Comedy Reviews
Jackie Mason, Wyndhams TheatreMonday, 05 March 2012
There was a time when Jackie Mason was the pre-eminent New York Jewish comedian. He had started his career in those postwar Catskills hotels catering to vacationing Jewish families from New York City, which became known as the Borscht Belt. The circuit spawned a list of talents including Mel Brooks, Woody Allen and Joan Rivers, among many, many more, and it was a phenomenon that prompted the film Dirty Dancing. Read more... |
Watson & Oliver, BBC TwoTuesday, 21 February 2012
Lorna Watson and Ingrid Oliver, purely by dint of being female, have a burden of expectation before they even open their mouths, as the ghosts of French and Saunders stalk the corridors of the BBC. It's horribly unfair to saddle the newcomers with that burden of course, but, given the dearth of female comics on television, it's perhaps inevitable. Read more... |
Adam Riches, Soho TheatreSunday, 19 February 2012
The journey from the Edinburgh Fringe to a UK tour or London residency can be a fraught one. What works in the context of the world's biggest and best arts festival, where even in established venues there's often a whiff of “let's do the show right here!” shambolism, can, in the confines of a professional theatre space, be met with irritation rather than affection. Read more... |
Nathan Caton, Firebug, LeicesterTuesday, 07 February 2012
On a bitingly cold and snowy night in Leicester, Nathan Caton still manages to attract a big house for his show Get Rich or Die Cryin'. The hip young Londoner, in corncrow-and-dreads hairstyle and city slicker casual gear, is an immediately engaging presence on stage at the Firebug club, dissing his teated fruit-drink bottle as undermining any macho posturing he may be tempted to do. Read more... |
Frank Skinner and Friends, Noel Coward TheatreFriday, 03 February 2012
There must be something in the air. Hot on the heels of Alexei Sayle returning to stand-up in the guise of an MC introducing young talent to a wider audience comes Frank Skinner doing the same. In truth, the latter started the trend two years ago with Credit Crunch Cabaret, and now his Frank Skinner and Friends is having a short West End season – in which he mixes mixes some scripted and riffed material with promoting a few lesser-known acts. Read more... |
Alexei Sayle, Soho TheatreSunday, 29 January 2012
It has been 16 years since Alexei Sayle last performed as a stand-up, save the very occasional charity gig, so there was a proper sense of occasion at the Soho Theatre when he came on stage. The old lefty, brought up in a Stalinist household in Liverpool, was alternative comedy's biggest name back in the 1980s and the scourge of the Thatcher government, so how would his sneering, disdainful political material fare now? Read more... |
The One Griff Rhys Jones, BBC OneTuesday, 17 January 2012
What’s the opposite of a pilot? Griff Rhys Jones has not performed in a comedic capacity for nearly a decade and a half. When he did, he was always part of a larger company – first Not the Nine O’Clock News, then for 14 years in a partnership with Mel Smith. There must be a reason why he never struck out on his own. Read more... |
Simon Munnery, Soho TheatreSaturday, 14 January 2012
Bubbles are emanating from Simon Munnery's head. They're streaming out of a huge, black stovepipe hat which he has cobbled together from cardboard and sticky tape. He has also slung an electric guitar over his shoulder as he sidles up to the mic to begin Hats Off to the 101ers, and Other Material. What does he look like? A cranky mishmash. Kids' entertainer or mad Victorian undertaker? Read more... |
2011: Tinker Tailor Minchin SheenMonday, 02 January 2012
On Easter Monday, as the sun came down over the sea, a crowd of 15,000 – it’s not quite right to call them theatre-goers – followed Michael Sheen as he dragged a cross to Port Talbot’s own version of Golgotha, a traffic island hard by Parc Hollywood. The culmination of a three-day epic, The Passion of Port Talbot was street storytelling at its most transformative. Read more... |
2011: Morrissey, Manics and the Resurrection ShuffleSaturday, 31 December 2011
I have always fought hard to resist nostalgia, but 2011 was the year when I succumbed. Maybe the present – and the future – was just too awful to contemplate, but I found myself constantly looking back. Whether it was onstage, onscreen or on a hand-held device the past seemed to provide the requisite cultural comfort food. Dessau Towers remains a dubstep-free zone. Read more... |
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