Comedy
Veronica Lee
If such a thing were to exist, then American essayist, humorist and raconteur David Sedaris would be a Radio 4 superstar. His broadcasts on the channel receive hit numbers and are repeated regularly, and he's a permanent fixture on those parts of the literary festival circuit that its listeners flock to. He's now touring the UK and it's sure to sell out, but it was interesting to see that his audience at Cadogan Hall was far more diverse than the channel's supposed typical listener – white, middle-class and 56 - might suggest.An Evening With David Sedaris is a series of readings taken from Read more ...
Veronica Lee
My, what an entrance Jack Whitehall makes on the last night of his first arena tour. The 25-year-old - not that long ago making his Edinburgh Fringe debut - rides into the arena on a Segway with music blaring and fireworks. But he may have overreached himself, however, as a whole tier was curtained off and the remaining two were by no means full.Whitehall has made his name as a posho comic who is always wrongfooted by his accent and his upbringing in a thoroughly middle-class household, and he continues to send himself up in Jack Whitehall Gets Around to great comedic effect. With his writers Read more ...
Veronica Lee
What a career arc Miranda Hart has had; from playing tiny venues at the Edinburgh Fringe in the early 2000s, followed by roles in television comedies including Hyperdrive, Lead Balloon and Not Going Out, to starring in her own sitcom, Miranda, and in the BBC One drama Call the Midwife. And now she is returning to live comedy not with a few dates in standard-size venues, but with an extensive arena tour.Her blazing-lights-and-blaring-music entrance at the O2 for My, What I Call, Live Show (devised with creative director Thea Sharrock) is deliberately reminiscent of Beyoncé (of which more Read more ...
Veronica Lee
It's a mark of Miles Jupp's charm that he can do a show with a long segment about being the father of four young children and win over both non-parents and those who wish to forget for two hours that they have left their own offspring at home with a babysitter. But in Miles Jupp Is the Chap You're Thinking Of, which I saw at the Ambassadors Theatre in London, the comic expounds at length on life chez Jupp, which appears to be a whirl of cleaning Weetabix-encrusted crockery and finding faecal matter in inappropriate places.Many will know Jupp from Rev. and The Thick of It, and he's also Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Tomorrow the 2014 comedy festival season kicks off, and while there are several gatherings around the country (and one up a mountain featuring British comics), the oldest and biggest starts in Leicester. Dave's Leicester Comedy FestivalThe UK's longest-running comedy festival was founded in 1994 and over 17 days there will be more than 600 events across the city. Most top UK comics now include an appearance at the festival on their tours and this year's highlights include Chris Ramsey (19 Feb), Miles Jupp (20 Feb), pictured right, and John Kearns (15 Feb), whose new offering is a Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Young Irish actress and comic Aisling Bea made a tremendous debut with C'est la Bea at last year's Edinburgh Fringe, where she was deservedly nominated for best newcomer in the Foster's Edinburgh Comedy Awards. Now she is performing a short run at the Soho Theatre and, on second view, it's still a joyously funny show.You may know Bea from various acting roles (The Town, Dead Boss) but you will surely be seeing her on your screens a lot more from now on, as she's an accomplished actress (a Rada graduate), here using a range of accents and even throwing in an impersonation of Sir David Read more ...
Jasper Rees
It is the fate of political leaders to be played by actors. In the circumstances Richard Nixon hasn’t been dealt a bad hand. He has been portrayed by Anthony Hopkins in Oliver Stone’s Nixon, by Frank Langella in Frost/Nixon on stage and screen and by tall handsome Christopher Shyer in Clint Eastwood’s J Edgar. But towering over them all is Harry Shearer, who has been impersonating Tricky Dicky since Nixon was actually president.Shearer is best known in the UK for his voicing of Montgomery Burns and other characters in The Simpsons, and for Spinal Tap’s priapically challenged bass player Derek Read more ...
Veronica Lee
In Irish mythology, a stray sod is an enchanted piece of grass that, if stepped on, leaves a person feeling disorientated and lost, even in familiar surroundings. Although there's no reference to this in Tommy Tiernan's new show, Stray Sod, there's plenty of self-knowing stage Irishness – even, briefly, Oirishness – as he delivers a riveting 80 minutes of comedy that's a sort of state-of-the-nation address about his home country.Tiernan won the 1998 Perrier (now Edinburgh Comedy) award in 1998 for an intricately woven and beautifully delivered tale based on his Irish Catholic childhood; Read more ...
Veronica Lee
John Kearns introduces himself as himself as he comes on stage then, very carefully - tenderly almost - he lays out a blonde wig, a pair of women's high-heeled shoes and a skimpy dress on the floor. They stay there until the final segment of his show, untouched and without mention. He puts on a ridiculous oversize tonsure wig and a pair of joke-shop false teeth. Oh and he is wearing a horse costume, and “rides” Trigger as he performs the first bit of the show - which he tells us is about "disguise, expectations and failures".Kearns won the Edinburgh Comedy Awards best newcomer gong for this, Read more ...
Jasper Rees
A couple of weeks ago I was queueing to get into the BBC’s magnificently revamped HQ at Broadcasting House. Just behind me in the same queue were Harry Enfield and Paul Whitehouse. Their faces are craggier, their hair less confident than when the two comedians became part of the national furniture 20 years ago. And here they were, lightly joshing about the indignity of signing in to enter the offices of the national broadcaster which owes them so much. Meanwhile employees with passes, endowed with rather less of the talent that makes the BBC what it is, filed in and out of the revolving doors Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Jane Bussmann may not be an immediately familiar name to some, but you will know her work. The writer, who was once a celebrity journalist, has been part of the writing teams for South Park, Smack the Pony and Brass Eye, among other quality television comedies, and wrote a hilarious memoir, The Worst Date Ever, about how a reckless whim took her to war-torn Uganda, where she helped unveil the appalling crimes of rebel leader Joseph Kony.She has maintained close links with many she met on her travels and now lives much of the time in Kenya, from where she is well placed to cast a cynical eye Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Six years away from live comedy (save for a couple of outings as MC for mixed-bill shows) haven't blunted Frank Skinner's stand-up skills. He's still an accomplished gag writer and performer, and his quick-witted comic's brain is, as ever, much in evidence in Man in a Suit at Soho Theatre in London.He riffs on any number of things in a show of wide-ranging subject matter of observational comedy – everything from going grey to wearing brogues, relationships to the sexual semiotics of popcorn – and one that appears to have little by way of a narrative thread, but which however does have Read more ...