Comedy Reviews
Reginald D Hunter, SohoTuesday, 10 November 2009
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 and more an in-joke from the time an earlier show’s posters (which also included it) were banned on the London Underground. So now he puts a rude word in the title of most of his shows and it pretty much indicates the Southerner’s style:... Read more... |
Comedy Showcase: Campus, Channel 4Friday, 06 November 2009
“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 sitcom pilots. For once, the handy nut-shell description is spot on. Campus is precisely that: Green Wing, but set in a university – and as a fan of Green Wing I should feel that that is good... Read more... |
Tom Wrigglesworth, Soho Theatre, LondonMonday, 02 November 2009
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. Read more... |
Stephen K Amos, Churchill Theatre, BromleySunday, 01 November 2009
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 buy him a pint afterwards), but unless I quoted reams of his delivery I couldn’t actually describe what the show is about, other than making people laugh. A lot. |
Stewart Lee, Mercury Theatre, ColchesterSaturday, 31 October 2009
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, he also disses a fellow comedian while he’s at it. Read more... |
Dylan Moran, ApolloThursday, 29 October 2009Dylan 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, What It Is, is the sort where one smiles a lot rather than laughs out loud. Read more... |
Alistair McGowan, touringSaturday, 24 October 2009Alastair 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 there’s an over-reliance on sport-... Read more... |
Tim Minchin, Hammersmith ApolloSaturday, 24 October 2009
Of course there’ll be no certain way of knowing whether the ensuing rave is heartfelt. Four years ago Tim Minchin, fresh off the plane from Down Under, burst onto the Edinburgh Fringe to be greeted by a short sharp one-star crit from a Guardian reviewer who had possibly got out of the wrong side of the bed. Where a regular stand-up would look horribly petulant to bear such a public grudge, Minchin put his riposte in song, because he has that near-unique facility. Read more... |
Modern Family, Sky1 / Question Time, BBC OneThursday, 22 October 2009American critics have been fanfaring Modern Family as something of a sitcom revolution for its wit, intelligence and the cast's all-round expertise. It might take longer to grow a British fanbase, because you need a few spins around the circuit before its contours start to feel familiar, but then suddenly the lights go on and revelation ensues. Read more... |
Grumpy Old Women, Dorking HallsThursday, 22 October 2009Anyone looking for a novel way into their PhD on how the British like to be entertained would do well to sit in the audience of the live version of Grumpy Old Women, a successful spin-off from the BBC television series where celebby femmes d’un certain age sit and moan about whatever takes their fancy. Students of British social mores will learn that what Brits love more than... Read more... |
Pages
latest in today
Coote, LSO, Tilson Thomas, Barbican review - the triumph of...
Programme notes for Mahler’s monumental symphonies will often blithely chat about the works’ epic struggle between life and death, creation and...
Our Mothers review - revisiting the horrors of Guatemala...
Director Cesar Diaz’s debut feature film was...
Conchúr White, St Pancras Old Church review - side-stepping...
If there’s a feeling of déjà vu, it isn’t detectable. Conchúr White played St Pancras Old Church in April 2016 with County Armagh’s Silences, the...
Rhod Gilbert, G-Live Guildford review - cancer, constipation...
Rhod Gilbert is disarmingly honest about his thought process when he received his diagnosis of head and neck cancer in 2022. Following quickly...
Pop Will Eat Itself, Chalk, Brighton review - hip hop rocker...
By midway, things are cooking. “Can U Dig It?”, a post-modern list-song from another age (Ok,...
Album: Beth Gibbons - Lives Outgrown
It’s been a long while since Beth Gibbons released an album. Portishead’s Third was out in 2008. She has lived through so many...
Britten Sinfonia, The Marian Consort, Milton Court review -...
Gesualdo was, in the words of New Yorker critic Alex Ross – “irrefutably badass”, a double murderer, sado-masochist and black magic enthusiast who...
Music Reissues Weekly: Little Girls - Valley Songs
The name, Caron and Michelle Maso explained to Los Angeles radio DJ Rodney Bingenheimer, was a literal description. “We’re both like five feet. We...
Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes review - a post-human para...
Planet of the Apes is the most artfully replenished franchise, from the original series’ elegant time-travel loop to the reboot’s rich,...