humour
Under the Black Rock, Arcola Theatre review - political thriller turns soapySaturday, 11 March 2023
“Darkly comic thrillers” (as they like to say) set in Ireland tracking how families, or quasi-families, fall apart under pressure are very much in vogue just now. Whether The Banshees of Inisherin will garner the Oscars haul it hardly deserves... Read more... |
The Unfriend, Criterion Theatre review - dark comedy is (largely) audience-unfriendlySaturday, 21 January 2023
We all have that friend. The person you met on holiday and couldn’t shake off. You added each other on Facebook, but they posted so much you’ve quietly unfollowed them. You can’t quite bring yourself to unfriend them, though. In The Unfriend, a new... Read more... |
Iphigenia in Splott, Lyric Hammersmith review - raises as many questions as answersMonday, 03 October 2022
It’s hard to keep up with what terms are in vogue amongst those who insist on classifying and vilifying young people, but one that you don’t hear so often these days is NEET (Not in Education, Employment or Training). Back in 2015 when Gary Owen's... Read more... |
The Wonderful World of Dissocia, Theatre Royal Stratford East review - wild trip gets a welcome revivalSaturday, 24 September 2022
Lisa has lost an hour in a (somewhat contrived) temporal glitch. As a consequence, her world is always sliding off-kilter, not quite making sense, things floating in and out of memory. A watchmaker (himself somewhat loosely tethered to reality)... Read more... |
Clutch, Bush Theatre review - new comedy-drama passes its testThursday, 22 September 2022
Max is big and black and Tyler is slight and (very) white, an odd couple trapped in a dual-control car as Max barks out his instructions and Tyler prepares for his driving test. If their relationship is to get started, like the clutch of the... Read more... |
Funny Pages review - comic-book confidentialSaturday, 17 September 2022
Shortly after the art teacher who thinks he’s a genius jumps on a table naked to be sketched, only to meet a sticky end, high school senior Robert (Daniel Zolghadri) sets out to start his brilliant career as an underground cartoonist.From this... Read more... |
Wonderville Magic and Cabaret review - fast-paced show delivers the promised wonderWednesday, 17 August 2022
There’s nothing quite like magic, live, up close and personal. Sure there are the TV spectaculars, the casino resort mega-shows and even The Masked Magician to pull back the curtains, but there’s a frisson in the air when the card that’s in your... Read more... |
The Tempest, Shakespeare's Globe review - occasional gales of laughter drown out subtletySaturday, 06 August 2022
Alexei Sayle, in his angry young man phase, once said that you can always tell when you’re watching a Shakespeare comedy, because NOBODY'S LAUGHING. That’s not entirely true, of course, but sometimes a director has to go looking for the LOLs and... Read more... |
Sister Act the Musical, Eventim Apollo review - the West End meets the WestwayThursday, 28 July 2022
If jukebox shows occupy one end of the musical theatre spectrum and Stephen Sondheim's masterpieces the other, Sister Act The Musical is somewhere in-between.We get songs we know (Alan Menken's score, heard first on the West End and then, in 2011,... Read more... |
Project Dictator, New Diorama Theatre review - anarchic satireThursday, 07 April 2022
When Rhum + Clay conceived this show, the idea of a comic becoming a political leader might have prompted thoughts of Boris Johnson's carefully cultivated buffoonery on "Have I Got News For You" and elsewhere. Since then, a certain Volodymyr... Read more... |
The Wife of Willesden, Kiln Theatre review - a saucy ode to BrentFriday, 19 November 2021
Zadie Smith might not be the only writer who can rhyme "tandem" with "galdem", but she’s the only one who can do it in an adaptation of Chaucer. In The Wife of Willesden, her debut play, a modern version of one of the Canterbury Tales, Smith’s... Read more... |
Pride & Prejudice* (*sort of), Criterion Theatre review - bursting with wit, verve, and loveThursday, 04 November 2021
“We haven’t started yet!” Hannah-Jarrett Scott, dressed in Doc Martens under a 19th-century shift, reassures us as she attempts to dislodge a yellow rubber glove from a chandelier in the middle of the set of Pride & Prejudice* (*sort of).... Read more... |
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