Soho Theatre
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.Ince races through an almost embarrassing richness of material, going down highways and byways as he talks about whatever comes into his head or is prompted by a selection of photographs that he clicks on to the onstage screen.As anyone Read more ...
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. With Arthur Smith’s latest show at Soho Theatre, however, it is his dad’s life being described here, and what a life.Syd is a funny and touching account of a life well lived. Smith bases the show on the memoir he asked his father to write, which described, among other things, his wartime experiences at El Alamein and as a prisoner of war in Colditz. He later became a policeman whose south London beat was Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Irish playwright Dylan Coburn Gray's new play won the Verity Bargate Award in 2017, and his reward is a fine production of this beautifully written account of one Dublin family over several decades. It is a light-touch epic which is partly a humorous account of ordinary people's daily lives, partly a meditation on time and partly a social history of changing attitudes to family, and to sex, over the years in Ireland. Coming to the Soho Theatre after opening at the Abbey in Dublin last month, it is a short poetic tribute to the nitty-gritty of quotidian living.Opening with a taxi driver, and a Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Penelope Skinner's monologue was a critical and audience hit at last year's Edinburgh Fringe, when its talking point found its moment. Here is Roger, a divorced father who lives in Walnut Creek and has lost his senior management job at AT&T, drifting along in middle age, when he discovers Angry Alan, his online saviour. Angry Alan says that all men's problems, including Roger's, are caused by the gyno-centric world we live in, and men should start fighting back, citing "meninism" as the route. And while they're at it, why not donate to the Men's Rights Movement that Angry Alan has Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Sheeps, the sketch comedy threesome, had never really gone away but when they performed Live and Loud Selfie Sex Harry Potter at the Edinburgh Fringe last year after a four-year absence, it was called a comeback. More a welcome reunion, as its members – Liam Williams, Daran Johnson and Alastair Roberts – had been busy doing solo projects.The show, which they have brought to the Soho Theatre for a short run, is in the same vein as their previous work – original and intelligent sketch comedy with a touch of edginess and the surreal.It’s an insightful exploration of long-lasting Read more ...
Veronica Lee
The #MeToo movement is barely a year old, but it is already prompting some clever and insightful comedy – from standalone jokes or set-pieces in several comics’ shows, or, here, a very funny but frequently discomfiting hour that delves deep into the subjects of gender, relationships and toxic masculinity.Natalie Palamides, an LA-based actress, burst on to the UK comedy scene last year with her award-winning show Laid, which examined motherhood and fertility, and much beyond. Nate initially appears to follow in the same vein: a mime to start the show, then some daft interactive comedy to Read more ...
Veronica Lee
As a former adviser to Harriet Harman and Ed Miliband – and a woman who has put her name forward to be a Labour Party candidate at a Westminster election – Ayesha Hazarika certainly knows her politics from the inside. So a show with the title Girl on Girl: The Fight For Feminism promises to be avowedly political.For the first half, this proves to be the case, with an intelligent resumé of the past year since the Harvey Weinstein allegations (which he denies) and the start of the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements, from which she manages to mine a lot of sardonic humour. But then in the second half Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Considering where Motion Sickness ends up, Ivo Graham's new show begins a million miles away, as he talks about his love of trains and his favourite train company, Chiltern – or “The Chilt”. But don't be fooled by this quotidian fare; what begins as a seemingly aimless wander down a path of nothing very much packs an emotional punch by the end of the hour.Graham has previously made much gentle humour out of his thoroughly English, middle-class existence. His USP (not quite so unique, but we'll let that pass) is that he was Eton and Oxford, rather clever but witty and self-deprecating enough Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
Underground Railroad Game is scabrous theatre – in every sense. To start with, Jennifer Kidwell and Scott R Sheppard’s two-hander is as down and dirty as anything you’ll find on the London stage at the moment, with one sex scene that’s belly laugh-out-loud funny, another which creates a silence of unease that chills the house.But it’s scabrous in the original sense, too, about a wound that doesn’t heal, the scab that has formed over it only precarious protection against the original hurt. That hurt, of course, is slavery, the legacy of which simply has not gone away for America, even a Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Flo and Joan are sisters (Nicola and Rosie Dempsey: they have borrowed their stage names from their nan and her sister) and you may have recently seen them on television doing advertisements for Nationwide. Others may know them from social media, and their runaway hit “The 2016 Song” about music fans' annus horribilis with the deaths of David Bowie and Prince. If you like either iteration, you will love this hour-long show, called The Kindness of Stranglers.Nicola, always deadpan, is at the keyboard, while the chattier Rosie adds a bit of percussion on a shaker or triangle. The chat Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Simon Evans, at 52, is far too young to be a grumpy old man, but he’s doing his best to prepare for the role, with this amusingly dyspeptic standup show at Soho Theatre about the ageing process, and how the evolutionary model appears to be moving backwards. According to his show Genius, things really aren’t getting better, at least in terms of human intellect and those who lead us.He starts by talking about the perils of ageing, about his thinning hair, senior moments and losing his spectacles. So far so predictable, but Evans has a breezy conversational style and a pleasingly original take Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Fern Brady is a young Scot with plenty of provocative opinions – on politics, society and relationships – with a delivery that can only be described as dry as a desert. It means that some pieces of information – as well as a few gags – take some time to pass through the “Is she joking?” filter. In Suffer, Fools she likes to confound audiences with two pieces of information she relates in fairly quick succession; she studied Arabic and Islamic history at Edinburgh University, and she put herself through college by performing at the city's “titty bars”.Brady neatly fillets those men who Read more ...