standup comedy
Veronica Lee
Of all the outdoor spaces being utilised to keep live performance going in this maddest of years, Warwick Castle is surely among the most striking. Its Picnic at the Castle series has the building as an imposing backdrop to events, the stage reached by a wooden bridge across the River Avon.The Covid-secure audience are arranged in twos, fours and sixes around a table within its own little wooden pergola, decorated with ivy (plastic, but who cares) and fairylights, adding to a rather magical Midsummer Night's Dream feel. Even the hog roast available seems fitting. The pergolas' transparent Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Comedy is all about timing, and the owners of the UK's newest comedy club should know. Just days after they obtained the final licences they needed to open, the national lockdown was announced in March. Now the brave souls are opening 21Soho at a third of capacity; thankfully audiences are keen to see live performances after being starved of them for so long, and the first of regular comedy nights – 21Soho presents – had a fantastic line-up.The club (which can hold live music events as well as comedy), is in a listed building in the heart of London's West End and has a pleasing Read more ...
Veronica Lee
We live in strange times, so it's appropriate that a socially distanced pop-up arts festival – of theatre, comedy, improv, music and magic – calls itself The New Normal. I went to the first comedy night of its August run, curated by Good Ship Comedy, a great comedy club which is normally located at a pub in north London, but is decamping to south London for a couple of dates here.And what a here: The New Normal is taking place at a gem of a location, the baronial gothic Royal Victoria Patriotic Building in Wandsworth, once an asylum for girls (for which read workhouse), later an MI5 Read more ...
Veronica Lee
After drive-ins, now come Covid-secure outdoor shows as the comedy industry tries to find its way back to normality. Battersea Arts Centre is utilising its hitherto unused courtyard for a season of outdoor comedy, during which Al Murray and Russell Howard will perform.The courtyard accommodates fewer than 50 people – about 30 seated, the rest standing – and the audience had to wear masks throughout. We were encouraged to laugh rather than smile by MC Luke Kempner as we sat like a “bunch of assassins”.Fortunately there was a lot to laugh at. The comic, as well as being a jovial host, is a Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Drive-in comedy shows are now well into their groove (although sadly a couple of promoters have had to cut their losses because of poor sales at some venues), and distinct differences in approach to what's on offer have emerged. Clearly going for the upper end of the market is Dine and Drive Theatre, an old hand at curating outdoor events, whose USP is classy locations and food catered by top chef Tom Kerridge.And very nice my picnic bag was too, with a decent assortment on offer – rather like the mixed bill on stage, curated by Mark Watson (who MCs each event in Mark Watson's Carpool Comedy Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Daniel KitsonDaniel Kitson, in a rare and welcome move, has released his 2009 Edinburgh Fringe show, The Interminable Suicide of Gregory Church, in a version he has edited.Various times, 18-22 Maydanielkitson.comCambridge Footlights Stand-up ShowcaseDoes what it says on the tin: stand-up comedy from one of the oldest and most famous comedy troupes in the UK, written and performed by the current crop of graduating and postgrad students.9pm, 19 May, 2 and 16 Juneadctheatre.com/whats-on/comedy/footlights-stand-up-showcase/Marcus BrigstockeMarcus Brigstocke brings back his gap-yah posho idiot Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Jerry Seinfeld said in a recent interview that this Netflix special – 23 Hours to Kill – may be his last stand-up show. That's a shame, as there's much to enjoy here, even if he is retreading some old ground.Much of this material he performed during UK dates last year (and some of it he had also performed when he previously visited the UK, in 2011), but that's OK as far as it goes – he's still a very funny man, and his grouchy, world-weary shtick can bear some repetition.The show starts with – unusually for Seinfeld – a surprisingly showbizzy sequence, a filmed skit in which he dives out of a Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Who knew in the early days of his career, when Simon Amstell was taking the mick out of celebrities on Popworld and then Never Mind the Buzzcocks, that he would turn into one of the cleverest comics of his generation, with a special talent for making existential angst funny?And now the latest of his amusing navel-gazing stand-up shows is Set Free (recorded late last year). In it he turns his soul-searching – for which read his search for his father's approval – into a form of group therapy with a barrel of laughs thrown in.The comic sets out by saying: “The problem with humanity at the Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Rachel Fairburn says she didn't know what to wear for the gig. She's dressed in an all-black ensemble; hotpants, animal-print boots and a feather bolero jacket. “I've come as a mistress at a funeral.” It's a doozy of an opener to Her Majesty and the kind of sharp gag that listeners to her All Killa No Filla podcast (performed with Kiri Pritchard-McLean) would recognise.Fairburn's hero is her grandmother, and she is trying to be a good role model for her young nieces, passing on the same Mancunian grit and fortitude while not giving a toss what anyone thinks of her or how she lives Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Michelle Wolf, best known to UK audiences as the comic who upset Donald Trump with some smart barbs aimed at his staff at the 2018 White House Correspondents' Dinner, has done some occasional dates this side of the pond (plus a run at the 2016 Edinburgh Fringe), so her fans will be grateful for Joke Show, a Netflix special, where she is on top form.She starts with a very strong section on the modern trend for people to get offended by just about everything, which must be a pain in the backside for a comic such as Wolf, much of whose material is edgy. Yet instead of laying into the easily Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Spencer Jones, a clownish stand-up, has been responsible for some the cheeriest, daftest and most heart-warming shows at the Edinburgh Fringe, where he has twice been nominated in Dave's Edinburgh Comedy Awards (ECA). Others may know him from his scene-stealing turn in Upstart Crow, where he channels Ricky Gervais in the character of Will Kempe. Now, in Matt Morgan's new comedy, he plays Leslie Winner who, despite his best intentions, is forever finding himself in a pickle.Last night's opening episode of this six-parter introduced us to the ironically named Leslie, drifting through life Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Shappi Khorsandi's latest show, Skittish Warrior – Confessions of Club Comic, is an enjoyable look back at the stand-up's 20 years in the comedy business. She starts by taking us back to when she was child refugee; her father, a poet and satirist, offended the clerics in Iran, and was even the target of an assassination gang in London.Some of this material is familiar from previous shows, but no matter as her parents sound a hoot – although it's clear she didn't appreciate the disrupted sleep patterns she had from living in a household that was open all hours to other Iranian refuseniks and Read more ...