standup comedy
Veronica Lee
Pierre Novellie opens his show by telling how his latest show, Why Are You Laughing?, came into being. It started, he says, when he was heckled at a previous show by someone shouting out: “I have Asperger's and I think you have it too.” It's an arresting start but Novellie doesn't mention it again until the final section of the show.Instead he offers us diversions by way of biography, starting with his name and upbringing, which covers a few countries across two continents, from South Africa to the Isle of Man via France and Italy. Novellie then describes some of the worst gigs he has played Read more ...
Helen Hawkins
The Glaswegian comedian Janey Godley, the woman who put the punch in punchline, has what she would call a “mooth” on her. It delivers pith and grit and lots of short words needing asterisks. Though possibly not for much longer, as she is in the throes of ovarian cancer.But that didn’t stop her doing a tour called "Not Dead Yet" last year. The title is an echo of the mordant humour she has purveyed since embarking on a comedy career in 1994, after the family pub she and her husband Sean ran was taken over by his brothers. That the family was more the Sicilian kind is typical of Godley’s CV. Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Catherine Bohart opens by telling us that we're seeing her at the beginning of a long tour – before her energy flags, she says. It's difficult to believe, however, that the Irishwoman ever performs at anything less than full throttle, and so it proves here with Again, With Feelings, a show about where her life is at the moment.She's 35 and very definitely not where she thought she would be – and certainly not where her parents might have hoped; married, with kids and owning a house. Instead Bohart is unmarried, child-free and her living arrangements... Well she fills us in on those, as she Read more ...
Veronica Lee
It takes a talented comic to turn a horrible life experience into comedy, but Miles Jupp is nothing if not talented. Add in a bit of self-depreciation, a smidgen of philosophical musing and a dollop of ruderies about bodily functions and you have On I Bang, which charts the comic's diagnosis with – and, thankfully, recovery from – a benign brain tumour.Jupp starts at the beginning: August 2021 and the Jupp family are on holiday. As with much of the comic's material, it anecdotally describes the everydayness of most people's lives, and, more specifically, the daily frustrations of being Miles Read more ...
Veronica Lee
In the middle of another age of austerity, a climate crisis and seemingly intractable international conflicts, it's cheering that a comic should tour with a show called Bafflingly Optimistic. Even more so when that comedian is Andy Parsons, whose sardonic humour – much of it about the British and Britishness – could never be described as rose-tinted.Parsons has carved out a solid career with his intelligent takes on the British political landscape and his thoughtful ruminations on where we are in the world. He knows his stuff, as evidenced here by a tour de force treatise on economics; if Read more ...
Veronica Lee
It's probably fair to say that Paul Foot is an acquired taste for some; his absurdist, poetic comedy isn't for everyone but he has built a strong and loyal following without the help of television exposure. And now in Dissolve, which debuted at the 2023 Edinburgh Fringe, his comedy takes a more personal turn as he describes the mental health problems that have dogged him for decades.Foot draws the audience in gently with some trademark whimsy though, as he describes the “disturbances” in his head and also tells a convoluted tale about a bird. Yes, it's a contrived metaphor he tells us, but he Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Jessica Fostekew is ageing fast. Actually, she's not, but having recently reached 40 she says that's how she feels. And for an hour she describes to us the signs, from despising litterbugs to gaining a political viewpoint that may not chime with her peers.Even if the comic is concerned about her “accelerated ageing”, Mettle is not a downbeat show, far from it; Fostekew has far too much natural ebullience for that, and she gives a very physical performance as she acts out some passages, not least when she expertly deconstructs one of Lizzo's songs.Mettle follows in the vein of previous shows Read more ...
Helen Hawkins
As the man himself says, he was awarded an MBE last year, despite the dirt, for services to comedy – though which services weren’t specified… On paper that isn’t a remotely risqué remark, but Skinner can milk innuendo from anything that comes out of his mouth.His new West End set, road-tested in Edinburgh last year, raises an interesting question, though: has his act got less dirty over the years, or audiences more so? My memory of past Skinner sets is of a man revelling in stories that would have made the mainstream entertainment censors twitch before he arrived in the early 1990s, but Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Tatty Macleod, whose debut show is about the differences between the French and the English, has a confession to make: she's not French. She not even half English/half French, despite having lived her life between the two countries. But she's definitely bilingual and, as befits having a foot in both cultures, is well placed to compare her dual countrymen and women.It's a very good premise for Fugue, even if for most of the show Macleod – who first came to prominance on social media – doesn't detain us with anything much deeper than “the English are like this, the French are like that”.But she Read more ...
Veronica Lee
From Covid-delayed dates (yes, that's still a thing) to emotional comebacks and assured debuts, 2023 had much to offer.Of the big TV names rediscovering the joys of live comedy were Dick and Dom on their Covid-delayed 20th-anniversary tour and shiny-floor-show specialist Michael McIntyre, but the most anticipated return was by Peter Kay, who had cancelled his mega tour in 2017 for undisclosed family reasons. The first half of his show was entertaining enough but not memorable, but he pulled it out of the bag with a second-half coup de theatre. He's touring throughout 2024 and 2025, so Read more ...
Helen Hawkins
The O2 has to be the K2 of comedy peaks: a vast ovoid drum of a place where those right at the back have to be content with watching magnified images on screens. And for a standup, there are no electric instruments to drown out the echoing acoustics.So it’s a measure of Trevor Noah’s charisma and charm that he cut right through these handicaps. It’s not the worst place he has played since his return to live comedy from hosting The Daily Show on US TV. That would be the giant tent his promoters booked for him in India, which had to have a score of air conditioning units on the go: there was no Read more ...
Veronica Lee
It takes some chutzpah to do a substantial section of a comedy show in 2023 (and touring until mid-2024) that deals with your pandemic woes, but that’s Michael McIntyre for you – he has never been short of confidence. To be fair, it’s the closing section of a solidly constructed performance of his everyman comedy, but runs the risk of being stale for those seeing him at the end of the tour.Macnificent is his first touring show in five years, during which his career as host of various shiny-floor shows – clips of which we see in a pre-show reel – has gone from strength to strength. His latest Read more ...