sat 07/06/2025

Comedy

A Merry Little Christmas Eve: theartsdesk recommends

As we all have only one shopping day left, theartsdesk hopes to make Christmas Eve a little easier by offering a few enlightened recommendations. From our writers on new and classical music, opera and ballet, film and comedy, here is a list of CDs...

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Kim Noble, Soho Theatre

Kim Noble: a funny, disturbing and strikingly original show

‘'You must see this show!” “You must not go to this show!” Faced with those exhortations from friends and colleagues who had already seen (and been quite shocked by) it, I of course go to Kim Noble Will Die at the Soho Theatre. I was trepidatious...

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Pajama Men, The Last Stand to Reason, Soho Theatre

Pajama Men: Mark Chavez and Shenoah Allen in the astonishingly inventive The Last Stand to Reason

It’s a rare show that has every critic reaching for the superlatives and wishing they could award six stars out of five, but Pajama Men’s The Last Stand to Reason did that at the Edinburgh Fringe earlier this year earlier this year. Pajama Men...

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Comedy DVDs Round-Up 1

Chris Rock: the American hiphop comic has frequently courted controversy

November’s comedy releases come just in time for the festive season - those stockings won’t fill themselves, you know. From feelgood humour to thoughtful (and very funny, too) discourses of race, sex and class, there's a comedy turn recorded live to...

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Eddie Izzard, Brighton Centre

Let’s be kind to Eddie Izzard. The guy has not long finished running 43 marathons in 51 days in aid of Sport Relief and the undeniably noble effort would take the puff out of anyone. And just the day before this show, he had run a half marathon...

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Reginald D Hunter, Soho

Reginald D Hunter: punchy exposition tempered by knowing irony

Reginald D Hunter wants us to know from the off that he will be using the “n” word in his show. A lot. Well, there’s a clue in the show’s title, The Only Apple in the Garden of Eden and Niggas, but that’s rather misleading; it’s less a description...

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Comedy Showcase: Campus, Channel 4

“Green Wing, but set in a university” is one of those useful handles that reviewers were always going to grasp when discussing Victoria Pile’s new improvised ensemble comedy, Campus, the opening try-out in Channel 4’s new Comedy Showcase season of...

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Tom Wrigglesworth, Soho Theatre, London

Firstly, no, Tom Wrigglesworth's Open Return Letter to Richard Branson isn’t that letter. His epistle is not to be confused with Oliver Beale’s, whose email to the Virgin boss complaining about the food on a Virgin flight went viral last year. The...

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Stephen K Amos, Churchill Theatre, Bromley

Stephen K Amos: unequalled ability to riff with an audience

Stephen K Amos, although a mightily talented comic, doesn’t make a critic’s job easy. His new show, The Feelgood Factor, does indeed offer that and leaves everybody in the Churchill Theatre in Bromley in a happy mood (and many of them planning to...

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Stewart Lee, Mercury Theatre, Colchester

It’s a brave comic who declares on stage every night that he would like to see a cute television presenter die in a horrific accident (as nearly happened to Top Gear’s Richard Hammond in 2006). But declares it Stewart Lee does and, for good measure...

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Dylan Moran, Apollo

Dylan Moran is, as the ethnic stereotype would have it, a great storyteller. The Irishman doesn’t tell jokes with punchlines as such, rather he rambles on a bit and sort of makes his points along the way. As entertainment, then, his latest show,...

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Alistair McGowan, touring

Alastair McGowan’s larynx is an amazing thing; it allows him to do 120 voices in 120 minutes during his solo touring show, The One and Many..., which I saw at Journal Tyne Theatre in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Not all the impressions are spot-on and...

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