standup comedy
Veronica Lee
Iliza Shlesinger is an American writer, performer and presenter whose film work includes roles in Pieces of a Woman and Good on Paper, the latter which she also wrote and produced. She's also an established stand-up comic, with five Netflix specials to her name. For her latest stand-up show, Back in Action, she was on a fleeting visit to London as part of an international 70-date tour, delayed by COVID, before she performs some dates in the US.From the off her performance was full of energy, with lots of adroit physical comedy – two standouts being how a woman taking off her bra looks like Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Tickets for Jason Manford's Like Me went on sale in 2019 but the tour had to be put on hold as events unavoidably detained him at home. "I hope you haven't gone off me in that time – it does happen," he said. He needn't have worried as the Palladium crowd were as delighted as he was to be in a theatre, having a laugh.That modesty – part real, part knowing – runs through the evening, as Manford frequently makes himself the butt of the joke, whether it's who makes the decisions at home, or telling a deliciously self-lacerating story about a cringe-making encounter with one of his comedy Read more ...
Veronica Lee
At the risk of stating the bleeding obvious, this year's Fringe is a much smaller beast than normal. In the face of Covid restrictions, uncertainty about when they would end and the limitations on international travel, this year many performers are staying away. There are 755 shows at 118 venues across the city, compared to 3,841 in 323 venues in 2019, the last time the Fringe was held.No top comics have a traditional three-week residency in the city and the few big names who are appearing are doing a handful of work in progress dates for UK tours later in the year. So slim pickings for Read more ...
Veronica Lee
What a great idea Just the Tonic's Comedy Shindig is; outdoor gigs at lovely locations under a huge awning - so who cares if the British summer turns out to be a bit wet this year? The season kicked off – in beautiful weather – in the grounds of Melbourne Hall near Derby, where a sunken Victorian walled garden provided a natural amphitheatre. Chuck in a barbecue and a bar, and it was a perfect way to enjoy an evening of comedy.Host Lou Conran was terrific, and gloriously rude about the audience from the off. Much of her material is filthy – she's the co-host (with Sally-Anne Hayward) of the Read more ...
Veronica Lee
What to make of Jimmy Carr? He’s a fantastic gag writer and experienced stand-up who has made a hugely successful career on television. And yet... as Terribly Funny makes clear, you have to share what he calls his dark and edgy humour - or, as he has it: “Cunts are a key demographic for me” - to find it mirth-making.His gags tend to be one-liners of the set-up, payoff variety, with a few set-up, misdirect, reveal to vary the pace. But when the vast majority are about how women nag, or how unattractive they are beyond a certain age, or are there just for men’s sexual pleasure, or about ghastly Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Mark Thomas comes on stage unannounced. It's not a show of humility – rather, he told us, amused at his own mistake, that his hearing isn't what it used to be and he had misheard his music cue. It was a modest start to his new show 50 Things About Us, which he is giving a runout at Soho Theatre before touring with it later in the year.It has been 18 months since he last gigged, but there were few signs of rustiness as Thomas described what has been happening to him during his enforced layoff from live performance. He developed Type 2 diabetes, for a start – “the kind you have to overeat for Read more ...
Veronica Lee
“A real live audience,” said Arthur Smith delightedly as he kicked off the Brighton Fringe with Syd, his touching and funny tribute to his late father, “an ordinary man who lived in extraordinary times” – his life included a stint in Dad's Army (the Home Guard) and as a prisoner of war in Colditz Castle, and for decades he was a bobby on the beat in south London.Smith was glad to be in The Warren, as were the audience, in a pop-up space that he described as “a yellow metal Globe”, made from brightly painted shipping containers and metal railings, with the occasional, fitting, accompaniment of Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Introduced by Brighton Festival 2021 Guest Director, poet Lemn Sissay, Josie Long, clad in blue denim dungarees and a black tee-shirt, initially hits the stage for a celebratory introduction. She’s here to perform her Tender show about pregnancy and childbirth, but this is her first show in well over a year, due to COVID-19, and she’s keen to say hello first. She’s excited and it’s contagious.Back in summer 2019 theartsdesk reviewed Tender in its original Edinburgh Fringe incarnation but tonight’s version is not a straight rerun. Pulling it from mothballs, Long is constantly aware that a lot Read more ...
Veronica Lee
London's weather – a day of huge downpours – underlined the point that we should be rushing inside as entertainment venues (in parts of the UK, at least) reopened. It was lovely to be back at 21Soho, a welcoming and well run venue, particularly as its opening night was for anti-violence charity Reclaim These Streets. Proceeds will be distributed by the charity Rosa.Sarah Keyworth was on terrific form as the host, grateful to be finally working to a crowd who appeared in real-life form rather than on the other side of a Zoom screen. Although, as she wrily pointed out, even on Zoom there can be Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Heckling at a drive-in gig is rather pointless, don't you think? The audience, mostly listening through their car radios, will be unable to hear the interruption, while the comic can deliver a slam-dunk put-down that we can all enjoy. And so it proved at Mark Watson's Carpool Comedy Club as it pulled into Culden Faw Estate, between Henley and Marlow on the Oxfordshire-Buckinghamshire border.The heckler was annoyed at headliner Nish Kumar's political gags, which were as bracing as the unseasonal weather. And whether or not you share them, fair play to the guy for sticking to his beliefs while Read more ...
Veronica Lee
What a pleasure it was to go to the first drive-in date of 2021 as Mark Watson's Carpool Comedy Club, produced in association with The Alfresco Theatre, rocked up in the picturesque surroundings of the Hop Farm, near Tunbridge Wells in Kent. The gigs are a pleasurable affair, held in pretty venues with designer food on hand, far removed from the dark, sweaty enclosed spaces that every comic is now so desperate to get back to in just a few weeks. But I for one have become a great fan of alfresco comedy and hope it becomes a permament summer fixture – and that the British weather plays Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Loyiso Gola, twice nominated for Emmy awards for his satire show Late Nite News, has been a big star in South Africa for some years now but this show should help cement his reputation abroad. UK fans will remember his 2018 appearance on Live at the Apollo, where he guyed the audience with his views on the British and Brexit, among other things.Unlearning, a show written a few years ago but updated for this hour-long Netflix special, is rather lighter on gags than the Apollo material but is entertaining in its own way. In it he weaves a story about living in Apartheid-era South Africa, his Read more ...