Comedy
Veronica Lee
A lot has happened to British-Canadian comic Katherine Ryan since she last toured and was expecting to go back on the road in 2020 – the “pandem”, which affected us all, of course, plus unexpected marriage and second-time motherhood. Updating us on that, plus her thoughts on much more, is a lot to pack in but she does so at pace in a show that barely stops for breath.She keeps us waiting for a while before she tells us why this show is called Missus, though. First she has some nicely caustic asides about a few celebrities, her thoughts on anti-vaxxers and Covid conspiracy theorists, and the Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Catherine Bohart had a more eventful lockdown than most, as it marked the end of a five-year relationship and what she describes as a sort of breakdown followed. To add insult to injury, the break-up came not along after she and her girlfriend, fellow comic Sarah Keyworth (whom she doesn't name in the hour), had launched You'll Do, a podcast about – you've guessed – love and relationships.This Isn't For You describes the pain of that time, but Bohart is such a positive presence, and lands the gags so well, that it's rarely downbeat. It is, however, occasionally reflective as she questions Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Sarah Millican is clearly glad to be back on stage, and the noisy reception she gets at the Winter Gardens in Margate suggests her fans are glad to have her back too. Bobby Dazzler is a crowd pleaser in much the same vein as her previous shows – unflinching honesty about women's bodies, and scatological filth.The first half of the show is mostly taken up with chatting to the audience about some of their dafter lockdown hobbies – knitting and yoga being two of the shout-outs. It's always a risk that people will be shy or that everyone did the same thing – knitting and yoga – but in Margate Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Nowadays, the jokes almost write themselves. As each new revelation of the Bacchanalia at 10 Downing Street appears (with much more to come, no doubt), political comics like Matt Forde must rub their hands with glee. It's almost as if he can just state the facts of what has come out that day, do a honk-honk sound and we'll know he's talking about our clown-car government. Thankfully, in his podcast The Political Party, he does more than that.This series' fortnightly podcasts are being recorded at the Duchess Theatre in London, and the audience get more bangs for their buck as they watch the Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Nish Kumar comes on stage raring to go, and delivers 15 minutes of terrific political comedy that expertly skewers the Government and this country's leader “spraying jizz over us”. It's a barnstorming start to the show and worth the price of admission alone.Kumar can't quite maintain the energy or the rhythm of that first quarter of an hour, but most – although not all – of what follows is worth listening to. At the centre of Your Power, Your Control is a lengthy tale about the comic's appearance at a Lord's Taverners charity lunch in 2019 that went seriously pear-shaped. It's a story many Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Lots of stand-ups plunder their personal lives for material – whether it's about friends, parents, children or partners – and many a good show has been fashioned by the telling of tales about them, or comic exaggerations at least. But sometimes real life interrupts art in the rudest possible way.And so it proved with Alan Carr's new touring show, Regional Trinket, which starts with him telling us that he has a lot to update us on, not least his fabulous wedding in 2018 in Beverly Hills, officiated by his friend Adele. The day after I saw the show, Carr announced he was separating from his Read more ...
Veronica Lee
In 2019, Russell Howard was all set to celebrate his 20th year in comedy by going on a world tour. Covid put paid to that, so it was with some genuine celebration that he was able to return to the stage with Lubricant, his second Netflix special, recorded at the Eventim Apollo in late 2021.He was able to use some of the material of that anniversary show, Respite – about finding the pleasure rather than the pain in life and describing a world spinning out of control. Little did he know. In Lubricant he has skilfully updated Respite – written “when Corona was a beer and Harry was a prince” – Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, they say. I'm not sure One-Woman Show, written and performed by comic, writer and actor Liz Kingsman, is an imitation of a solo show that catapulted another female actor-writer to worldwide fame, but it's imitation-adjacent in a spot-on spoof kind of way.The elephant in the room for this wickedly funny hour is Phoebe Waller-Bridge's brilliant, zeitgeisty and deservedly lauded Fleabag, a play that I loved on its debut at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2013; it previewed at this theatre and later had a successful post-Fringe run on the same Soho stage. How' Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Everybody in the comedy industry started out with so much hope that, finally, things could get back to normal in 2021 – and for a while they did, and there were some gems as live comedy returned to clubs and theatres.In live comedy, which operated for part of the year, Jason Manford and Alfie Brown – two comics who couldn't be more different if they tried – delivered great shows, while it was clear that Olga Koch (pictured right) had been using her enforced layoff to work on some very solid material for her new show. Sadly, not all comics had used the time wisely, and there were a few Read more ...
Veronica Lee
The lengthy ovation Chris and Rosie Ramsey received when they walked on stage at the O2 showed there was a lot of love in the room, and why wouldn't there be? The married couple's podcast Shagged. Married. Annoyed. has clocked up 144 episodes and built a large and loyal following, and now here they were doing the show live.Chris Ramsey is a stand-up and a former contestant on Strictly Come Dancing, and Rosie Ramsey is an actor and presenter who is now also an influencer (that last job leading to a cringworthy in-show advertising routine for their sponsors, acted out by the couple as if a Read more ...
Gary Naylor
"Off-grid" wasn't a thing in the mid-'70s. Sure, people planted a few potatoes in the garden and pottered about a bit in an allotment, but nobody went the whole hog. The rat race was certainly a thing though, a fertile seam for comedies like The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin. John Esmonde and Bob Larbey had the brainwave of combining the two in the BBC sitcom The Good Life - that and casting Felicity Kendal of course.The veteran writer-director Jeremy Sams takes us back to Tom and Barbara’s momentous decision to live off the land - in Surbiton - and their love-hate relationship with Read more ...