Soho Theatre
kate.bassett
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? Fortysomething geek or indie rocker?His gigs defy narrow categorisation too, being experimentally varied and full of non-sequiturs. One minute he'll be launching into a satirical droning ballad – "la la la, Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Those of a certain vintage will know Richard Herring's irreverent comedy best from his BBC television work with erstwhile partner Stewart Lee - including Fist of Fun (1995-96) and This Morning with Richard Not Judy (1998-99) - while newer fans will be familiar with his radio work and podcasts. Over the years, though, while Lee has grown into the most astute and cutting political comic of his age, it's probably fair to say that Herring has taken a more meandering route to finding his métier.Herring is not afraid to take on big subjects – religion in Christ on a Bike!, Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Angie Le Mar, who recently celebrated 25 years in showbusiness, has certainly packed a lot into her life; she's a comic, writer, director, radio presenter and producer, and now has written and performs In My Shoes, her new one-woman show (directed by Femi Elufowoju), a collection of six interwoven characters. It follows her first stage outing, as the writer of Do You Know Where Your Daughter Is?, a thought-provoking account of the sexual and domestic abuse of young women.Her first character is the loud and brash American soul singer Falushilah Falashilay, whom we see in a shoe shop buying Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Clowning, despite its association with great funnymen such as Joseph Grimaldi and Charlie Chaplin, has always had a dark underside of melancholy or even menace. More latterly it has been thought of in terms of “low” arts such as circus and street theatre, and so it perhaps shouldn't come as a surprise that fear of clowns, coulrophobia, is in the Top 10 list of phobias, up there with spiders, enclosed spaces and vomiting.Understandably, then, clowning – even the physical-theatre style developed by Jacques Lecoq – is an acquired taste, perhaps more so in modern comedy where wordsmithery is Read more ...