Comedy
Veronica Lee
Normally comedy critics tell people not to sit in the front row, lest they're picked on by a particularly boorish comic. No such problem for audiences at James Freedman's interesting and unusual show about the art of pickpocketing and more modern crimes; nobody is safe from being volunteered and, in the evening's memorable finale, the subject wasn't actually in the audience when one of Freedman's tricks made him the star of the show.Freedman, whose hands are insured for a million pounds, is as adept at relieving people of their valuables as he is at delivering corny but interesting patter Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Al Murray is celebrating 20 years as his brilliant invention the Pub Landlord, an autodidact, xenophobic sexist with misogynistic undertones. Who better then, you may think, to run for a certain political party in the forthcoming election? You'd be wrong, because the Pub Landlord has founded the FUKP (the Free United Kingdom Party) and he, its sole candidate, is standing for the Thanet South constituency, where Nigel Farage of Ukip just happens to be running. Murray's new show One Man, One Guvnor is not, strangely enough, a political husting, although there are elements of that in the Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
Ventriloquist Nina Conti, along with her wisecracking sidekick Monkey, has emerged as one of the sharper comedy acts of the past few years but Nina Conti Clowning Around was an uneasy, far from comic film. Embarking on a new direction, away from “entertaining drunk adults” as Monkey put it so winningly, Conti set herself to trying to entertain sick children as a hospital clown, or “giggle doctor” to give them their title at the Theodora Children’s Charity which was her starting point.It followed two years of her life, and this certainly wasn’t one of those triumphing-against-the-odds Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Well, here’s an interesting endeavour. The 2,000 Year Old Man was a series of improvised sketches performed in the 1960s by Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner. Brooks played the old guy, talking about all the great names in history – Jesus, Joan of Arc, Napoleon and many more – he has known in his long and eventful life. Reiner was the straight man, lobbing the questions that Brooks would then riff on. What started as two comedy mates having a laugh become television sketches and five albums-worth of recorded material.The humour, which is Yiddish, world-weary and overly dramatic – I am a Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Nick Mohammed's show has had a slight change of title since it debuted at the Edinburgh Fringe last year, where it was called Mr Swallow - the Musical, and garnered warm reviews for its shambolic silliness.The set-up is that Mohammed’s alter-ego, the egomaniacal Mr Swallow, a lispy Northerner who is quick to take offence but is oblivious to all around him, has fashioned a musical, Dracula! - starring himself as the bloodthirsty count, of course – and we are watching the final dress rehearsal. Mr Swallow, for some reason known only to himself, makes his appearance on roller skates; it sets the Read more ...
Veronica Lee
The Soho Theatre's lawyer was in the night I saw Kim Noble's new show, and that's no surprise as it pushes a few boundaries – public decency and legality being just two. In many ways it's typical of Noble's output as it plays with the audience's perception of real and imagined events, blurs ethical lines and dares us to be offended. As we walk in, for instance, he's Googling things such as “weird cunt cum” and “dwarf sticking milk bottle up arse”, and later we see footage of him defecating in a church – “It was a Catholic church so it doesn't count.”In You're Not Alone Noble first shocks us Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Due to unfortunate circumstances I am unable to give a star rating to this show; 15 minutes into the second half a cast member collapsed on stage and the performance was cancelled. At the time of posting Ted Robbins (extreme right in the picture below) was recovering in hospital, in a stable condition, and we wish him a speedy recovery.I can of course write about what I did see, and much of it was great fun. Peter Kay's Phoenix Nights is a special live version of the sitcom set in a working men's club (the Phoenix) "just off Junction 7 on the M61" in Bolton (from where Kay hails). It's Read more ...
Veronica Lee
The Glasgow International Comedy Festival was launched last night (the day after Burns Night) at the Leicester Square Theatre in London, with Stewart Lee, Rob Deering, Simon Munnery, Janey Godley and others giving a taster of what's to come in Scotland's second city 12-29 March.The festival – the biggest of its kind in Europe – is now in its 13th year and goes from strength to strength; this year there are 400 shows in 46 venues over 18 days. The strong line-up features both big names in comedy as well as those starting out in their careers; of the former, Jimmy Carr, Dylan Moran, Frankie Read more ...
Veronica Lee
It may not have been the most stellar year for comedy at the Edinburgh Fringe, but 2014 was made memorable not just by a long-awaited reunion, but also by witnessing a fine solo debut of a performer we're more used to seeing as part of a terrific double act. It was fun, too, to see the development of talented live performers – some newbies, another continuing to find her voice after a few years in the business. And lastly for seeing others keeping on doing what they do very, very well.Monty Python, O2 Arena LondonMonty Python Live (Mostly): One Down, Five to GoFor decades it seemed unlikely Read more ...
Veronica Lee
It's always an education to see a comic – now a part of the British comedy establishment – performing a gig in his own backyard. And Dara Ó Bríain, at the Royal Theatre in Castlebar, Co Mayo, was just that; he had, as ever, done his homework, immediately throwing in several local references, plus a few more that his Twitter followers would recognise, and told them that returning to his home country on the Irish leg of his Crowd Tickler tour after a few years away from the stage was an education for him too. Ireland is undergoing so much rapid political change at the moment, he said Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Many of the audience for An Evening with Noel Fielding were still in nappies when the comic first plied his trade as one half of The Mighty Boosh with Julian Barrett, which started life on the Edinburgh Fringe in the late 1990s and quickly became a cult hit.But since Howard Moon and Vince Noir have been put into mothballs, Noel Fielding has forged a career as an actor (The IT Crowd), television host (Never Mind the Buzzcocks), and the creator of several outlandish characters in various solo TV projects, most recently Luxury Comedy.In his new show – Fielding's first major live outing as a Read more ...
Veronica Lee
It's a conundrum for some in the industry how John Bishop, so beloved of the BBC, which has given him several vehicles to parlay his Liverpool-lad-made-good comedy, can still, as a multimillionaire, perform his smiley Everyman persona with such conviction and be met with such affection - as indeed he was at the National Indoor Arena in Birmingham where I saw his Supersonic arena tour.It cannot be a case of, as an old show business saw (attributed to many) has it, “Sincerity; if you can fake that, you've got it made”, because, although he made a very good fist of it in Skins and Route Irish, Read more ...