standup comedy
Veronica Lee
Confidence, says Helen Bauer, is a good thing. As a woman who casts herself as the leading lady in any situation, including funerals, she has oodles of it – as well as bucketloads of energy in a show that starts with a declaration of intent: “I'm going through a very confident phase and I think you should be there for me.” The audience is on board straight away, such is the force field she exerts from the moment she walks on stage.In Madam Good Tit Bauer talks about some of the things she's supposed to be as a modern woman (she has just turned 30) – including being self-aware and body- Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Although PowerPoint has been around since 1987, and several comics have incorporated it into their shows, it's Dave Gorman who remains king of the form. And here he is again in PowerPoint to the People, an amiable evening in which he, as ever, delves into the nooks and crannies of modern life that the rest of us might overlook, and charts a delicious long-form joke for the audience to enjoy long after they have seen the show.He starts by telling about his lockdown which, two years on, could seem lazy; but not with Gorman, who constructs wonderfully elaborate stories that are never hack and Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Some people learned how to make sourdough bread during the pandemic lockdown, while others discovered the joy of Zoom quizzes. Dara Ó Briain, on the other hand, wrote this brilliant show, So... Where Were We?, his most personal yet.He starts with referencing the lockdown, but what follows isn't a slew of hack observations that have been sitting on the back burner for two years. Rather, in describing the agonies of homeschooling, it's to make a subtle point about how differently Irish and British people view our shared history, or when he talks about the knee surgery he underwent last year, it Read more ...
Veronica Lee
It has been a long time since Harry Hill went on tour – 2013 – so one can assume that many of the youngsters in the multi-generational audience hadn't seen him perform live before, but were there because they know him from his deliriously funny television work, much of it available online. I hope they weren't disappointed – but I suspect, judging by the lack of laughter around me, that at least some were.Hill is an endlessly inventive comic, and he had a slew of props on stage to deliver his gags – most of them utterly daft and beyond explanation – and a lot of Pedigree Fun is brilliantly, Read more ...
Veronica Lee
It's a pleasure to see Rob Rouse back doing standup, as these days he's as well known for his acting – he plays the idiot savant Bottom in BBC's Upstart Crow, the theatre version of which is opening shortly in the West End after its 2020 premiere run was truncated by Covid.Rouse performed his latest comedy show, No Refunds, at the Gilded Balloon at the Edinburgh Fringe last month and it's now possible to catch up with it on comedy streamer NextUp, which is running Rewind the Fringe, a week in which it is showing live recordings of shows at the 2022 festival.Rouse, wearing a shirt a little on Read more ...
Veronica Lee
The Dave Edinburgh Awards went abroad this year – Australian Sam Campbell won for best show at the Fringe, while American Lara Ricote won best newcomer.Campbell won against strong competition from Seann Walsh, Liz Kingsman, Delightful Sausage, Alfie Brown, Colin Hoult and Larry Dean, while among those on the newcomer list were Leo Reich and Josh Jones. Those who missed the Queenslander's ultra-silly and goofy hour, Comedy Show, at the festival may be waiting a while to see it as he has yet to announce any more UK dates, but Ricote has just announced she is appearing at Soho Theatre in London Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Joseph Parsons, The Mash House ★★★Joseph Parsons is wearing a Bristol City shirt for Equaliser, which is about being a gay man who loves football. Actually, he loves most sports – he's the kind of guy who will set his alarm to watch curling live at the Winter Olympics on the other side of the world – but football is his game and City are his team. The trouble is that for a big chunk of his life, gay men have often felt unwelcome in football (and, still, no gay Premiership footballer has come out).This is a coming-out story of sorts, as Parsons describes his closeted teenage years and his Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Jake Lambert, Pleasance Courtyard ★★★★Jake Lambert warms up the audience by describing how much he enjoyed lockdown (despite a relationship break-up), and he suspects that football players enjoyed playing for a season without spectators too – “Whose job wouldn't be improved by removing thousands of people calling you a wanker?”But the pandemic is not the thrust of Liminal, merely the way into its main theme. Lambert has epilepsy (a subject he has addressed before in his comedy), and tells a touching story – punctuated by big laughs – about how he came to be diagnosed, and the help Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Hal Cruttenden, Pleasance Courtyard ★★★★ Hal Cruttenden is the kind of observational comic who talks about his home life a lot, so when his wife announced recently that their marriage was over it could have meant a quick swerve away from the personal stuff. But as it's an amicable break (they're still living in the same house) he can talk about it on stage.In It's Best You Hear It From Me Cruttenden details the pitfalls of long marriages, advancing middle age and now the awful prospect of being back on the dating scene. He poses the important questions of who gets the house, who Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Randy Feltface, Assembly George Square ★★★★ Despite being made of felt, with a gash for a mouth and two googly eyes, Randy Feltface (always seen in the vicinity of Heath McIvor) can, astonishingly, appear to emote. Of course, he can't – we are feeling the emotions – but in response to what Randy is saying, whether it's serious or silly. It's an astonishing trick to pull off, and McIvor does it brilliantly.Randy's latest outing, Alien of Extraordinary Ability, tackles some big subjects, not least what humans are doing to our planet, and how we have wasted the chance to reset that the Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Ania Magliano, Pleasance Courtyard ★★★★Ania Magliano is debuting at the Fringe with Absolutely No Worries If Not, an hour that explores her sexual awakening. She has only recently realised she's bisexual, which means she still likes straight culture. “I think All Bar One is a great space,” she say drily.Magliano, an instantly likeable presence on stage, used to work in Lush – cue some cruel but very funny descriptions of those who work and shop there – and talks about her time at an all-girls boarding school. She describes the two kinds of girl it produces – those who had eating Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Sara Barron, Pleasance Courtyard ★★★★Sara Barron is known for her no-holds-barred comedy style – or “American energy” as another mum at her son’s school calls it – but in her fast-paced new show she pushes even further, addressing as she does her fertility treatment and a miscarriage.But Hard Feelings is not sad, far from from it. It is an hour of often raucous comedy, telling it like it is, whether that’s about the reality of sex in a long-term marriage, dirty bums or frenemies.She warms up the audience – Barron does great crowd work – with some observational shtick Read more ...