Comedy Reviews
Desiree Burch, Soho Theatre On Demand review - fantastical storytellingMonday, 25 May 2020![]()
You may have seen Desiree Burch, a Californian now living in London, on The Mash Report on BBC One. Read more... |
Jerry Seinfeld, Netflix review - not bad for a swansongTuesday, 12 May 2020![]()
Jerry Seinfeld said in a recent interview that this Netflix special – 23 Hours to Kill – may be his last stand-up show. That's a shame, as there's much to enjoy here, even if he is retreading some old ground. Read more... |
Aditi Mittal, Soho Theatre On Demand review - cows, mothers and fempowermentWednesday, 22 April 2020![]()
“There are places in India where it's safer to be a cow than a woman” is a seemingly innocuous statement, but for Indian comic Aditi Mittal it was a dangerous one to make in a comedy show. Read more... |
Simon Amstell, Netflix review - wisdom and wisecracksTuesday, 14 April 2020![]()
Who knew in the early days of his career, when Simon Amstell was taking the mick out of celebrities on Popworld and then Never Mind the Buzzcocks, that he would turn into one of the cleverest comics of his generation, with a special talent for making existential angst funny? Read more... |
Rachel Fairburn, Go Faster Stripe review - smart and subtle gagsMonday, 06 April 2020![]()
Rachel Fairburn says she didn't know what to wear for the gig. She's dressed in an all-black ensemble; hotpants, animal-print boots and a feather bolero jacket. “I've come as a mistress at a funeral.” Read more... |
Lazy Susan, Soho Theatre On Demand review - sketch duo's ingeniously plotted showFriday, 03 April 2020![]()
You may have seen Lazy Susan's excellent BBC pilot last year; now a series has been commissioned from Freya Parker and Celeste Dring so we can look forward to more sketches, surreal interludes and tiptop visual gags – as well as returning characters including Northern lasses Megan and Michaela, tottering on their heels to a night out where they “don't want any drama”. Read more... |
Michelle Wolf: Joke Show, Netflix review - edgy and original materialMonday, 30 March 2020![]()
Michelle Wolf, best known to UK audiences as the comic who upset Donald Trump with some smart barbs aimed at his staff at the 2018 White House Correspondents' Dinner, has done some occasional dates this side of the pond (plus a run at the 2016 Edinburgh Fringe), so her fans will be grateful for Joke Show... Read more... |
Shappi Khorsandi, Soho Theatre On Demand - enjoyable run-through of her careerMonday, 23 March 2020![]()
Shappi Khorsandi's latest show, Skittish Warrior – Confessions of Club Comic, is an enjoyable look back at the stand-up's 20 years in the comedy business. She starts by taking us back to when she was child refugee; her father, a poet and satirist, offended the clerics in Iran, and was even the target of an assassination gang in London. Read more... |
Steve Martin and Martin Short, SSE Hydro Glasgow review - old friends bring a touch of vaudevilleTuesday, 10 March 2020![]()
Steve Martin and Martin Short first met in 1986 on the set of The Three Amigos (in which they co-starred with Chevy Chase), became fast friends and have since worked on a few projects together. In what was quite a coup for the Glasgow Comedy Festival, the first night of their UK tour was a starry curtain-raiser to the festival proper, which starts on Thursday. Read more... |
Tom Rosenthal, The Hawth, Crawley review - circumcision made funnyMonday, 09 March 2020![]()
There's nothing you can't joke about, say all stand-up comics, but Tom Rosenthal has entered new territory with Manhood – a riveting and often raucously funny show about his circumcision. He is here, he says, “to avenge the theft of my foreskin”. Read more... |
Pages
latest in today

Frantic Assembly’s Othello, originally co-developed with the Lyric in 2008, is back in its third iteration, and it’s still not...
This concert was advertised as the completion of an Elgar symphony cycle, though in the absence of the reconstructed Third, that meant the second...

Ever been to a queer club? You know, drag cabaret night at Madame Jojo’s, or the Black Cap or Her Upstairs. No? Well, not to worry – the...

Ben Gernon’s calm and clear way of conducting an orchestra (something he once told me he’d observed in the work of his mentor, Colin Davis) is...

Reflections on how the past relates to now suffuse The Candle and the Flame. The album’s closing track is “When I Was a Young Man.” When...

“Ka Huma” by Ivo Nilakreshna sounds as if a jazz band was taking on rock ’n’ roll. There’s a swing and sway, busy rhythm guitar and a lead female...

It’s coming up for two years since some of us watched the first three seasons of what’s increasingly coming to seem like television’s greatest...

Spielberg sometimes directed The Fabelmans through a film of tears, as he recreated his cinema’s origins. Lightly fictionalising his own...

A Short Diary, a duo album for piano and drums,...