Stand-Up for Museum Visitors Who Accidentally Discovered Fun
South Kensington is the part of London that the Natural History Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Science Museum, and approximately four thousand restaurants priced for the international tourist market have made into one of the city’s most visited and least authentic neighbourhoods. It is a beautiful, expensive, slightly airless place where children stare at dinosaurs and parents stare at the price of coffee and everyone eventually decides to have dinner somewhere that charges £30 for pasta because it has a good TripAdvisor rating and they are too tired to walk anywhere else. Into this environment, the South Kensington Comedy Club inserts the radical proposition that the evening does not have to end when the museum closes.
Comedy in the Museum District
The South Kensington Comedy Club occupies a position in London’s comedy geography that no other venue does: it is the only dedicated comedy option in one of the capital’s most visited tourist areas, serving an audience that includes both the international visitors who fill the surrounding hotels and the wealthy residential population of SW7 who do not particularly want to travel to Soho for their entertainment. This gives it a captive market that most London comedy venues would envy, and a relatively low 4.2-star rating from 76 reviews suggests it has not entirely fulfilled the potential of this position.
A 4.2 average is not bad it is above three, it is above the midpoint, it indicates more satisfied than unsatisfied customers. But in the context of London comedy venues, where 4.7 and above is achievable by well-run operations, a 4.2 suggests either inconsistency in programming, a room that does not work optimally for comedy, or an audience mismatch the South Kensington demographic being, perhaps, slightly more orientated toward opera and less toward stand-up than the ideal comedy audience.
The Potential for Improvement
The South Kensington Comedy Club has significant potential that its current rating does not fully reflect. The area is underserved by comedy, the audience has money and cultural appetite, and the proximity to one of London’s most concentrated museum districts means there is a steady supply of people who are in the neighbourhood and looking for evening entertainment. A stronger programming focus and a room that works better for comedy could push this venue into the 4.5 to 4.7 range that its market position deserves.
The Verdict
The South Kensington Comedy Club is an interesting experiment in comedy venue placement putting stand-up in a neighbourhood that does not have a strong comedy tradition but demonstrably needs one. Its current rating suggests room for improvement, but its location gives it advantages that venues in more traditionally comedy-dense areas cannot replicate. Worth visiting if you are in the area, worth watching as it develops its identity.
Auf Wiedersehen, amigo!
Alan Nafzger was born in Lubbock, Texas, the son Swiss immigrants. He grew up on a dairy in Windthorst, north central Texas. He earned degrees from Midwestern State University (B.A. 1985) and Texas State University (M.A. 1987). University College Dublin (Ph.D. 1991). Dr. Nafzger has entertained and educated young people in Texas colleges for 37 years. Nafzger is best known for his dark novels and experimental screenwriting. His best know scripts to date are Lenin’s Body, produced in Russia by A-Media and Sea and Sky produced in The Philippines in the Tagalog language. In 1986, Nafzger wrote the iconic feminist western novel, Gina of Quitaque. He currently lives in Holloway, North London. Contact: editor@prat.uk
