Comedy
Veronica Lee
It’s always good to welcome the opening of a new arts venue, and sadly it doesn’t happen too often in the current economic climate. But bucking the trend is The Free Association, an improv comedy troupe who have been plying their trade in various upstairs rooms in pubs for several years and have now found a permanent base in southeast London.The FA was founded 11 years ago by Graham Dickson, Max Olesker and Ivan Gonzalez (the latter two who perform as Max and Ivan) and as well as performing it the company teaches improv – both to comics and non-professionals. Alumni of FA classes include Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Comedy is strange old thing; it’s supposed to be funny ha-ha, but the laughs can often come from a dark place, as evidenced by Nick Helm’s latest show (which I saw at the Arts Depot in London). His mental health has been a backdrop to previous show, but No One Gets Out Alive is his most personal yet as he references the end of an important relationship some years ago, and charts how his television breakthrough proved to be a false dawn in his career.But before he gets into that, some housekeeping, as Helm rearranges the venue’s seating to fill up a few empty spaces at the front. These Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Kerry Godliman is livid, she tells us. Spider webs catching in her hair, the state of the world, her teenage children; you name it, they – and much, much more – irritate her. But she’s hoping it’s a temporary state, as she puts her current maelstrom of emotions down to the fact that she’s going through the perimenopause. And while it may not be a barrel of laughs for her, it provides plenty in Bandwidth.From the moment she skips on to the stage, Godliman delivers a high-energy set, bouncing between ideas at a mile a minute and fizzing about this and that – from her husband’s inability to pack Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Cat Cohen, Pleasance Courtyard ★★★★★In Broad Strokes Cat Cohen paints a fascinating picture of events leading up to the stroke that could have killed her. Thankfully three years on she is now fully recovered – and from near tragedy comes this superb show.The hour is her trademark mix of standup and music (with Frazer Hadfield on piano) and Cohen delivers it in her usual deadpan, knowing style. You might forgive her should some sentimentality creep in, but no, her cuttingly ironic comedy shines through – “I had a stroke at 30: isn’t that so creative?”Describing the health Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Emmanuel Sonubi, Pleasance Courtyard ★★★★This show – Life After Near Death – is not about dying, it is about living, Emmanuel Sonubi tells us. Well, actually it’s about both, as in his case he nearly died of heart failure but, thankfully here he is.A physically imposing figure, the comic – an ex-nightclub bouncer – certainly looks good, but then he has always been fit. But not fit and healthy, as we learn he had a taste for big nights out that would include “party sugar”. There’s only so long you can cane it before the Grim Reaper starts taking an interest.Sonubi Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Eric Rushton, Monkey Barrel ★★★★ Everything about Eric Rushton is lo-fi. His delivery, his movement about the stage, his interactions with the audience. Even the subject matter of this show – mental health, lost love – is low-key. Yet with his deadpan delivery and finely wrought gags, he commands the audience and delivers a lot of laughs.He tells a personal story, although one or two set-ups may have some comedic licence. But the core of Innkeeper – about how Rushton has come to handle his sometimes fragile mental health – has the imprimatur of lived experience.He takes us back to Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Lily Blumkin, Gilded Balloon @ Patter House ★★★ Lily Blumkin has always planned to be a big-time comic, she tells us. So when her parents downsized and asked her to clear out her childhood bedroom, she went through her stuff – photographs, toys and other oddities – to curate the future museum dedicated to her life and work.That bit of chutzpah is the neat construct of Nice Try, in which the Brooklyn-based Daily Show writer and performer tells us the story of her childhood. She plays all the characters who appear here – among them her first boyfriend, her first girlfriend, her Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Desiree Burch, Monkey Barrel ★★★★Desiree Burch is a bundle of energy as she comes on stage and gives us a warning about the subterranean venue she’s in. It’ll get hot, the Taskmaster favourite tells us – but maybe that’s just her as she going through the perimenopause, and in The Golden Wrath she’s going to tell us all about it.She starts by running through the differences between the various generational groups in the room. At 46 she just falls into the Gen X group, who went through AIDS, drugs culture and serial killers – the very things that Millennials now do podcasts about, she says Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Lily Phillips, Monkey Barrel ★★★★Lily Phillips is keen to tell us at the top of her show that she’s not that Lily Phillips. There’s no OnlyFans content in Crying but, dealing as it does with her experience of having a baby, it’s graphic in a different way. So strap in.She tells the story from conception to childbirth and also talks about IVF and being part of a National Childbirth Trust group – or a “diverse group of white, middle-class women”, as the comic drily describes it.It takes real skill to tell a personal story like this and keep everyone, male and female, parents and non- Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Jacob Nussey, Pleasance Courtyard ★★★★ Write about what you know, comics are told, and in Primed – his Fringe debut – Jacob Nussey does just that. He describes to great comic effect what it was like in the three years he worked in an Amazon warehouse.It’s not as bad as everyone thinks, he says, but his descriptions suggest otherwise, delivered though they are with a generous dollop of gags and smart observations.He paints a vivid picture of his time there, of his colleagues and how they enacted their revenge for the boredom and dead end nature of the work. Although, he says, the Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Rob Auton, Assembly Roxy ★★★★ The stage is littered with 30-odd large white cards bearing words such as “love”, “believe” and “push”. Rob Auton comes on stage and tells us he’s CAN, a former motivational speaker, and in the following 60 minutes of CAN (An Hour-Long Story) we hear his tale.As ever with Auton, he draws us in, peppering the story with lots of clever gags and asides, and even the odd groaner. His shows are mix of performance poetry, spoken word and storytelling, and he has a knack of looking at things from a different angle, prompting us to look at things anew.For Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Monstering the Rocketman by Henry Naylor, Pleasance Dome ★★★★Henry Naylor doesn’t hold back in his latest Fringe offering, an entertaining monologue in which he examines The Sun’s treatment of Elton John in the 1980s, an era when tabloids reigned supreme in the UK media – and trust in them started to erode.Against an onstage projection of screaming tabloid headlines from the era, Naylor tells the tale through the eyes of a keen young reporter hoping to make his mark in his first week at The Sun, then edited by the abrasive Kelvin MacKenzie – “The most foul-mouthed man in Britain” as Read more ...