Matt Roper is a British comedian, writer and musician.
Career
Roper made his comedy debut in London during the late-1990s and is noted for his early work in
sketch comedy
Sketch comedy comprises a series of short, amusing scenes or vignettes, called "sketches", commonly between one and ten minutes long, performed by a group of comic actors or comedians. The form developed and became popular in vaudeville, and is ...
romantic
Romantic may refer to:
Genres and eras
* The Romantic era, an artistic, literary, musical and intellectual movement of the 18th and 19th centuries
** Romantic music, of that era
** Romantic poetry, of that era
** Romanticism in science, of that e ...
singer that has divided critics, leading them to proclaim him as "strangely endearing",Wilfredo: Erecto! Review – Edinburgh Festival Fringe Chortle.com, retrieved 30-08-12 "utterly charming and uplifting",ED2011 Wilfredo: Erecto! Review – Three Weeks Three Weeks, retrieved 08-01-12 "unlikeable", "inappropriate"Broadwaybaby.com BroadwayBaby.com: Review: The Wonderful World Of Wilfredo – Retrieved 30 August 2012 and "a genius creation". The character is notoriously ill-mannered; frequently salivating onstage, drinking and smoking his way throughout songs, while berating his musicians and audience members with insults and expletives. Comedycv.co.uk Entry for Matt Roper – Retrieved 15 February 2011
With Wilfredo and his band, Roper toured the British summer festival circuit, counting the
Glastonbury Festival
Glastonbury Festival (formally Glastonbury Festival of Contemporary Performing Arts and known colloquially as Glasto) is a five-day festival of contemporary performing arts that takes place in Pilton, Somerset, England. In addition to contemp ...
among his successes on several occasions. In July 2010 Wilfredo became the surprise hit of the Port Eliot Festival, appearing onstage with Jarvis Cocker.Matt Roper and Jackie Juno a double bill at the Totnes Festival '' PRSD'', retrieved 15-09-10 Roper has presented the character at the
Café de Paris Café de Paris may refer to:
Establishments
*Café de Paris (London), a London nightclub
* Café de Paris, Chicago, a Chicago nightclub
* Café de Paris (restaurant), Geneva
* Café de Paris (Rome), a bar in Rome, Italy
* Café de Paris (Cubzac-les ...
, the Tobacco Factory in Bristol, Brighton Komedia and at London's Leicester Square Theatre. He has toured the character to festivals worldwide, giving performances in Australia, Argentina, the Philippines, the United States, South Africa, and across Europe.
In June 2011, Wilfredo appeared in the first series of Rufus Hound's ''What's So Funny?'' for BBC Radio 7 (now
BBC Radio 4 Extra
BBC Radio 4 Extra (formerly BBC Radio 7) is a British digital radio station from the BBC, broadcasting archived repeats of comedy, drama and documentary programmes nationally, 24 hours a day. It is the sister station of BBC Radio 4 and the p ...
), recorded the Christmas Day edition of ''The Comedy Club Interviews'' for the same channel later that year in addition to making an appearance on Arthur Smith's Pissed Up Chat Show at the E4 Udderbelly at the
Southbank Centre
Southbank Centre is a complex of artistic venues in London, England, on the South Bank of the River Thames (between Hungerford Bridge and Waterloo Bridge).
It comprises three main performance venues (the Royal Festival Hall including the Nat ...
.
With comedian Pippa Evans under the guise of Loretta Maine, Roper co-wrote and recorded the song 'Happy Goddamn Christmas', released on 1 December 2012, peaking at No. 6 on the iTunes UK Comedy Charts. An accompanying video was released via BBC Three featuring cameos by Arthur Smith,
Imran Yusuf
Imran Yusuf (born 26 November 1979) is a Kenyan-born British stand-up comedian of Indian Konkani Muslim descent, who has appeared on various British radio and TV comedy shows.
Early life and career
Yusuf was born in Mombasa, Kenya to ethnic India ...
,
Ruth Bratt
Ruth Bratt is an English actress and comedian. Bratt has appeared in the BAFTA award winning BBC2 series ''People Just Do Nothing''. In 2022 she was at the Edinburgh Festival in "Starship Improvise" with the Mischief Theatre.
Life
Bratt was a r ...
and Thom Tuck. Also with Evans, he co-wrote and recorded the single 'Peace All Over The World (At Christmas Time)', released 8 December 2014 and reportedly banned by
BBC Radio 2
BBC Radio 2 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC. It is the most popular station in the United Kingdom with over 15 million weekly listeners. Since launching in 1967, the station broadcasts a wide range of content. ...
who were "worried that sensitive listeners would be offended".
