standup comedy
Edinburgh Fringe 2015: The Kinsey Sicks/ Minor Delays/ Rhys JamesThursday, 20 August 2015
The Kinsey Sicks, Gilded Balloon **** The Kinsey Sicks, a four-piece drag a cappella act, were formed in 1993 and have played off-Broadway and Las Vegas; this is their UK debut. Their name is a play on Kinsey 6, the point in the scale of sexual... Read more... |
Edinburgh Fringe 2015: Aisling Bea/ Funz and Gamez/ Chris StokesWednesday, 19 August 2015
Aisling Bea, Gilded Balloon ★★★★Aisling Bea received an Edinburgh Comedy Awards best newcomer nomination for her excellent show in 2013, and she returns with another high-energy hour of clowning about and rapid-fire delivery mixed with some astute... Read more... |
Edinburgh Fringe 2015: Tom Allen/ Sarah Callaghan/ BEASTSTuesday, 18 August 2015
Tom Allen, The Stand ★★★★Tom Allen tells us Both Worlds is about being gay, watching daytime TV, doing the gardening and his "crushing sense of wasting his life". But this is no misery comedy, far from it, as Allen gives us an hour of... Read more... |
Edinburgh Fringe 2015: Bridget Christie/ Mark Steel/ Beth VyseThursday, 13 August 2015
Bridget Christie, The Stand ★★★★Bridget Christie, the comic credited with bringing feminism to the fore with her 2013 Edinburgh Comedy Awards-winning show, broadens her target for withering political analysis and to great effect.In A Book For Her (... Read more... |
Edinburgh Fringe 2015: Walking the Tightrope/Maddy Anholt/ Phil JerrodTuesday, 11 August 2015
Walking the Tightrope, Underbelly Potterow ★★★★ Subtitled The Tension Between Art and Politics, this collection of eight short plays on the subject of censorship was prompted by the boycott of an Israeli hip hop troupe at this venue last year.... Read more... |
Rob Delaney, QEHThursday, 25 June 2015
Most people in the UK will know US comic Rob Delaney from his wonderfully sardonic Twitter feed (1.17 million followers) or his autobiography Mother. Wife. Sister. Human. Warrior. Falcon. Yardstick. Turban. Cabbage - a painfully honest (and often... Read more... |
Tommy Tiernan, Soho TheatreMonday, 15 June 2015
Tommy Tiernan tells us not to take him seriously at the start of his latest show, Out of the Whirlwind. “I’m like a cow mooing for the sake of mooing,” he says – which neatly explains the surreal riffs in a mesmerising 80 minutes, but also lets him... Read more... |
Death of a Comedian, Soho TheatreMonday, 20 April 2015
Owen McCafferty’s new play could have had as its starting point John Updike’s line "Celebrity is a mask that eats into the face”, for it deals with stand-up comedian Steve Johnston, who hungers after success so much that he is prepared to jettison... Read more... |
The Pub Landlord, TouringMonday, 23 March 2015
Al Murray is celebrating 20 years as his brilliant invention the Pub Landlord, an autodidact, xenophobic sexist with misogynistic undertones. Who better then, you may think, to run for a certain political party in the forthcoming election? You'd be... Read more... |
Best of 2014: ComedyMonday, 29 December 2014
It may not have been the most stellar year for comedy at the Edinburgh Fringe, but 2014 was made memorable not just by a long-awaited reunion, but also by witnessing a fine solo debut of a performer we're more used to seeing as part of a terrific... Read more... |
Dara Ó Bríain, TouringWednesday, 26 November 2014
It's always an education to see a comic – now a part of the British comedy establishment – performing a gig in his own backyard. And Dara Ó Bríain, at the Royal Theatre in Castlebar, Co Mayo, was just that; he had, as ever, done his... Read more... |
John Bishop, TouringTuesday, 11 November 2014
It's a conundrum for some in the industry how John Bishop, so beloved of the BBC, which has given him several vehicles to parlay his Liverpool-lad-made-good comedy, can still, as a multimillionaire, perform his smiley Everyman persona with such... Read more... |
