standup comedy
Veronica Lee
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 (also the title of her recently published book) Christie guys herself in her opening line, telling us that 11am is the perfect time for comedy about gender-based violence - "or at misogynists' funerals, widows love it" - and that she's not really a feminist, as that was done for marketing purposes to sell the book.There's a masterful take-down of Read more ...
Veronica Lee
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. Do we have the right to stop art happening if we are offended by the artist or the content of their work, or where their funding comes from? Or is freedom of expression an absolute right?The standard of writing is consistently high (not always the case in a portmanteau work), much aided by a terrific cast of four and slick direction by Cressida Read more ...
Veronica Lee
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 snortingly funny) account of his alcoholism as a younger man. More recently they may know him as the co-star (with Sharon Horgan) of Channel 4's Catastrophe, the hilarious and sexually honest sitcom they created about a couple of strangers whose casual affair leads to them becoming parents together.Any of those should have prepared the QEH audience Read more ...
Veronica Lee
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 off the hook for some of his edgier material. He has often courted controversy in his native Ireland, and there is the occasional line tonight that draws a shocked response from the audience.Tiernan is in full fire-and-brimstone preacher mode when addressing us loudly without the aid of his microphone, other times whispering intimately as if in a Read more ...
Veronica Lee
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 everything that matters to him – girlfriend, integrity, talent – to achieve it. And that description could indeed apply to many so-so comics currently plying their trade who gain financial reward in inverse proportion to their talent (no names, no pack drill).Steve (Brian Doherty) starts out in seedy clubs, loyally supported by his girlfriend Maggie Read more ...
Veronica Lee
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 wrong, because the Pub Landlord has founded the FUKP (the Free United Kingdom Party) and he, its sole candidate, is standing for the Thanet South constituency, where Nigel Farage of Ukip just happens to be running. Murray's new show One Man, One Guvnor is not, strangely enough, a political husting, although there are elements of that in the Read more ...
Veronica Lee
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 double act. It was fun, too, to see the development of talented live performers – some newbies, another continuing to find her voice after a few years in the business. And lastly for seeing others keeping on doing what they do very, very well.Monty Python, O2 Arena LondonMonty Python Live (Mostly): One Down, Five to GoFor decades it seemed unlikely Read more ...
Veronica Lee
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 homework, immediately throwing in several local references, plus a few more that his Twitter followers would recognise, and told them that returning to his home country on the Irish leg of his Crowd Tickler tour after a few years away from the stage was an education for him too. Ireland is undergoing so much rapid political change at the moment, he said Read more ...
Veronica Lee
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 conviction and be met with such affection - as indeed he was at the National Indoor Arena in Birmingham where I saw his Supersonic arena tour.It cannot be a case of, as an old show business saw (attributed to many) has it, “Sincerity; if you can fake that, you've got it made”, because, although he made a very good fist of it in Skins and Route Irish, Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Well, here’s a first; I was taken to a comic’s dressing room to be checked out before I could review his show. There was a mix-up over tickets for Jim Davidson so the front-of-house manager asked him If he would give the OK to let me in. “He wants to see you,” he said. After a few minutes of Davidson telling me he doesn’t read his reviews, how awful journalists are and how he now couldn’t do jokes about Guardian readers, lesbians and immigrants (he did all three), he took me to the bar and bought me a drink while we talked about both growing up in south London.I wish, then, I could Read more ...
Veronica Lee
The last time I saw Lee Mack live, my companion and I were literally in pain because we were laughing so much. It's perhaps unfair to expect a repeat of such a wonderful, life-affirming experience - live comedy is an ephemeral art, after all - but the comic doesn't appear to be even trying to achieve the same effect on his audience in his latest show, Hit the Road Mack, and this time we both left disappointed.His 75-minute set - including a lengthy Q&A, almost always a sign of a shortage of material - is delivered at Mack's usual breakneck speed as he paces across the stage. The comic Read more ...
Veronica Lee
It's inevitable that Paul Daniels would introduce his wife and onstage partner as “... the lovely Debbie McGee”, one of two phrases now synonymous with the magician and comic. (The other, “you'll like this, not a lot”, makes an appearance later in the evening.) However there's nothing predictable about this entertaining show of magic tricks and illusions - most of them devised by Daniels, and others associated with great names from the past that the comic, a keen student of the art of magic's history, has given a modern makeover.I saw the show at the Broadway Theatre in Barking, and Daniels Read more ...