sun 08/12/2024

standup comedy

Edinburgh Fringe 2024 reviews: Anna Akana / Elliot Steel / Rosco McClelland

Anna Akana, Pleasance Courtyard ★★★★ If you like morbid humour, you’ve come to the right place. Asian American comic Anna Akana, a YouTube star making her Fringe debut, dives in at the deep end with It Gets Darker, which deals with, inter alia, her...

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Rahul Subramanian, Soho Theatre review - rush-hour traffic and upsetting DJs

Rahul Subramanian is a well-established comic in his native Mumbai, as evidenced by the appreciative audience of Indian expats gathered at Soho Theatre. His sellout dates in London acted as previews to his debut run at the Edinburgh Fringe, which...

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Hannah Berner, Netflix Special - sex, politics and relationships

Hannah Berner isn't a big name in stand-up (yet), but she's well known enough in the United States to have come to Netflix's attention. Her fame comes from TikTok and Instagram (where she has three million followers), her podcasts and formerly being...

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DVD/Blu-ray: Billy Connolly - Big Banana Feet

The most striking thing about the 1976 documentary (restored and re-released by the BFI) is just how polite Billy Connolly comes across as. Not that he's impolite now, but the raucous stage presence and vibrant chatshow interviewee was yet to fully...

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Clinton Baptiste, Touring review - spoof clairvoyant on great form

Clinton Baptiste – clairvoyant, medium and psychic – first appeared briefly as a character in Peter Kay’s Phoenix Nights on Channel 4. Alex Lowe has since developed him through Clinton Baptiste’s Paranormal Podcast and his live shows, and now he's...

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Rhod Gilbert, G-Live Guildford review - cancer, constipation and celebrity treatment

Rhod Gilbert is disarmingly honest about his thought process when he received his diagnosis of head and neck cancer in 2022. Following quickly from his fears about his possible imminent death, another thought flashed through his mind: “I can get a...

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Fern Brady, Netflix Special review - sex, relationships and death

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...

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Pierre Novellie, Soho Theatre review - turning a heckle into a show

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...

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Janey review - fitting punchline for a contentious comedian

The Glaswegian comedian Janey Godley, the woman who put the punch in punchline, has what she would call a “mooth” on her. It delivers pith and grit and lots of short words needing asterisks. Though possibly not for much longer, as she is in the...

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Catherine Bohart, Soho Theatre review - girlfriends, gossip and gay parenthood

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...

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Miles Jupp, Cambridge Arts Theatre review - life's vicissitudes turned into laughs

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...

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Andy Parsons, Touring review - reasons to be cheerful...

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...

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