sat 26/04/2025

Comedy Reviews

Andrew Maxwell, Soho Theatre

Veronica Lee

When Andrew Maxwell premiered Banana Kingdom at the Edinburgh Fringe earlier this year, its title made a lot more sense. The show was a coruscating examination of what Scotland might be if the independence vote next September goes Alex Salmond's way; a tiny nation trying to go it alone at a time when the rest of Europe wants to be an even bigger - and of course happier - family.

Read more...

Jason Manford, Hammersmith Apollo

Veronica Lee

Mancunian Jason Manford is the kind of chap it would be difficult to dislike. Laidback, casually dressed, smiley and interacting with his audience in a totally unthreatening manner - it's no wonder that that demeanour, coupled with his everyman observational comedy, has made him a star.

Read more...

Bill Bailey: Qualmpeddlar, Brighton Centre, Brighton

Thomas H Green

At one point during the show Bill Bailey makes an aside about the last words of biologist JBS Haldane which were, according to the comedian, a comment about God having an “inordinate fondness for beetles". He then goes into a routine about deathbed quotations and the likelihood of coming out with a corker then having a snooze and muttering a mundanity just before you croak.

Read more...

Pajama Men, Arts Theatre

Veronica Lee

We're advised to take off our shoes, as the show will knock our socks off; it's the first of many neatly worked bits of wordplay about how good the show will be - “Is there anybody named Annette in the audience? Good, because this is comedy without Annette” - in a fantastic opening riff before Shenoah Allen and Mark Chavez get down to the proper business of the evening.

Read more...

Abandonman: Moonrock Boombox, Brighton Dome Studio Theatre

Thomas H Green

The front rows of an Abandonman gig are not a place for shy people. The core of rapping Irish comedian Rob Broderick’s act has long been to interact with the audience and turn the nuggets he gleans into ridiculous songs. For his latest show, Moonrock Boombox, which he now brings to the Brighton Comedy Festival, he turns the crowd participation into a surreal space adventure.

Read more...

Russell Brand, Hammersmith Apollo

Veronica Lee

Russell Brand, as I've written before, divides the room. Well, not the beautifully refurbished 3,000-seat Hammersmith Odeon in London, where his faithful gathered for the past two nights on his mammoth international tour, but more generally. There are those who find his – and I use the word deliberately – cocksureness irritating, or his loquacity a ridiculous affectation.

Read more...

Bryony Kimmings, Soho Theatre

Veronica Lee

Internet porn, the sexualisation of childhood and the objectification of women are so commonplace in Western society that they go mostly unmentioned and unchallenged, even in the arts.

Read more...

The Commitments, Palace Theatre

Kate Bassett

The setting is Dublin. We're talking modern-day and down-at-heel in this major new musical which has a deliberately scruffy look – with a launderette glowing in the dark and a concrete, four-storey housing block hulking upstage. The adaptation is by Roddy Doyle himself, based on his 1987 comic novel.

Read more...

Brighton Comedy Festival opening gala

Veronica Lee

Charity gigs, by their very nature, are usually jolly affairs, and Brighton Comedy Festival’s opening gala at the Dome was no exception. It had a stellar line-up, but also the advantage of being hosted by Alan Carr (the patron of The Sussex Beacon, in whose aid it was given) who was, like most of the guests, on cracking  form.

Read more...

Mark Thomas: 100 Acts of Minor Dissent, Connaught Theatre Ritz Studio, Worthing

Thomas H Green

Mark Thomas is telling us how he organised a large gay rights comedy gig outside the Russian consulate in Edinburgh (where this show was part of the Fringe), how it was a huge success, how the local police chief affably arranged for the street to be blocked off to traffic, and how the comedian Stephen K Amos raised a huge cheer of support for the cause to which one policeman on duty responded with enthusiastic and heartfelt applause.

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...

Album: Dr Robert & Matt Deighton - The Instant Garden

There’s this mod milieu, harking back to the Eighties. Weller at the forefront; Dr Robert and his Blow Monkeys; all righteously hate Thatcher;...

Philharmonia, Alsop, RFH / Levit, Abramović, QEH review - mi...

“Let the music guide your imagination” was never going to be the slogan of the Southbank Centre’s Multitudes festival. Its 13 events...

The Accountant 2 review - belated return of Ben Affleck...

It’s been nine years since Ben Affleck’s original portrayal of Christian Wolff in The Accountant, who’s not only an accountant but also a...

The Inseparables, Finborough Theatre review - uneven portrai...

The Finborough has once again performed the miracle of creating a whole world in its intimate space: this time, inter-war France, where...

The Ugly Stepsister review - gleeful Grimm revamp

Although both of the Brothers Grimm died around 1860, they still insist on getting dozens of film and TV credits in each decade of our...

Album: Self Esteem - A Complicated Woman

Given that Prioritise Pleasure was Rebecca Lucy Taylor’s (RLT) Back to Black, and that there’s been a lengthy...

Flintoff, Disney+ review - tumultuous life and times of the...

Documentaries about sports stars are now a dime a dozen, but you can only be as good as your subject matter. We know Andrew Flintoff (usually...

Personal Values, Hampstead Theatre review - deep grief that...

“They fuck you up your Mum and Dad; they may not mean to, but they do.” These lines from Philip Larkin’s 1975 poem, “This Be the Verse”, sum up...