standup comedy
Veronica Lee
Rose Matafeo knows how to make an entrance, as she enters the stage with a choreographed dance. She's useless at ending things, she says – shows, relationships – so she's going to start On and On and On with something memorable. She doesn't need to, as this affable Kiwi has the audience hooked straight away in her first stand-up since her success with romcom Starstruck, 2018's Horndog and her appearance in 2019 edition of Taskmaster.Starstruck – which she also co-wrote and starred in – was a funny and honest account of twentysomething relationships. But now, at 32, Matafeo is doing Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Hard to imagine it now, but just a few years ago Ellen DeGeneres was one of America’s biggest daytime TV stars; her chatshow The Ellen DeGeneres Show attracted Hollywood stars and politicians and she was paid millions for it. But then, in 2022, it was cancelled amid accusations there was a toxic atmosphere on set created by senior members of her team. This is the context of For Your Approval, which the comic says is her last stand-up appearance.The Netflix Special starts with a film giving a brief overview of DeGeneres’ career before she comes on stage to a standing ovation, the first of the Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Before Joe Rogan gained fame for his podcast The Joe Rogan Experience, he has been, variously, a comic, presenter of goofball television shows and an analyst of UTC bouts. Now with his Netflix Special he’s returning to his first occupation, as a stand-up. It was recorded at the Majestic Theatre in San Antonio, Texas.Rogan, as his fans will know, is not short of opinions (with his politics on the right of the spectrum in the United States) and can turn a smart phrase. But in Burn the Boats he muses on the quotidian rather than the weighty political subjects often discussed in his Read more ...
Veronica Lee
You may spend some of Adam Sandler's new Netflix Special wondering what's going on. But if you're a fan of his alma mater, Saturday Night Live, you'll guess that the clearly staged first few minutes act as a homage to its “cold opening”, as we see Sandler arrive at the venue, walk through the backstage mayhem of greeters, fans and hangers-on, and then take the stage.In Love You, Sandler teams up again with Josh Safdie, who co-directed him in Uncut Gems, a departure for Sandler the actor from his previous straight-up comedy or geek roles; here the departure is from traditional standup, as the Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Amy Gledhill won the Don and Eleanor Taffner Best Comedy Show, the main award at the 2024 Edinburgh Comedy Awards for Make Me Look Fit on the Poster. The show has variously been described as “bawdy comedy delivered with a blush”, “a funny woman rightly confident of her comedy talents” and “a brilliant physical comedian”.Accepting her award, Gledhill said: “This is insane. I saw the other people on this list and I thought, 'I don't have to write a script!'”Gledhill originally came to Edinburgh fame as one half of the sketch duo The Delightful Sausage, with Chris Cantrill, who was also Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Grace Mulvey, Assembly Roxy ★★★ Grace Mulvey has been single for five years, she tells us at the top of the show, a matter of some disappointment to her mother back in Dublin. Even moving to London two years ago didn't change her dating status, despite the best efforts of her flatmates. But then, they're lesbians and she's straight, so maybe their advice isn't quite hitting the spot.Mulvey's debut show, Tall Baby, covers a lot of territory, but fortunately she talks at a million miles an hour: she mentions her previous career in tech, dealing with the British public in a deadend job to Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Stevie Martin, Monkey Barrel ★★★ Stevie Martin is part of the generation of comics for whom the internet is a natural home; she has racked up tens of millions of views for her work online, where she had to strut her stuff when the world went into lockdown.But having debuted as a solo comic in 2018 (after being one-third of the talented sketch group Massive Dad) she wants the thrill – and the exertion – of appearing before a live audience again, she says, so here is Clout, a tightly constructed hour of comedy full of ideas, not all of which land.Recently acquired habits die hard; Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Chris Grace, Assembly George Square ★★★★ How do you produce laughs out of grief and loss? Well Chris Grace does, and then some, in Sardines (A Comedy About Death). The American actor, well known to Fringe regulars as a member of improv group Baby Wants Candy, structures the show almost as a thought experiment; can you enjoy something when you know how it's going to end? And does art actually help us deal with a complex issue such as bereavement?In a clever conceit, he mimes drawing an oblong shape that he says is a screen, and then mimes a shape that he says is a projector – “They Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Emma Sidi Is Sue Gray Pleasance Courtyard ★★★★I have no idea what Sue Gray - the former senior civil servant who is now The Prime Minister’s right-hand woman - sounds like, but I’m guessing not someone who has stepped straight out of The Only Way Is Essex.Hilariously, and to great effect, that is character comic Emma Sidi’s presentation of a woman finding herself at the heart of government without really knowing why.“The last four years have been mental!” says “Sue Gray” as she introduces herself - Sue Gray refers to herself in the third person frequently, and always with her full name Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Eric Rushton, Monkey Barrel @ The Hive ★★★★ Eric Rushton tells us he has enough cash on him to return the price of one person’s ticket if they don’t like what’s about to follow. No one takes up the offer, although I suspect a few in the audience may have taken a few minutes to tune into his individual style of comedy.Essentially Real One is a shaggy dog story that uses a surreal hook – a vivid dream the comic had about the actress Margot Robbie – to examine regrets, embarrassment and a life that’s yet to take off.Rushton intersperses his account of that dream – in which he managed to Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Anna Akana, Pleasance Courtyard ★★★★ If you like morbid humour, you’ve come to the right place. Asian American comic Anna Akana, a YouTube star making her Fringe debut, dives in at the deep end with It Gets Darker, which deals with, inter alia, her sister’s suicide.But before we get there, Akana sets the scene. She has returned to comedy after several years away, having left the scene because she was threatened by a long-term stalker who the LAPD told her they couldn’t arrest until he did something. As awful as it was, she acknowledges that having a stalker is great material for a comic. “My Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Rahul Subramanian is a well-established comic in his native Mumbai, as evidenced by the appreciative audience of Indian expats gathered at Soho Theatre. His sellout dates in London acted as previews to his debut run at the Edinburgh Fringe, which starts on 2 August.Subramanian is one of several South Asian comics Soho Theatre has introduced to London and Edinburgh comedy fans, and it's a mutually productive arrangement; last year, Urooj Ashfaq, another star of the Mumbai standup scene whom the theatre promoted in the UK, made her Fringe debut and walked away with the best newcomer gong at the Read more ...