Comedy Reviews
Edinburgh Fringe 2016: Zoë Coombs Marr/ Randy/ Sarah CallaghanMonday, 22 August 2016
Zoë Coombs Marr, Underbelly Cowgate ★★★Zoë Coombs Marr's debut show last year, Dave, gained a lot of attention, and rightly so. Dave is an old-school male comic whose line in misogyny doesn't sit well in modern comedy – even if his material might find an audience in the wider world. Read more... |
Edinburgh Fringe 2016: Richard Gadd/ Kieran Hodgson/ Nazeem HussainFriday, 19 August 2016
Richard Gadd, The Banshee Labyrinth ★★★★★Richard Gadd wryly tells us at the end of Monkey See Monkey Do that he thought it was a good idea to put this thought-provoking show, with its deep seam of theatricality and emotion, in the comedy section of the Fringe brochure. And in truth it could sit easily as a theatre show, albeit one with frequent laughs. Read more... |
Edinburgh Fringe 2016: Bridget Christie/ Adam Kay/ Rachel ParrisMonday, 15 August 2016
Bridget Christie, The Stand ★★★★★When Bridget Christie planned this show, it was to be a work in progress about mortality for a tour starting later this year. But then the EU referendum happened, and everything changed. Read more... |
Whose Line Is It Anyway?, London PalladiumSaturday, 11 June 2016
At least half the audience for this live version of the short-form improv show, which was shown on Channel 4 between 1989 and 1998, couldn’t possibly have seen Whose Line Is It Anyway? when it was first broadcast, so one assumes they must have become fans via YouTube or rerun channels – testimony to the idea that good comedy is timeless and ageless. Read more... |
David Baddiel - My Family: Not the Sitcom, Menier Chocolate FactorySaturday, 04 June 2016
David Baddiel's new show, funny though much of it is, raises some interesting ethical questions. Described by the writer and comic as a “massively disrespectful celebration” of his parents' lives, My Family: Not the Sitcom certainly lives up to that, but, considering his mother is dead and his father is suffering from a form of dementia, neither could give their approval for the material used. Read more... |
Brighton Festival: Alexei Sayle, Corn ExchangeSaturday, 28 May 2016
The last time I saw Alexei Sayle was at a benefit gig in Essex in the Eighties, when his rapid torrents of invective and surreal invention was stand-up as great as I’ve seen. Last night’s stage interview about his memoir, Thatcher Stole My Trousers, was reminiscent of those times rather than comparable. Read more... |
Julian Clary, TouringSunday, 22 May 2016
Truly, the older Julian Clary gets the filthier he becomes. As he warns us in almost the first line of The Joy of Mincing, which celebrates 30 years in the business, “Are you ready for filth?” He isn’t mis-selling, and the audience at the Congress Theatre in Eastbourne, where I saw the show, loved every naughty minute of it. The combination of the British seaside and ultra-camp comedy from this “renowned homosexual” was a winning one. Read more... |
Marcus Brigstocke, Soho TheatreMonday, 02 May 2016
It's striking what a broken heart can do for a comic. Not least it can provide him with some new material, but also make him take a step back to reevaluate what he has. In Marcus Brigstocke's case it led him into a horrible depression but happily, via some other byways, to this new show, Why the Long Face?, which started life at the Edinburgh Fringe last year. Read more... |
Jena Friedman, Soho TheatreThursday, 24 March 2016
“It's a really bad word,” Jena Friedman says as she opens her show, American C*nt. “...American.” And so begins an evening of ultra-dry, drawled-out and darkly feminist wit that encompasses everything from recent atrocities in Belgium and Donald Trump to abortion and Hamas. Read more... |
Isy Suttie, TouringTuesday, 23 February 2016
Isy Suttie, an ever-smiling and engaging stand-up, may come across as a real-life version of Dobby, the perpetually nice character she played in Peep Show, but that's somewhat to deceive. Read more... |
Pages
latest in today
Album: Bab L'Bluz - Swaken
Bab L’Bluz are a French-Moroccan four-piece that play a tasty blend of fiery psychedelic rock backed up with hypnotic North African gnawa rhythms...
Thank You, Goodnight: The Bon Jovi Story, Disney+ review - h...
To mark the 40th anniversary of New Jersey’s second-greatest gift to rock’n’roll,...
Album: Pokey LaFarge - Rhumba Country
Pokey LaFarge has always defied categorisation. He likened his 2020 album Rock Bottom Rhapsody to a mix tape, with elements of...
L'Olimpiade, Irish National Opera review - Vivaldi...
In Vivaldi’s more extravagant operas, some of the arias can seem like a competition for the gold medal. L’Olimpiade is relatively modest...
Red Eye, ITV review - Anglo-Chinese relations tested in junk...
Aircraft hijacking is a ghoulishly popular theme in films and TV, but Red Eye brings a slightly different twist to the perils of air...
Album: Josienne Clarke - Parenthesis, I
Parentheses, I is an album title – (I) – that’s a hieroglyph of the self, the brackets like...
Music Reissues Weekly: West Coast Consortium - All The Love...
West Coast Consortium’s first single was July 1967’s “Some Other Someday,” a delightful slice of Mellotron-infused harmony pop which wasn’t too...
Love Lies Bleeding review - a pumped-up neo-noir
Somewhere along a desert highway in the American Southwest, where there's not much to do besides get drunk, shoot guns, and pump iron, a stranger...
Remembering conductor Andrew Davis (1944-2024)
As a human being of immense warmth, humour and erudition, Andrew Davis made it all too easy to forget what towering, incandescent performances he...
Brancusi, Pompidou Centre, Paris review - founding father of...
One hundred and twenty sculptures, and so much more: the current Brancusi blockbuster at the Centre Pompidou, the first large Paris show of the...