Comedy
Veronica Lee
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, they say. I'm not sure One-Woman Show, written and performed by comic, writer and actor Liz Kingsman, is an imitation of a solo show that catapulted another female actor-writer to worldwide fame, but it's imitation-adjacent in a spot-on spoof kind of way.The elephant in the room for this wickedly funny hour is Phoebe Waller-Bridge's brilliant, zeitgeisty and deservedly lauded Fleabag, a play that I loved on its debut at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2013; it previewed at this theatre and later had a successful post-Fringe run on the same Soho stage. How' Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Everybody in the comedy industry started out with so much hope that, finally, things could get back to normal in 2021 – and for a while they did, and there were some gems as live comedy returned to clubs and theatres.In live comedy, which operated for part of the year, Jason Manford and Alfie Brown – two comics who couldn't be more different if they tried – delivered great shows, while it was clear that Olga Koch (pictured right) had been using her enforced layoff to work on some very solid material for her new show. Sadly, not all comics had used the time wisely, and there were a few Read more ...
Veronica Lee
The lengthy ovation Chris and Rosie Ramsey received when they walked on stage at the O2 showed there was a lot of love in the room, and why wouldn't there be? The married couple's podcast Shagged. Married. Annoyed. has clocked up 144 episodes and built a large and loyal following, and now here they were doing the show live.Chris Ramsey is a stand-up and a former contestant on Strictly Come Dancing, and Rosie Ramsey is an actor and presenter who is now also an influencer (that last job leading to a cringworthy in-show advertising routine for their sponsors, acted out by the couple as if a Read more ...
Gary Naylor
"Off-grid" wasn't a thing in the mid-'70s. Sure, people planted a few potatoes in the garden and pottered about a bit in an allotment, but nobody went the whole hog. The rat race was certainly a thing though, a fertile seam for comedies like The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin. John Esmonde and Bob Larbey had the brainwave of combining the two in the BBC sitcom The Good Life - that and casting Felicity Kendal of course.The veteran writer-director Jeremy Sams takes us back to Tom and Barbara’s momentous decision to live off the land - in Surbiton - and their love-hate relationship with Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Well, this is a first: a comedy show with footnotes. Alfie Brown tells us at the top of the hour that he'll be stepping out of his routines from time to time to explain why the gag he's about to tell, or has just told, isn't offensive. It's a clever touch, one of several in Sensitive Man.Brown is perhaps taking a sensible precaution over being misunderstood because he's a contrarian comic who is happy to tackle sensitive subjects – unplanned parenthood, racism and paedophilia in previous shows – and here he delves into mental health and white male privilege.There's more material about Read more ...
Veronica Lee
During lockdown most of us were caught in a Groundhog Day existence of sleep, eat, exercise with Joe Wicks, take part in a Zoom quiz, bake banana bread, repeat – or variations on that theme. So a comic doing a show talking about his lockdown experience is taking a risk that it might not be the most scintillating hour – and so it proves with Ahir Shah's Dress.Shah says he chose the title because he saw the pandemic as a dress rehearsal for the apocalypse, or more prosaically, married life, and the show is bookended with him telling us about the end of one relationship at the beginning of Read more ...
Gary Naylor
Tuesday, 8 November 2016. Vera is in a New York hospital room giving birth to a son. On anxiously checked phones, the votes are piling up for Hillary, but the states are piling up for Trump. Vera’s world will never be the same again.Mathilde Dratwa’s new play, Milk and Gall (directed by Lisa Spirling, Theatre 503's Artistic Director), takes a searingly unsentimental look at 21st century parenting in the big city, mining plenty of laughs along the way. Speaking from experience, I can vouch that it’s all true – except, perhaps, that the reality is even worse!In her mid-thirties, Vera ( Read more ...
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
Say what you like about Dave Chappelle, but if nothing else he's an equal-opportunities offender, as his latest Netflix special, The Closer, proves. The last of his six specials for the network, all of which have drawn criticism – as well as plaudits – for his uncompromising “I tell it as I see it” material has again provoked ire in some quarters.Whatever some may think of his work, he is an accomplished comic, weaving stories – often around a grain of truth – that move from the factual to the fantastical in mid-sentence. He tells the tales with such a straight face that in many it's 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 ...
Gary Naylor
We’re in an agreeable drawing room with an author, Charles Condomine, who is looking forward to having a bit of fun with a local spiritualist, Madame Arcati, whom he has invited over for an evening séance. But once a conversation with his wife, Ruth, debating the relative attractiveness of his deceased first wife, Elvira, cracks like a shot from Chekhov’s gun, trouble is as sure to come as the spirits themselves.Richard Eyre’s revival of Noël Coward’s crowd-pleasing comedy fetches up at the Harold Pinter Theatre having haunted the Theatre Royal Bath and the Duke of York’s Theatre and Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Anuvab Pal may be a new name to some UK audiences (although many will know him from the global satirical podcast The Bugle), but he is well known in his native India. And it is with a wry look at Indian history – and the British role within it – that he begins his show Democracy and Disco Dancing, a version of which he previously brought to the Edinburgh Fringe in 2019.Pal introduces himself, saying he looks like “I work for HSBC in risk management” but in reality he's has some thought-provoking and funny gags about the India-Great Britain relationship. He takes us through Partition (“the Read more ...