mon 23/12/2024

Comedy Reviews

Kevin Bridges, Hammersmith Apollo

Veronica Lee

Kevin Bridges, an affable young Glaswegian, has had a meteoric rise in comedy. He started gigging at 17, made his solo Edinburgh Fringe debut in 2009, where he played in a 50-seater and earned an Edinburgh Comedy Awards newcomer nomination, and returned the following year to a sold-out run in a 700-seat theatre.

Read more...

Michael McIntyre, O2 Arena

Veronica Lee

First a confession: I've never been a great fan of Michael McIntyre. He's a nice bloke for sure, works at his craft and is a slick performer with a huge following, both live and on television. Plus - and this is one of the best compliments I can pay to a stand-up because it's a difficult skill to pull off - he's one of the best MCs in the business.

Read more...

Stewart Lee presents John Cage's Indeterminacy, Cafe OTO

joe Muggs

John Cage is funny: this much we know. The deadpan prankster at the heart of 20th-century artistic experimentalism was always about the inadvertent punchline, the chuckle that comes from unexpected disjunction, the relief that comes from reminders of the absurdity of reality, as much as he was ever about any engagement with progress, technology, the transcendent.

Read more...

Edinburgh Fringe: James Acaster/David Trent/Daniel Simonsen/Ben Target

Veronica Lee

James Acaster: Prompt, Pleasance Courtyard ***

 

Read more...

Edinburgh Fringe: Tony Law

Veronica Lee

Tony Law: Maximum Noonsense, The Stand 

 

Read more...

Edinburgh Fringe: Alfie Moore/Eddie Pepitone/Claudia O'Doherty

Veronica Lee

Alfie Moore: I Predicted a Riot, Pleasance Courtyard ****

 

Read more...

Edinburgh Fringe: I, Tommy/Josie Long/WitTank

Veronica Lee

I, Tommy, Gilded Balloon ****

 

Everybody will be familiar with Tommy Sheridan's story, and not necessarily because they closely follow Scottish politics at their most internecine. Rather because the Glaswegian socialist went from being barely a paragraph in broadsheets to being plastered over the front pages of tabloids after a series of revelations – which he strongly denies – about visiting swingers' clubs.

Read more...

Edinburgh Fringe: Tam o' Shanter/Trevor Noah/Bridget Christie

Veronica Lee

 

Tam o' Shanter, Assembly Hall ****


Scottish schoolchildren are brought up on Robert Burns but other British students aren't so fortunate. We may know snatches of the great man's work – “Wee, sleekit, cow'rin, tim'rous beastie”, “O, my Luve's like a red, red rose” and so on – but few of us could recite even a stanza of Tam o' Shanter.

Read more...

Edinburgh Fringe: Jigsy/Pappy's/Joe Lycett

Veronica Lee

Jigsy, Assembly Rooms ****

 

Les Dennis may have started his career as a comic, and then as a presenter of cheesy, family-friendly television game shows, but of late he has been plying his trade as a very decent actor. And so it proves again in Tony Staveacre's one-man play about a washed up Liverpudlian club comic.

Read more...

Edinburgh Fringe: Magnus Betner

graeme Thomson

Magnus Betner, Assembly Rooms ****

 

Here is the news: dismemberment, suicide bombers, industrial-strength Japanese porn, paedophilia and the descent of Julian Assange from hero to zero. The son of a priest and a superstar in his homeland, Swedish comic Betner is drawn to the dark stuff (come to think of it, there’s not much of a leap between Betner and bête noire), and his show latched on to the mood of post-Olympics comedown and held fast.

Read more...

Pages

 

latest in today

Help to give theartsdesk a future!

It all started on 09/09/09. That memorable date, September 9 2009, marked the debut of theartsdesk.com.

It followed some...

Death in Paradise Christmas Special, BBC One review - who ki...

Though Death in Paradise is an Anglo-French production filmed in Guadeloupe, in the French West Indies, the Frenchness seems to have...

The English Concert, Bicket, Wigmore Hall review – a Baroque...

Enough is as good as a feast, they say. But sometimes, especially at Christmas, you crave a properly groaning table. At the Wigmore Hall, The...

The Unthanks in Winter, Cadogan Hall review

A suitable place to find yourself out for the winter solstice, buttoning up for the longest night of the year, was at the Cadogan Hall off Sloane...

Albums of the year 2024: Everything Everything - Mountainhea...

There are some years where my pick for album of the year is obvious; something stands out so...

Music Reissues Weekly: Hawkwind - X In Search Of Space, Dore...

One of last year’s major joys was the box set version of Hawkwind's Space Ritual, an 11-disc extravaganza which made the great live album...

Twelfth Night, Royal Shakespeare Theatre review - comic ener...

It is not just Twelfth Night, it’s Twelfth Night, or What You Will in The Folio,...

Blu-ray: Hitchcock - The Beginning

There's a tension in Alfred Hitchcock’s early films between misogyny and condemnation of...

Albums of the Year 2024: Samara Joy - Portrait

From placing first in the Sarah Vaughan International Vocal Jazz Competition in 2019 to being a triple Grammy winner, Samara Joy’s rise has been...