A Chapel & a Bowling alley walk in to a comedy night in Norwich
Live Comedy in Norwich AT The Maddermarket & Epic Studios
We put on stand-up in two places in Norwich. One used to be a chapel. The other used to be a bowling alley, then became the TV studio where they made Knightmare. If your mate says they’ve found an unusual venue for a comedy night, ask them if it’s ever had a dungeon.
The chapel became the Maddermarket Theatre, tucked down St John’s Alley in the Norwich Lanes. The bowling alley became Epic Studios on Magdalen Street, via a stint as an Anglia Television studio. We put on live stand-up at both. Depending on which one you book, you’ll spend the evening under a ceiling that dates back to the 1790s or on the studio floor where children once shouted “sidestep left” at a mate wearing a helmet.
The Maddermarket opened with a comedy
If you’re meeting someone at the Maddermarket for the first time, send them the pin. “It’s down an alley in the Lanes” is accurate in much the same way that “it’s near the sea” is accurate for Norfolk.
Once you’ve found it, look up. The curved ceiling belongs to the building’s days as a chapel. Nugent Monck and the Norwich Players turned it into an Elizabethan-style theatre, which opened in 1921 with Shakespeare’s As You Like It. So the first audience got a comedy involving questionable romantic decisions, people pretending to be somebody else and a fool who had a better grip on things than most of the people around him. There are acts on the circuit now getting a good twenty minutes out of less.
The gallery is one of the things that gives the Maddermarket its character. There’s an audience above you as well as around you, and when a joke gets a big laugh you hear it from both directions. There’s also nowhere for the front row to hide. That’s excellent news for everyone in the gallery, who can sit back and watch somebody else try to make their job sound interesting.
Epic Studios used to make Knightmare
The former Brunswick bowling alley on Magdalen Street became Anglia Television’s Studio E in the late 1970s. All eight series of Knightmare were filmed there. If you watched it after school, you’ll remember the basic setup. One child wore an enormous helmet and couldn’t see where they were going. Their friends could see perfectly well, which somehow made things worse.
Anglia’s regional newsroom later moved into the building too. These days, the studio floor is used for live shows as well as production. You can still see why television wanted the space. Walk in and there’s room to imagine the sets, the cameras and the poor person who had to clear it all away afterwards.
A comedy night makes quite a different use of that floor. The comedian has a mic, the audience has an opinion, and a room that once needed several people to guide a child across it can be brought to a halt by one well-timed sentence. You’ll also be allowed to see where you’re going when you leave.
Two very Norwich nights out
You could spend an afternoon around Norwich Market and the Lanes, then slip down St John’s Alley for the Maddermarket. Or you could head over to Magdalen Street and spend an evening in a bit of television history you might recognise without ever having been inside. Both are good excuses to go into town and stay out past the point when you’d normally decide it was easier to put something on at home.
If you’re choosing between the two, have a look at who’s on. There’s usually a name that makes the decision for you, or one that sends you down a rabbit hole of clips until you realise you’ve spent half an hour watching someone you’d never heard of before. That’s as good a reason to book as any.
And if you’re still torn, ask the group chat whether they fancy a night in a former chapel or a former bowling alley. Somebody will ask if they need to bring shoes. You’ll know who to put in the front row.