Roper played both God and the Devil, in
Terry Newman
Terry is a unisex given name, derived from French Thierry and Theodoric. It can also be used as a diminutive nickname for the names Teresa or Theresa (feminine) or Terence or Terrier (masculine).
People
Male
* Terry Albritton (1955–200 ...
's political satire ''Lucifer: My Part in the New Labour Project (And How I Invented Coalition Government)'' in London and for the Brighton Festival in May 2011.Brighton Fringe Interview: Matt Roper '' The New Current'', retrieved 26-05-11
In September 2014, he joined the line-up of the surreal sketch comedy group The Greatest Show on Legs, debuting in Leipzig, Germany.
Edinburgh Festival Fringe
At the
Edinburgh Festival Fringe
The Edinburgh Festival Fringe (also referred to as The Fringe, Edinburgh Fringe, or Edinburgh Fringe Festival) is the world's largest arts and media festival, which in 2019 spanned 25 days and featured more than 59,600 performances of 3,841 dif ...
, Roper has presented three feature length solo shows, ''Wilfredo: Erecto!'' (2011), ''The Wonderful World of Wilfredo'' (2012) and ''Wilfredo: Deconstructed'' (2014). Drawing positive comment and reviews in the press, Wilfredo was described by the Guardian newspaper as "weird, intimate and wonderful" and by Time Out as "an extraordinary creation who cuts a hacking, spluttering, beer dribbling figure upon the stage". The comedy industry website Chortle observed the character as "cantankerous, often lecherous and almost certainly consumptive, coughing and burping his way through the set, at one point hacking up phlegm like a horse chewing a toffee."
At the 2012 Edinburgh Festival, Roper appeared opposite Phil Nichol in a one-off performance at the Traverse Theatre for Theatre Uncut's season of radical playlets, playing an advertising executive representing a global corporation in ''Indulge'' by the Icelandic playwright Andri Snaer Magnuson.
In 2015, Roper accepted the Malcolm Hardee Award for Cunning Stunt of the Year, awarded to a group or individual annually for performing elaborate publicity stunts to promote their festival appearance. He had gained access to a social media account belonging to Kate Copstick, head comedy critic of the influential Scotsman newspaper, writing a glowing review of his own talents under her name.
New York Theatre
On 14 April 2016 it was announced that Roper was to play
Chico Marx
Leonard Joseph "Chico" Marx (; March 22, 1887 – October 11, 1961) was an American comedian, actor and pianist. He was the oldest brother in the Marx Brothers comedy troupe, alongside his brothers Adolph ("Harpo"), Julius ("Groucho"), Milton ...
Off-Broadway
An off-Broadway theatre is any professional theatre venue in New York City with a seating capacity between 100 and 499, inclusive. These theatres are smaller than Broadway theatres, but larger than off-off-Broadway theatres, which seat fewer tha ...
at the Connelly Theater in New York City. The show opened on 28 May 2016 to acclaim in the New York press, winning the New York Times Critic's Pick. Adam Gopnik, profiling the show in the New Yorker, writes ''"''Matt Roper, enlisted to play Chico, had to learn how to reproduce a fiendishly singular accent—not an Italian accent but a New York Italian-émigré accent as rendered in caricature by an émigré New York Jew—as well as how to play “trick” piano, in the distinctive Chico style, with the left hand lolling and the right hand shooting the keys and kittening... he captures the strange, unearned belligerence of Chico."
On 6 December 2017 Roper opened
Off-Broadway
An off-Broadway theatre is any professional theatre venue in New York City with a seating capacity between 100 and 499, inclusive. These theatres are smaller than Broadway theatres, but larger than off-off-Broadway theatres, which seat fewer tha ...
in the comic/clown role of the first large-scale pantomime to be presented in New York for over a century, at the Playhouse Theater of the Henry Street Settlement. Adapted from the fairy tale of the same title by the British actor-musician Mat Fraser and directed by the performance artist Julie Atlas Muz, ''Jack and the Beanstalk'' also starred Dirty Martini and a cast of downtown performers. The production enjoyed a revival the following year at the same theatre, running for three weeks during the 2018 holiday season.
