Bruce Dessau
Bio
Bruce specialises in music, TV and comedy. He writes for The London Evening Standard and is the author of biographies of numerous major figures, including George Michael and Rowan Atkinson. His latest book is Beyond A Joke: Inside The Dark World of Stand-Up Comedy (Random House). He is also the editor of comedy website beyondthejoke.co.uk
Articles By Bruce Dessau
latest in today
Peter Pan Goes Wrong, Lyric Theatre review - adult panto del...
Mischief Theatre set themselves a big challenge when they evolved their brand of knowing slapstick. And not just about how to destroy...
Queendom review - an LGBTQ+ performance artist takes to the...
It takes a brave or a foolhardy person to walk the streets wearing almost nothing but barbed wire and platform shoes, especially when the occasion...
Album: Ghost Woman - Hindsight Is 50/50
Ghost Woman’s 2022 self-titled album and this January’s swift follow-up Anne, If were both fairly laidback and spaced out affairs, with...
The House of Bernarda Alba, Lyttleton Theatre review - dazzl...
Rebecca Frecknall opened 2023 with a youthful, visceral, and brutal Streetcar Named Desire at The Almeida; she ends it with...
Album: Trevor Horn - Echoes: Ancient & Modern
A deathless trend in pop is taking great songs, slowing them down, doing orchestral versions, or rendering them raw acoustic. This, ostensibly,...
Odyssey: A Heroic Pantomime, Charles Court Opera, Jermyn Str...
This is the show that launched a thousand puns, mostly ancient-Greek-oriented, and just as many corny rhymes, all delivered with high energy and...
Grosvenor, Park, Ridout, Soltani, Wigmore Hall review - cham...
Frank Bridge’s Phantasie Piano Quartet was astutely described by his student Benjamin Britten as “Brahms tempered with Fauré”, so it made...
Album: Peter Gabriel - I/O
Some 28 years in gestation, Peter Gabriel’s eighth studio album of wholly original songs – his first since 2002’s Up...
A Christmas Carol, The Old Vic review - older, wiser, and ye...
Familiarity has bred something quite fantastic with the Old Vic Christmas Carol, which is back for a seventh season and merits ringing...
Boat Story, BBC One review - once upon a time in Yorkshire
It was as long ago as January last year that the prolific Williams brothers,...