standup comedy
Jill Chuah Masters
“I am not intense.” That declaration arrives early in Feel Good, the new Channel 4 and Netflix romantic comedy fronted by comedian Mae Martin, who plays a fictionalised version of herself. Over Mae’s shoulder, we see a literal trash fire. She’s lit up the evidence of a past drug addiction. It smoulders in the background while she smoulders in the front.This scene is Feel Good in miniature: it encapsulates Martin's brand of vulnerable, quirky comedy, pinned to her appeal as a character and a creator. The series is easy to watch and easy to like. Still, Feel Good has a hindrance. For a Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Steve Martin and Martin Short first met in 1986 on the set of The Three Amigos (in which they co-starred with Chevy Chase), became fast friends and have since worked on a few projects together. In what was quite a coup for the Glasgow Comedy Festival, the first night of their UK tour was a starry curtain-raiser to the festival proper, which starts on Thursday.The Funniest Show in Town at the Moment is a mix of stand-up, reminiscences and musical interludes (provided by pianist Michael Farrell and bluegrass band The Steep Canyon Rangers, while Martin gets out his banjo for a couple of tunes), Read more ...
Veronica Lee
There's nothing you can't joke about, say all stand-up comics, but Tom Rosenthal has entered new territory with Manhood – a riveting and often raucously funny show about his circumcision. He is here, he says, “to avenge the theft of my foreskin”.Despite the face and the name, he tells us, it wasn't done for religious reasons, as the family have been non-practising Jews for four generations, although he is happily “kosher for cash”, as some acting roles, including in Friday Night Dinner, about a north London Jewish family, come his way at least in part because of the monicker. In his Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Scouting and Girlguiding may seem awfully old-fashioned to some, yet many youngsters are still keen to join the Scout movement. Be Prepared (the Scout motto) was inspired by Lucy Porter's two children joining the Beavers, its youngest iteration.Beavers lends itself to any number of filthy jokes – and, yes, Porter goes there, with a couple of good'uns – but her offspring take it very seriously, as she once did, when she was a Brownie. She remembers her Brown Owl fondly, the times they spent camping and trying to gain badges. Everyone got a Hostess badge – “basically making an old person a cup Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Ahir Shah has delivered some very good comedy by performing as a man who knows he is right about everything – that's what a political degree from Cambridge can do for you. But now the comic, rightly lauded for his previous polemicist shows with two Edinburgh Comedy Awards nominations, is casting around for something other than old ideological certainties to believe in.In Dots, which he debuted at last year's Edinburgh Fringe, Shah, 29, tells us that the past 18 months have been emotionally challenging for him, hence the search for a belief system that suits a millennial atheist of Hindu Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Simon Brodkin is best known for his cheeky Cockney wideboy character Lee Nelson, and for pranking the famous – notably handing Theresa May her P45 at the Conservative Party conference in 2017, throwing Nazi-themed balls at Donald Trump when he visited his Scottish golf course in 2016, and, in 2015, storming Kanye West's Glastonbury set and showering then Fifa president Sepp Blatter with banknotes. But now in 100% Simon Brodkin, he is touring as himself for the first time.He starts with some gently mocking interaction with the front row, and then Brodkin tells us about his home life as the Read more ...
Veronica Lee
It has been seven years since Alexei Sayle last toured, with radio shows and books detaining him elsewhere, but he's back with a bang. As he walks on stage, he immediately starts railing about the “Eton boys running the country”; instead of hailing the school for having produced 20 prime ministers, “it should be in special fucking measures.” Oh, we've missed him.The old-fashioned lefty – who invented alternative comedy, he says with a knowing look more than once in the 80-minute set – is in mourning for what might have been, he says. He clearly has a lot to get off his chest, as a referendum Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Matt Forde sets out his stall in Brexit: Pursued by a Bear from the first line: “We meet in diabolical circumstances.” These aren't good times, he says, with two major leaders in the Western world whose relationship with the truth is merely that of passing acquaintance. Add in the UK's continuing divisions over Brexit, and diabolical seems apt.We know where Forde is coming from. He's a proud Remainer and Blairite, a former adviser to the Labour Party and a vehement critic of Jeremy Corbyn – who gets it in the neck just as much as Boris Johnson does. Forde sees little difference between Read more ...
Veronica Lee
When Frank Skinner did a London run of new material last year, the show was billed as a taster of a longer touring version. I wrote then that the show whetted my appetite for more, and I'm glad to say that the updated version, Showbiz, which now has a West End residency, has delivered.Showbiz comes after Skinner has chalked up more than 30 years in comedy and is a pleasing mix of reflections on parenting, the ageing process and fame. He starts the show by cheekily using Bruce Forsyth's famous phrase “Nice to see you, to see you nice” when he walks on stage. As he says drily: “No one else is Read more ...
Veronica Lee
A mixed bill rarely pleases all comedy tastes – whether in style or content – and so it proved at the launch of the Leicester Comedy Festival, which starts next month. In a line-up of eight comics that had few star names, the best came last – but more of that later.The gala was presented by the hugely likeable Charlie Baker, a Devonian who gets great mileage from his home county, approaching middle age, being married for nearly 20 years and liking his food too much. And while there was a lot of cheeky interaction with the front row along those lines, he was always the butt of the joke; Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Andy Parsons is a comic known to like a good old rant, particularly on a political issue. But in Healing the Nation he takes a calmer, more conversational approach as he tries to do what it says on the tin in a show that he fully expected to be performing after the UK left the EU – but more of Brexit later.In trying to dig down into what it means to be British in 2019, he starts with seemingly more mundane stuff about issues that may divide us in theory but in practice don't lead to us gouging each other's eyes out, such as transgender issues or the badger cull, and how easy it is to make Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Jack Whitehall is hardly ever off the telly, appearing on gameshows or jollying around with his father, Michael, presenting the BRIT Awards and proving to be a decent actor in dramas such as Decline and Fall. But now he's gone back to live comedy with his new show Stood Up.Whitehall, as befits his stadium-tour status, goes full Hollywood with his entrance through the audience as a group of spangly-clad dancers gyrate on stage. But the material – littered with wanking and diarrhoea references and an extended fart gag – is often rather less sparkling. He delivers mostly mundane Read more ...