On 19 July 2018 Roper reprised his role as Chico Marx for 13 performances at the Culbreth Theater in '' The Cocoanuts'', an adaptation of the 1925 Broadway musical-comedy directed by and starring
Frank Ferrante
Frank Vincent Ferrante (born April 26, 1963) is an American stage actor, comedian and director known for his inspired improvisation and audience interactive comedy. His lengthy, acclaimed stage runs as the legendary American comedian Groucho Mar ...
as
Groucho
Julius Henry "Groucho" Marx (; October 2, 1890 – August 19, 1977) was an American comedian, actor, writer, stage, film, radio, singer, television star and vaudeville performer. He is generally considered to have been a master of quick wit an ...
.
Roper again teamed up with Ferrante for the recording of a soundtrack album to accompany the release of the graphic novel ''
Giraffes on Horseback Salad
''Giraffes on Horseback Salad'', also called ''The Surrealist Woman'',Salvador Dalí for the Marx Brothers. Composed and produced by jazz multi-instrumentalist Quin Arbeitman with a score and spoken word vignettes from an ensemble of musicians and vocalists from around the world, the album was released worldwide on 26 July 2019.
Roper made his directorial debut with
Ashley Blaker
Ashley Blaker is a British comedian and television producer. Blaker is a writer for TV and radio and a longtime collaborator with Matt Lucas: he was producer of ''Little Britain'' and ''Rock Profile''. He also co-created and wrote ''The Matt Lu ...
's stand-up comedy ''Goy Friendly'', opening for three weeks Off-Broadway at New York's Soho Playhouse. Produced by Matt Lucas, the show opened 3 February 2020.
On 4 December 2021 Roper opened at the Playhouse Theater of the Henry Settlement in ''Dick Rivington and The Cat'', a pantomime inspired by the British folk story of ''Dick Whittington'', directed by Julie Atlas Muz and written by Mat Fraser. On 13 December, the production cancelled all remaining performances due to the outbreak of the Omicron variant of COVID-19 in New York City, with several members of the cast testing positive for contracting the virus.
Roper makes appearances under the guise of characters at the Slipper Room, a variety theatre in Manhattan's
Lower East Side
The Lower East Side, sometimes abbreviated as LES, is a historic neighborhood in the southeastern part of Manhattan in New York City. It is located roughly between the Bowery and the East River from Canal to Houston streets.
Traditionally an im ...
.
Politics
In November 2014, Roper was among 44 comedians to sign an open letter to
Dapper Laughs
Daniel O'Reilly (born 17 June 1984 in Kingston upon Thames, London, England), otherwise known as Dapper Laughs, is a British social media content creator and comedian from Addlestone, Surrey.
Career and controversies
In 2014, O'Reilly released ...
published nationally in the UK's Independent newspaper, protesting "encouraging rape culture and normalising sexism" in an ITV2 series, which was subsequently cancelled. He is a member of the Save Soho movement, a collective of artists who oppose the ongoing closure and demolition of music venues and independent businesses within the London neighbourhood, adding his signature to a letter to Boris Johnson in 2014. Roper is a long-time supporter of the British Labour Party and many of its causes. He is a supporter of the British-based NGO Burma Campaign UK.
Music Hall
Music hall is a type of British theatrical entertainment that was popular from the early Victorian era, beginning around 1850. It faded away after 1918 as the halls rebranded their entertainment as variety. Perceptions of a distinction in Bri ...
stage, and a great-nephew of the BBC wartime singer
Jeannie Bradbury
Jeannie Bradbury (born Jessie Lorenza Jean Bradbury; 30 October 1917 – 15 June 1967), sometimes referred to as Jean Bradbury, was a British big band singer, best known for her appearances on BBC radio during the later years of World War II and ...
.
On his maternal side, Roper descends from the
Groves family
The Groves family is a British theatre family which traces its roots to the Regency era. Its descendants include actors of the Victorian stage, the British Music Hall, Broadway theatre and motion pictures.
Lineage
The can be traced back to Cha ...
of actors and performers, which includes Martha Bigg (an actress of the Regency era), Fred Groves (a leading man in British silent films) and Walter Groves (a comedian with the Fred Karno Company).
The American writer Trav S.D., author of ''No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous'', describes the generational differences between father and son:
Discography
* ''Happy Goddamn Christmas'' - Loretta Maine feat. Matt Roper (single, 2012)
* ''The Wonderful World of Wilfredo'' - Wilfredo (album, 2014)
* ''Peace All Over the World (At Christmas Time)'' - Wilfredo feat. the Great Carmella (single, 2014)
* ''Wilfredo Unchained: Live in California'' - Wilfredo (album, 2015)
* ''Giraffes on Horseback Salad (Original Soundtrack)'' – Quin Arbeitman (album, 2019)