Comedy Reviews
Mark Thomas, BAC review - impassioned polemic about the NHSThursday, 25 April 2019
Mark Thomas issues a health warning for Check-Up: Our NHS at 70 at Battersea Arts Centre – “This show contains swearing, a video of an operation on a stomach and a description of being in A&E when a patient dies.” Indeed it does, but it also contains a heartfelt love letter to the health service Thomas was born in and, as a lifelong socialist, hopes to die in. Read more... |
Britney, Soho Theatre review - finding the funny in a brain tumourMonday, 22 April 2019
A brain tumour isn't usually the subject of a comedy show but Britney, written and performed by comedy duo Charly Clive and Ellen Robertson, is just that. It's “the true story of what happens to two best friends when one of them [Clive] gets a brain tumour” – the size of a golf ball, her father helpfully pointed out. Read more... |
Tommy Tiernan, Shepherd's Bush Empire review - playful and poeticFriday, 19 April 2019
Tommy Tiernan is something of an institution in his native Ireland, as a stand-up comic, newspaper columnist, sometime chat show host and full-time controversialist. Now his appearance as Da Gerry in Channel 4's Derry Girls has brought him to a wider audience – both geographically and generationally – and deservedly so. Read more... |
Angela Barnes, Blackheath Halls review - a pessimist turning the tablesWednesday, 10 April 2019
Angela Barnes is one of life’s pessimists, she tells us at the top of the hour, but she’s trying not to be so world-weary, and to turn negatives into positives. And, while there’s so much awfulness going on around us, why not try to lighten the mood a little? Read more... |
Aziz Ansari, Eventim Apollo review - show follows his #MeToo momentThursday, 04 April 2019
Most people in the UK know American actor and stand-up Aziz Ansari from Parks and Recreation, where he played the sarcastic and underachieving local government official Tom Haverford. Comedy fans will also know him as a successful club comic on both US coasts, and from his Netflix specials. Read more... |
Ed Gamble, The Stand review - amiable hour touching on personal issuesFriday, 15 March 2019
Ed Gamble starts the hour by telling us why his latest show is called Blizzard; he and a bunch of comic friends we stranded in New York by bad weather and it made the news - yet, strangely, the headline wasn’t a play on his name - a gift for hacks - but on the monicker of one of his mates. Cue faux outrage. Read more... |
Lou Sanders, Soho Theatre review - shame put under the spotlightTuesday, 26 February 2019
Have you ever felt the hot shame of saying or doing the wrong thing? Not just embarrassment – that's for amateurs, says Lou Sanders in her wonderfully honest and revealing show Shame Pig, in which she essays some of her life's red-faced moments. Read more... |
Sheeps, Soho Theatre review - sketch comedy with a touch of the surrealTuesday, 19 February 2019
Sheeps, the sketch comedy threesome, had never really gone away but when they performed Live and Loud Selfie Sex Harry Potter at the Edinburgh Fringe last year after a four-year absence, it was called a comeback. More a welcome reunion, as its members – Liam Williams, Daran Johnson and Alastair Roberts – had been busy doing solo projects. Read more... |
Adam Riches Is The Guy Who..., Drink, Shop & Do review - super-suave Lothario on the prowlThursday, 07 February 2019
The first line of this show is “I'm the guy who you meet right after you come out of a long-term relationship.” On the night I see The Guy Who..., Adam Riches has three tries with it before he meets his target, a woman who has been dumped by a long-standing boyfriend. Read more... |
Lost Voice Guy, Soho Theatre review - Britain's Got Talent winner finds the funny in disabilityMonday, 28 January 2019
Lost Voice Guy – aka Lee Ridley – won Britain’s Got Talent last year. He's a unique talent in that his cerebral palsy means he is unable to speak, and so he delivers his comedy through a synthesizer controlled via his iPad. Read more... |
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