Comedy Reviews
Jack Docherty, Soho Theatre review - warm and witty childhood memoirThursday, 16 May 2024
For fans of a certain age the name Jack Docherty will always be associated with a very good run of chat shows on Channel 5; he was also the star of Channel 4's sketch show Absolutely and more recently the Scottish comedy Scot Squad. And now he's on the road with David Bowie & Me – Parallel Lives, a sort of memorial to lost youth but also the life-affirming joy of music. Read more... |
Rhod Gilbert, G-Live Guildford review - cancer, constipation and celebrity treatmentMonday, 13 May 2024
Rhod Gilbert is disarmingly honest about his thought process when he received his diagnosis of head and neck cancer in 2022. Read more... |
Fern Brady, Netflix Special review - sex, relationships and deathMonday, 29 April 2024
An appearance on Taskmaster and the publication of her acclaimed memoir Strong Female Character have helped propel Fern Brady into the comedy big time – and now comes the accolade of her first Netflix special, Autistic Bikini Queen, which was recorded in Bristol last year. Read more... |
Jonathan Pie, Duke of York's Theatre review - spoof political reporter takes no prisonersFriday, 19 April 2024
If you don't like sweary comics – Jonathan Pie uses the c-word liberally – then this may not be the show for you. In fact if you're a Tory, ditto, because it is 70 minutes of political invective, taking aim at a rogues' gallery of senior Conservatives present and past. Oh, and the royal family get it in the neck too. Read more... |
Spencer Jones: Making Friends, Soho Theatre review - award-winning comedian mines his post-lockdown escape to the countryMonday, 15 April 2024
Lockdown feels more like a dream now: empty streets; bright, scarless skies; pan-banging at 8pm. Did it all happen? One part of our brains insists that it did; another resists such an overthrowing of what it means to be human. Read more... |
Six Chick Flicks, Leicester Square Theatre review - funny, frenetic and feminist spoofFriday, 12 April 2024
Spoofing movies or movie genres has been done before, but Six Chick Flicks goes the extra mile. It's a funny, frenetic and feminist take-down of the kind of movies that are aimed at woman, but pretty much always written and/or directed by men. Read more... |
Pierre Novellie, Soho Theatre review - turning a heckle into a showTuesday, 02 April 2024
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. Read more... |
Catherine Bohart, Soho Theatre review - girlfriends, gossip and gay parenthoodSaturday, 09 March 2024
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. Read more... |
Miles Jupp, Cambridge Arts Theatre review - life's vicissitudes turned into laughsTuesday, 05 March 2024
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. Read more... |
Andy Parsons, Touring review - reasons to be cheerful...Wednesday, 28 February 2024
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. Read more... |
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