Comedy Reviews
Mrs Brown Rides Again, Hammersmith ApolloFriday, 15 June 2012
There's a great PhD to be written about why comics are so keen to dress as old biddies, from Arthur Lucan and Benny Hill to Dick Emery and Les Dawson, by way of any number of panto dames to the most noble of them all, Dame Edna Everage. To this esteemed list of comics should be added Brendan O'Carroll, whose Agnes Brown is an astonishing creation, a foul-mouthed Dublin widow whose passions in life are bingo and poking her nose into her children's lives. Read more... |
Dara O Briain, The Playhouse, EdinburghFriday, 25 May 2012
The fact that the latest in a long line of Dara O Briain DVDs is already on sale on Amazon is pretty impressive considering that he hasn’t recorded it yet. I know this because the second show of his four-night run at the Playhouse happened to be the one immediately before the gig being filmed for a timely pre-Christmas release. If it captures the warmth and verve of last night’s show it might even turn out to be one of those rare comedy DVDs worth buying. Read more... |
Tom Allen's Society, Udderbelly Festival LondonTuesday, 22 May 2012
The purple cow has taken up its summer residency on the South Bank in London before making the journey to the Edinburgh Fringe in August. As ever, the line-up of performers is extensive: last night comic Tom Allen performed his chat show with the help of a few comedy guests. Read more... |
Stewart Francis, TouringSaturday, 05 May 2012
Before he started making regular appearances on BBC Two's Mock the Week, Stewart Francis was an accomplished comic of some years' standing on the circuit - and that experience shows in his extensive UK tour, Outstanding in His Field, where he proves to be a slick performer whose set is delivered with exquisite timing. Read more... |
Paul Merton, TouringWednesday, 02 May 2012
Paul Merton is a very funny man, as anybody who watches Have I Got New For You will know. But fans of that programme will find his latest live show, billed as his return to stand-up, which he started doing 30 years ago, a very different experience. First thing to report is that it's not really stand-up, more an autobiographical run-through of his life, using jokes, songs and sketches, aided by some chums from his improv group Paul Merton's Strolling Players. Read more... |
Benet Brandreth, Soho TheatreFriday, 30 March 2012
Storytelling, they say, is an almost lost art. Well, not while Benet Brandreth is around, it's not. Brandreth, Sandhurst graduate and a lawyer by day, studied Philosophy at Cambridge and has packed rather a lot into his life, real or imagined. He weaves a fantastical tale charting his story from graduation to last year - when, not for the first time, he saved the life of a member of the royal family. Read more... |
Alex Horne, Soho TheatreWednesday, 14 March 2012
In Seven Years in the Bathroom, which he premiered at last year's Edinburgh Fringe, Alex Horne attempts to shoehorn the average man's 79-year lifespan - in which he says a remarkable seven years is spent in the bathroom - into an hour's comedy. It's certainly high-concept, and there's an awful lot of comedy to be mined from the subject. Read more... |
Jackie Mason, Wyndhams TheatreMonday, 05 March 2012
There was a time when Jackie Mason was the pre-eminent New York Jewish comedian. He had started his career in those postwar Catskills hotels catering to vacationing Jewish families from New York City, which became known as the Borscht Belt. The circuit spawned a list of talents including Mel Brooks, Woody Allen and Joan Rivers, among many, many more, and it was a phenomenon that prompted the film Dirty Dancing. Read more... |
Watson & Oliver, BBC TwoTuesday, 21 February 2012
Lorna Watson and Ingrid Oliver, purely by dint of being female, have a burden of expectation before they even open their mouths, as the ghosts of French and Saunders stalk the corridors of the BBC. It's horribly unfair to saddle the newcomers with that burden of course, but, given the dearth of female comics on television, it's perhaps inevitable. Read more... |
Adam Riches, Soho TheatreSunday, 19 February 2012
The journey from the Edinburgh Fringe to a UK tour or London residency can be a fraught one. What works in the context of the world's biggest and best arts festival, where even in established venues there's often a whiff of “let's do the show right here!” shambolism, can, in the confines of a professional theatre space, be met with irritation rather than affection. Read more... |
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