohol, titled "Jesus, I Need a Drink," they sang "It takes just a sip of Eucharist blood to get stupid drunk on Christ. I'm going on a bender with Jesus and getting falling-down drunk with the Lord."

Us heathens ate it up. And there was entertainment to be had in the audience, as well. Right in front of us, near the end of the show, a very tipsy woman who was actually weaving in her seat belched and leaned into her date: "I think that lasht drink may have been a mishtake..." That's the spirit. - Charleston City Paper

THE sandals and socks, fixed grins and sense of forced fun that pervade God's Pottery will be familiar to anyone who has ever done hard time at a Christian youth camp. New Yorkers Gideon Lamb and Jeremiah Smallchild are a spoof Christian acoustic duo who have come to the Fringe on a misguided fundraising mission.

Through acting out heavy-handed morality tales and singing songs about getting high on Jesus rather than narcotics, they hope to redeem the audience's souls; whether they want it or not. The nail-chewing awfulness of ditties that rhyme 'Swiss cheeses' with 'Jesus' or preach pre-marital abstinence with songs called 'The Pants Come Off When The Ring Goes On' is made all the funnier by the duo's blind sincerity.

The more enthusiastic their patronising attempts at conversion, the more they reveal themselves to be intolerant, blinkered misogynists. This fantastic satire is a tonic for anyone who has ever been accosted in the street by fresh-faced young men clutching Bibles who want to invite you to a 'party' on the one occasion you don't have a can of Mace in your pocket. - The Scotsman

In the absence from Edinburgh of the great Flight of the Conchords, this year's coveted best spoof folk duo prize falls to New York imports God's Pottery. Gideon Lamb and Jeremiah Smallchild are Christian activists, here to raise money for a terminally ill black kid, LaVert, who they met on an accidental trip to Harlem. You'd have a job missing this soft a target, and their satire is very gentle. But actors Krister Johnson and Wilson Hall are terrific as the two impermeable, perma-smiling do-gooders, and their evangelical energy ensures the show is very easy to enjoy.

You know you're in safe hands when, having announced with all the brotherhood they can muster an opening number written especially for Jews, Gideon and Jeremiah sing a song called A Brand New Start with Christ ("Boy, that sounds mighty nice!"). Jeremiah is lead vocalist, and a man whose self-satisfaction looks set to give him lockjaw. "We like to have fun with our teachings," they coo, but behind the forced bonhomie lurks a ruthless intolerance of un-Christian activity. Hence the anti-alcohol ditty Jesus I Need a Drink, which invites us to "tap into the keg of Christ. It's always full."

Hence, also, a series of interludes entitled Life Skillz - instructive mini-dramas designed to wean teenagers off sex, drugs and trouble. These drip too heavily with irony to be effective, as the credibility gap of Johnson and Hall's parody opens wider than the pearly gates. Their songs are more subtle - so much so, in fact, that there's nothing in any of them at which a God-botherer might balk. Nor are the lyrics especially witty - it's the concept rather than linguistic dexterity that amuses in songs like tolerance anthem I'm Different and pro-chastity number The Pants Come Off When the Ring Goes On. If Christianity were always this funny, I'd go to church. - The Guardian