Comedy
Veronica Lee
Dara Ó Briain’s has described his previous show So… Where Were We? – in which he describes his search for his birth mother who gave him up for adoption when he was a baby – as his Philomena, while his latest, Re: Creation, is his version of Elf, in which a grown man travels across the world to find his birth father.It’s a neat joke, but also underlines a difference between the two shows which, while companion pieces, are very different tonally. Where the first had moments of raw emotion, Re: Creation – while also tugging at the heartstrings – feels as if it’s played much Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Nick Mohammed invented his Mr Swallow character – camp, lisping, with an inflated ego and the mistaken belief that he has creative talent – more than a decade ago, but he reached a new audience with his appearance as the good guy-goes-bad-then-good-again Nate in the lovely television comedy Ted Lasso.Now’s he’s touring with Mr Swallow: Show Pony. Part-way through, something unexpected happens: Nick Mohammed takes over, while still in the guise of Mr Swallow. It’s a meta moment for sure, and slightly discombobulating, but it allows Mohammed to play with the character-within-a-character guise Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Zoe Lyons knows her audience; as a few shoutouts confirmed, many of them are long-time fans, and have had lives with similar highs and lows along the way, and she delivers stories about her life that reflect theirs too. And so it proves with her latest touring show, Werewolf – which I saw in the cavernous surrounds of Earth Hackney – as she talks about finding contentment in middle age.Lyons said that a while back she had sort of decided not to tour again, but she has a mortgage to pay, so here she is, and we’re glad she changed her mind. In her warm, conversational style, she declares Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Greg Davies doesn’t spare himself in his new show, Full Fat Legend, his first tour in seven years after having been busy being mean to celebrities on Taskmaster on Channel 4, and showing his acting chops on the BBC’s dark comedy The Cleaner, among other projects. In a busy 90 minutes he talks about his dodgy prostate, pointless masturbation and his errant "bumhole”, among many other unflattering – but very funny – stories.The show’s title, introduced in a short video on the large onstage screen – which is used very well during the show to underline some gags – comes from an earlier television Read more ...
Veronica Lee
The title of Marcus Brigstocke’s latest show, Vitruvian Mango, is, like the man himself, rather clever. He appears on stage with a mocked-up version the Da Vinci drawing it references with his naked body replacing the artist’s model to illustrate the theme of the show, which I saw at the Alex in Faversham. His version of Da Vinci’s image of the perfect male form is, he attests, “sweeter, softer, seasonally available and, when ripe, delicately perfumed”.Brigstocke – dressed in shirt and tie, with a comfy cardigan on top – addresses modern manhood and poses the question: what are men for? Now Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Matt Forde gives a warning: “Don’t heckle the disabled – that’s a hate crime.” What an opener for his latest touring show, The End of an Era, which I saw at the Oxford Glee Club. To explain: in 2023 the back pain that Forde thought was sciatica turned out to be spinal cancer. Major surgery that included severing nerves in his nether regions followed, and post-surgery he now uses a stoma bag and self-catheterises. Thankfully Forde has recovered.He mines a slew of jokes here – mostly at the expense of his dignity – and the natural born comic looks on the bright side, as the very good poo Read more ...
theartsdesk
It all started on 09/09/09. That memorable date, September 9 2009, marked the debut of theartsdesk.com.It followed some hectic and intensive months when a disparate and eclectic team of arts and culture writers went ahead with an ambitious plan – to launch a dedicated internet site devoted to coverage of the UK arts scene.Many of our readers today may have forgotten the arts journalism atmosphere of the first decade of the new century – especially the decimation of traditional broadsheet arts coverage that followed the financial crisis of 2008.Many of the contributors who came together for Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Harry Hill reminds us at one point during his latest touring show that he’s 60, but there’s no let-up in the energy he brings to New Bits and Greatest Hits, a pleasing mixture of old and new material showing he still packs a punch on stage.There are sufficient new gags to justify the first part of the title, but equally enough old ones to keep his long-term fans happy – although the audience at Wilton’s Music Hall suggested that his fanbase now covers a few generations who appreciate Hill's madcap comedy.The gags – visual, physical, outrageous puns and sly asides – come thick and fast, Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
“I really am the repository for all your shit,” Nina Conti’s famous Monkey hand puppet tells her. Monkey may have a point.The brilliance of Conti’s ventriloquism is that it seems to burst, unedited, from her id. Filth, surrealism and lightning-fast gags spume in a torrent whenever her teeth are closed tight. Her non-puppet stage persona is, by contrast, all light and loveliness, apparently bemused by what’s being dredged up. Quite apart from how she has the Brighton Dome in stitches, watched purely on the level of technical skill and psychological tightrope walking, her shows are astonishing Read more ...
Veronica Lee
At the 2024 Edinburgh Fringe, Amy Gledhill won best show for Make Me Look Fit on the Poster, ostensibly a cheery collection of stories about the weird and wonderful things that happen to her. But under the guise of feelgood comedy with herself as the butt of many of the gags, Gledhill cleverly weaves in a thoughtful study of female body image and self-esteem.Her Soho residency is the last stage of the Hull comic's sellout post-Fringe tour, and she immediately establishes a rapport with the audience, encouraging them to throw knickers at her as if she were a rock star of a certain vintage ( Read more ...
Veronica Lee
This special, available for a limited time only, acts as a sort of appetiser for the next leg of a mega tour that started in 2023, and still has some months to run. The comic played 13 nights in London on the UK leg and the hour-long Russell Howard Live at the Palladium is taken from those dates.He's a thinker, Howard tells us. But it's not a brag, more a mundane description of a comic's life; he has a thought, and then works out how to make it funny. It's not difficult, or onerous, and he's lucky to make a living in comedy, he avers. After all, it's not a proper job like the one done by his Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Ben Elton loves a scrap. The Motormouth of yesteryear, who made his name attacking Margaret Thatcher and her policies (and being attacked by the right in turn) now wades into so many frothing hot topics – gender politics, assisted dying and the age divide among them – that one has to assume he loves pushing people's buttons. For all the shouty delivery though, what he has to say is closely argued and passionate as he posits that, among all the fears about the growth of AI, the dangers of climate change and Donald Trump going back into the White House, what we should fear most is.... Read more ...