spoof
Edinburgh Fringe 2019 reviews: Catherine Bohart / Matt Parker / Nigel Ng / Zoë Coombs MarrWednesday, 14 August 2019
Catherine Bohart Pleasance Courtyard ★★★★Catherine Bohart has a most unusual starting point for her new show, Lemon. Last year at the Fringe, a woman was so appalled by the Irishwoman mentioning her sexuality – she’s bisexual – in her show... Read more... |
Disenchantment, Netflix review - Matt Groening show has promise after poor startFriday, 17 August 2018
It’s an event that only comes around once a generation: a new Matt Groening TV series. The Simpsons is rightly regarded as one of the greatest shows ever made. It changed the face of American television, and 10 years later was followed Futurama, a... Read more... |
The Elvis Dead, Soho Theatre review - schlock horror told through Elvis songsMonday, 20 November 2017
A fair few Edinburgh Fringe shows are just that – things that work perfectly in the “let's do the show right here” spirit that permeates the festival, in a tiny (and often grotty) venue that adds hugely to the vibe. That's all well and good during... Read more... |
Coming soon: trailers to the next big filmsFriday, 11 August 2017
Summer's here, which can only mean Hollywood blockbusters. But it's not all Spider-Man, talking apes and World War Two with platoons of thespians fighting on the beaches. There's comedy, a saucy menage-à-trois, a film about golf and even a ghost... Read more... |
Mindhorn review - Eighties detective spoof is a hootFriday, 05 May 2017
To appreciate the full engaging silliness of Mindhorn, it helps to have been born no later than 1980. Those of the requisite vintage will have encountered the lame primetime pap it both salutes and satirises. Everyone else coming to this spoof will... Read more... |
Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo, Prog 2, Peacock TheatreThursday, 24 September 2015
If the Trocks didn't exist, we would have to invent them. Every genre needs its loving parodists, treading the fine line between homage and dommage, and an art form as stylised and convention-governed as classical dance is riper for it than most -... Read more... |
Dracula! (Mr Swallow - the Musical), Soho TheatreThursday, 19 February 2015
Nick Mohammed's show has had a slight change of title since it debuted at the Edinburgh Fringe last year, where it was called Mr Swallow - the Musical, and garnered warm reviews for its shambolic silliness.The set-up is that Mohammed’s alter-ego,... Read more... |
UKIP: The First 100 Days, Channel 4Tuesday, 17 February 2015
As worst-case scenarios go, the prospect of a UKIP government in a little under three months’ time is a frightening but unlikely one – isn’t it? That they have only two MPs, and leader Nigel Farage is yet to find a seat, has done nothing to stop... Read more... |
Peter Kay's Phoenix Nights, Manchester ArenaMonday, 02 February 2015
Due to unfortunate circumstances I am unable to give a star rating to this show; 15 minutes into the second half a cast member collapsed on stage and the performance was cancelled. At the time of posting Ted Robbins (extreme right in the picture... Read more... |
DVD: The Kidnapping of Michel HouellebecqSaturday, 20 December 2014
There’s a wonderful drollery to Guillaume Nicloux’s wry and eccentric comedy The Kidnapping of Michel Houellebecq (L‘Enlèvement de Michel Houellebecq) which is quintessentially Gallic. Three years ago the enfant terrible of French literature... Read more... |
Forbidden Broadway, Menier Chocolate FactoryThursday, 03 July 2014
Since 1982 it’s been open season on the great and the good of Broadway musicals. It was in that very year that a chap called Gerard Alessandrini created Forbidden Broadway and from the hitherto innocuous sidelines of the fringe set out to cut any... Read more... |
Sundance London 2014: They Came TogetherMonday, 28 April 2014
It might be putting it bluntly, but hell - American rom-coms didn't always suck. The screwball comedies of the 30s and 40s made bickering artful and aspirational and Woody Allen added his own neurotic spin in the 70s. Now the commercial end of the... Read more... |
