fri 23/05/2025

Comedy Reviews

Edinburgh Fringe 2019 reviews: Joanne McNally/ The Crown Dual/ Maisie Adam/ James McNicholas/ Titania McGrath

Veronica Lee

Joanne McNally Assembly George Square 

The area Joanne McNally treads (actually stomps might be a better word, given her fantastically high-energy performance) in The Prosecco Express is not new – she’s 36 and wondering if she should settle down and have children, or would that mean settling for less – but the Irish comic makes it her own.

Read more...

Edinburgh Fringe 2019 reviews: Clive Anderson / Goodbear

Veronica Lee

Clive Anderson Assembly George Square ****

Read more...

Edinburgh Fringe 2019 reviews: Nick Helm/ Just These Please/ Anna Drezen

Veronica Lee

Nick Helm Pleasance Dome ****

What a pleasure it is that Nick Helm has returned to the Fringe after six years away after appearing in television comedies Uncle and The Reluctant Landlord.

Read more...

Edinburgh Fringe 2019 reviews: Josie Long / Snort / Sara Barron

Veronica Lee

Josie Long The Stand ★★★★

It has been five years since Josie Long performed a full run at the Fringe, and in the meantime she has experienced a momentous event. 

Read more...

Edinburgh Fringe 2019 reviews: Ciaran Dowd/ Tom Parry/ Suzi Ruffell, Pleasance Courtyard

Veronica Lee

 

Ciaran Dowd ***

Read more...

Robin Ince, Soho Theatre review - fun among the chaos

Veronica Lee

How to describe a show that by Robin Ince’s own admission doesn’t have a narrative strand, and for which he has written several pages of notes that he gets through only a small section of? Well here goes: he calls the show a mash-up of the two cultures of art and science in a celebration of the human mind, and Chaos of Delight is very well named.

Read more...

Arthur Smith, Soho Theatre review - charming tribute to his father

Veronica Lee

There has been a trend in stand-up comedy in recent years for intensely personal shows, confessional even, but it’s the comic’s life that is usually the one being examined for comedic effect.

Read more...

Frank Skinner, Leicester Square Theatre - mixing some acid with the charm

Veronica Lee

Frank Skinner walks onstage without introduction and a man in the audience gives him a friendly heckle by way of greeting. Skinner is straight on it, engaging him in a brief conversation; his responses are amiable enough but have a few barbs too.

Read more...

Emily Atack, Clapham Grand review - I'm a Celebrity... star's first solo show

Veronica Lee

Most people know Emily Atack from The Inbetweeners, where she played Charlotte, the object of Will's desire. More recently, she found new fans as the runner-up on 2018's I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here! Now she is performing in her first solo comedy show, Talk Thirty to Me.

Read more...

Al Murray as the Pub Landlord, Embassy Theatre Skegness review - comic pulls his punches

Veronica Lee

Al Murray's Pub Landlord character has been around since the mid-1990s. As such, it's a wonder that Murray has managed to reinvent the embittered, xenophobic loudmouth so many times, but he has – and the EU referendum in 2016 should have, you may have thought, given the character new life or killed him off altogether.

Read more...

Pages

 

latest in today

Help to give theartsdesk a future!

It all started on 09/09/09. That memorable date, September 9 2009, marked the debut of theartsdesk.com.

It followed some...

The Phoenician Scheme review - further adventures in the idi...

It’s not what he says, it’s the way he says it. Few filmmakers have bent the term “auteur” to their own ends more boldly than...

Album: Ammar 808 - Club Tounsi

Ammar 808 is the high octane vehicle for the Tunisian-born producer Sofyann Ben Youssef, now based in Denmark. His first album Maghreb United...

Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning review - can this...

Whether it is or isn’t the final Mission: Impossible film, there’s a distinct fin-de-siècle feel about this eighth instalment, and not...

Code of Silence, ITVX review - inventively presented reality...

In the guided tour of Britain’s cathedral cities that is the primetime TV...

The Crucible, Shakespeare's Globe review - stirring acc...

A society ruled by hysteria. Lurid lies that carry more currency than reality. There’s no shortage of reasons that...

Pixies, O2 Academy, Birmingham review - indie veterans pack...

Pixies might just be the ultimate Radio 6 Dad band. They’ve been around (on-and-off) for around 40 years; they’ve got a fine back catalogue of...

Album: Sports Team - Boys These Days

How do you solve a problem like Sports Team? Taking them at face value, they’re a living metaphor for the slow music biz relegation of the working...

Pygmalion, Early Opera Company, Curnyn, Middle Temple Hall r...

With French baroque opera all but banished from the UK’s major...

Album: Stereolab - Instant Holograms on Metal Film

Stereolab always walked a knife edge between deadly serious and dead silly. Their sound was constructed around the sort of reference points –...