standup comedy
Veronica Lee
Well, here’s a first; I was taken to a comic’s dressing room to be checked out before I could review his show. There was a mix-up over tickets for Jim Davidson so the front-of-house manager asked him If he would give the OK to let me in. “He wants to see you,” he said. After a few minutes of Davidson telling me he doesn’t read his reviews, how awful journalists are and how he now couldn’t do jokes about Guardian readers, lesbians and immigrants (he did all three), he took me to the bar and bought me a drink while we talked about both growing up in south London.I wish, then, I could Read more ...
Veronica Lee
The last time I saw Lee Mack live, my companion and I were literally in pain because we were laughing so much. It's perhaps unfair to expect a repeat of such a wonderful, life-affirming experience - live comedy is an ephemeral art, after all - but the comic doesn't appear to be even trying to achieve the same effect on his audience in his latest show, Hit the Road Mack, and this time we both left disappointed.His 75-minute set - including a lengthy Q&A, almost always a sign of a shortage of material - is delivered at Mack's usual breakneck speed as he paces across the stage. The comic Read more ...
Veronica Lee
It's inevitable that Paul Daniels would introduce his wife and onstage partner as “... the lovely Debbie McGee”, one of two phrases now synonymous with the magician and comic. (The other, “you'll like this, not a lot”, makes an appearance later in the evening.) However there's nothing predictable about this entertaining show of magic tricks and illusions - most of them devised by Daniels, and others associated with great names from the past that the comic, a keen student of the art of magic's history, has given a modern makeover.I saw the show at the Broadway Theatre in Barking, and Daniels Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Lee Evans is one of those comics people either love or can't stick, and the audience at the O2 Arena last night clearly fell into the former camp – not much point in them being there at 55 quid a pop otherwise. For the latter group, though, his new show, Monsters, would be further proof that the Billericay stand-up is all style and no substance.He makes his entrance with a pre-recorded song-and-dance number, burbling backstage with a large troupe of dancers and then appearing, alone, in a blaze of lights. Had he reinvented himself as a variety entertainer after his recent sojourn on the West Read more ...
Veronica Lee
John Kearns: Shtick, Voodoo Rooms ****London comic John Kearns made history at the weekend, when he became the first comic to win the main prize at the Edinburgh Comedy Awards after winning best newcomer gong, which he did last year That's some achievement.Shtick is in much the same vein as last year's show – lo-fi observational comedy about the mundanities of life given an absurdist twist. But this hour feels a lot more structured and rooted in reality, even if Kearns is again dressed in monk's tonsure wig and ill-fitting false teeth. I suspect, though, that last element of his act may soon Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Adam of the Riches, Pleasance Dome ****No one is safe at an Adam Riches show from being grabbed to take part in his frantic sketch comedy; each skit in this hour of anarchy involves audience participation, from using someone's mouth as a cocktail mixer (compete with half a banana shoved in his gob) to having gents of a certain age “strumming” each other's hair, as if a harp.The latter happens during a long, multi-layered opening sketch in which Riches is Sean Bean, “Britain's most modest actor” who implores us to support “the straight-to-video market”. Riches creates a nicely cruel overview Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Cuckooed, Traverse Theatre *****Mark Thomas's new show is in the theatre section of the Fringe brochure, but this hour, full of laughs and witty lines as it is, could easily be under the heading of comedy. Indeed, Thomas once made his living as a stand-up, even if his career has long defied any pigeonholing; professional irritant, activist and satirist are just a few job titles that could apply.Cuckooed is a masterful piece of storytelling and in an engrossing hour in which Thomas tells of how he – a master prankster – was duped by "Martin", a former comrade in Campaign Against Arms Trade. Read more ...
Hanna Weibye
In her book How To Be a Woman, Times columnist Caitlin Moran explains the difference between strip clubs and burlesque shows, and why the latter are perfectly acceptable to feminism. “In burlesque, the power rests with the person taking their clothes off, as it always should do in polite society.” My Stories, Your Emails, which opened last night in the Purcell Room at the Southbank Centre, is cabaret artist Ursula Martinez’s way of making exactly the same point. Martinez was subjected to an unwanted level of exposure (sorry...) some years ago, when a video of her clever little striptease Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Chelsea Handler may be an unknown name for many in Britain - although some will know her from her spat with Piers Morgan on his now-cancelled US chat show - but there were plenty of fans at the London Palladium to watch the actress, comic and chat show host making her UK stand-up debut, with a one-off show based on her travelogue of a trip to Africa with some friends, Uganda Be Kidding Me.In typical American stand-up style, the show was only an hour long, and she didn't deviate from the script to riff on local subjects or engage with the audience. When a fan called out for “the kayak Read more ...
Veronica Lee
She may have been performing for more than 30 years, but it takes some cojones to do your first solo show at the age of 56. Dawn French, with neither long-time partner Jennifer Saunders nor fellow cast members on stage, makes her debut with Thirty Million Minutes, an autobiographical show about the 30 million minutes (give or take) she has spent on this earth. She is doing it in the “sliver of time between the madness of my menopause and the impending madness of my dementia”.It's less a stand-up show, more a one-woman “how-to” life guide and, as directed by theatre and opera director Michael Read more ...
Jasper Rees
Nina Conti is a postmodern visitor from a previous era. Ventriloquism, the remarkable skill of vocal misdirection, was a staple of yesteryear’s mainstream. Its practitioners were odd men pedalling flaccid Saturday-night humour. And indeed she inherited her skill from a much older man. Ken Campbell, the polymathic entertainer who for a time was her lover, introduced her as a young actress to ventriloquism and devised a play called Let Me Out!!! for her which she took to the Edinburgh Fringe in 2001. When he died in 2008, Conti inherited his collection of puppets.Conti has built her act around Read more ...
Veronica Lee
My, what an entrance Jack Whitehall makes on the last night of his first arena tour. The 25-year-old - not that long ago making his Edinburgh Fringe debut - rides into the arena on a Segway with music blaring and fireworks. But he may have overreached himself, however, as a whole tier was curtained off and the remaining two were by no means full.Whitehall has made his name as a posho comic who is always wrongfooted by his accent and his upbringing in a thoroughly middle-class household, and he continues to send himself up in Jack Whitehall Gets Around to great comedic effect. With his writers Read more ...