Comedy
Veronica Lee
John Bishop was last on tour three years ago and he tells us that this show, Winging It, was inspired by two things that happened in the intervening period. Not the obvious Brexit (although it does make an appearance), but in that time he has passed the 50 landmark and his three sons have all left home.Bishop's calling card is laidback observational comedy, and as befits someone who started late at this comedy lark – he's celebrating 10 years as a full-time stand-up, having made the jump from being a rep for a pharmaceuticals company – he never forgets where he came from, a Liverpool council Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Kerry Godliman is such an affable and down-to-earth onstage presence that when she talks about whether she should move now that her area has upped and come – you can tell by the local baker making sourdough loaves – you think how much her neighbours would miss her.Moving – whether geographically or along the social scale – is the central theme of Stick or Twist (which I saw at Soho Theatre), but Godliman neatly swerves into lots of other territory including bad parenting, female friendship and the invasion of hipsters in her previously gritty London abode. If she and her husband sold up, she Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Mat Ewins comes on stage with a bullet belt slung across his chest. Indiana Jones he ain't, but what follows is a spoof on that film genre, a convoluted narrative that makes little sense but has a large degree of bombast as the show's title, Mat Ewins: Presents Adventureman 7 – the Return of Adventureman, suggests.It's an hour of multimedia storytelling, visual jokes and a lot of audience engagement (plus a brilliant long-form gag), in which Ewins trots out a daft tale involving a cursed amulet from Tutankhamen’s tomb that has gone missing from the British History Museum where he works, and Read more ...
Veronica Lee
There were a lot of shocked and disappointed people after the EU referendum last year and several comics have used the result to fashion some good comedy, delivering state-of-the-nation material in their shows. For Ahir Shah, though, the more he thought about the result, the more he took it personally.He starts Control at Soho Theatre by giving us a mnemonic for his first name – Alpha, Hero, Indian, Romeo. It's a deft way into revealing his comic self – bombastic, teasing, self-deprecating, playful – and it's a persona he falls back into several times in the show (which I saw at the Edinburgh Read more ...
Veronica Lee
She’s only 30, but Mae Martin has been at this comedy lark for a long time. By her own admission she was a rather strange child; she became obsessed with stand-up after her parents took her to a comedy club when she was 11, and she started performing in clubs in her native Toronto two years later – when the high from making people laugh took over her life.The comedy obsession was part of a pattern in her younger years, and in Dope she explores the compulsive behaviour that resulted in a serious drug addiction by the time she was in her mid-teens. She’s honest about the reasons why – hanging Read more ...
theartsdesk
Wondering what on earth to choose between as you tramp the streets of the festival? These are our highlights so far.STANDUPAthenu Kugblenu, Underbelly Med Quad ★★★ Strong debut hour of political and identity comedyCally Beaton, The Caves ★★★★ Single motherhood, autism, sex with women, the corporate world: original and cleverDad’s Army Radio Hour, Pleasance Dome ★★★ Scripts of born-again sitcom classic delivered with real light and shadeDarren Harriott, Pleasance Courtyard ★★★ Extrovert with strong material on politics and personal historyElliot Steel, Gilded Ballroom ★★ Slacker lad's tales Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Ingrid Oliver ★★★★ Ingrid Oliver is an old Edinburgh hand as one half of the sketch duo Watson and Oliver, but this is her debut solo show, and a very fine one it is. The set-up in Speech! is that she plays various characters giving speeches – among them a nervous TED-talker, a man leading an improv class, and a boorish student-union activist who wants to no-platform everybody ("As students we shouldn't have to engage with other people's opinions").The highlights are a pitch-perfect routine about a shock-jock radio host not a million miles away from Katie Hopkins, dropping her “truth Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Hannah Gadsby ★★★★This is Hannah Gadsby's last show, she tells us. Not because she has stopped being funny (she most definitely hasn't, as the laugh count in this show attests), but because making comedy out of her life experience has become toxic for her.Over the years, Gadsby's shows have had increasingly personal content - about being a lesbian, her depression and growing up gay in a deeply homophobic society. And then last year, when the debate about gay marriage hit the headlines in her home state of Tasmania (it's still not legal), something shifted, and she realised how much anger she Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Tom Allen ★★★★ Tom Allen is celebrating his 10th year at the Fringe, and he appears to be having a ball – and so do we. He bounds on stage full of energy and does a fantastically strong 10 minutes' interaction with the audience, and when he finds comedy gold in the front row with a management consultant, a nurse on a liver ward and a judge, he dextrously weaves details of their lives into the show.Absolutely is more of the conversational comedy that Allen has honed over the past decade, and there's a pleasing touch of the television host about him (someone please give this man Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Kiri Pritchard-McLean ★★★★Appropriate Adult has an unlikely subject for comedy – Kiri Pritchard-McLean's work with vulnerable teenagers. But it proves rich territory as she recounts her relationship with one in particular, 15-year-old “Harriet”. Don't worry, it doesn't pose an ethical issue, as the comic, rather than the child, is the butt of the jokes – of which there are plenty.Pritchard-McLean, hugely likeable and energetic, is disarmingly honest about her motivations for doing such work. It's not entirely selfless, she tells us; it gives her an excuse to feel smug, and she can act Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Tiff Stevenson ★★★★“I identify as a 10!” Tiff Stevenson tells us in Bombshell. It’s a strong opener, particularly as she follows with: “And if you don’t agree you’re beauty-phobic.” It’s not to boast, though, more marking her territory in a show about the shifting sands of modern sexual politics. Why should women identify with a male view of the world?She playfully sets up the seeming incongruity of loving to dress in leopardskin while being able to talk about the semiotics of feminism - the two aren't mutually exclusive, after all, and how you see yourself is not necessarily how others Read more ...
theartsdesk
The Hospital Club’s annual h.Club100 awards celebrate the most influential and innovative people working in the UK’s creative industries, with nominations from the worlds of film and fashion, art, advertising, theatre, music, television and more. This year they are teaming up with theartsdesk.com – the home of online arts journalism in the UK – to add a brand new award to the line-up.The Young Reviewer Award is aimed at bold, thoughtful young writers aged 18-30 who are serious about a career in arts journalism. It will be presented to the author of the best review of any art-form that we Read more ...