standup comedy
Veronica Lee
Recovery from alcoholism is now standard fare in stand-up comedy; so too are living with ADHD, OCD, depression and anxiety. It's the last of those conditions, combined with becoming sober, that 2017 Edinburgh Comedy Award winner John Robins has fashioned into a striking and affecting show, Howl, which I saw at the Gulbenkian Theatre in Canterbury.“Issues” don't always lend themselves to sparkling comedy, but Robins weaves an involving tale which begins, innocuously enough, with his venture to buy a slotted spoon. As he details precise dimensions of said utensil, descriptions of the Read more ...
Veronica Lee
In 2017, Bolton comic Peter Kay had to cancel his planned tour because of “family circumstances”. But then, when he announced last year that he was back in the saddle, the tickets for Better Late Than Never sold like the proverbial. Well into what has mushroomed into a mega tour continuing until 2025, I caught him at the O2 Arena.While it's good to have him back, much of the first half could have been written for any of Kay's previous tours since he was nominated for best show in the 1998 Perrier Awards (now the Edinburgh Comedy Awards) as he riffs on one of his mainstays, advertising jingles Read more ...
Veronica Lee
The show begins before the audience troops into the theatre; the walls of the staircase leading to it are plastered with images of Kate Berlant, its writer and performer; we file past her (sitting by the doorway with a sign saying “Ignore me”) and a long word-salad statement by her; and then, before she appears, we watch a film on the onstage screen in which – in arty black-and-white, quoting Stanislavsky and Oscar Wilde – Berlant preens and pouts and Looks Very Serious.It nicely sets up Kate Berlant Is KATE, her one-woman show (already a hit off-Broadway), in which the American stand-up and Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Ahir Shah, Monkey BarrelAhir Shah is a fast talker, but then in Ends – which deservedly won best show in the Edinburgh Comedy Awards – he has a lot to say. It's a show about multiculturalism, family, identity, fitting in, and encompasses modern history on two continents, so he has a lot to pack in.He starts, more prosaically, by talking about how he got into this comedy lark because, as three generations of his family sat down together to watch Goodness Gracious Me in 1998, it was the first time he had heard his grandparents properly laugh out loud.Shah's family – specifically his late Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Janine Harouni, Pleasance Courtyard ★★★★Names and identity feature heavily in Janine Harouni’s new show, Man’oushe, itself titled about where her family nickname comes from. Heavily pregnant (the reason why she is ending the show’s Edinburgh run tonight), Harouni tells us her baby’s origin story, and it’s by turns moving and hilarious, as she brings us up to speed with her life since we last saw her at the Fringe in 2019, when she was nominated for best newcomer.Harouni talks about her mixed feelings about becoming a mother, in part formed by her relationship with her parents. And, as an Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Olga Koch Monkey Barrel ★★★★Olga Koch's opening segment deals with bisexuality and her first threesome in some decidedly evocative language. That's what turning 30 does for you, she suggests – allowing her to engage in a more adventurous attitude to life and a more sex-positive one to relationships.Prawn Cocktail is her vivid account of her sort-of adult gap year during which she not only pushed her sexual boundaries but also gained a master's degree in parasocial relationships – or the “reply guys” who hilariously think they have a real connection with the famous women they engage with Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Darran Griffiths, Pleasance Courtyard ★★★★Lots of comics talk about sex in their shows but few do so with such charm and purpose as Darran Griffiths with Inconceivable, his debut hour.The purpose is that it's about the struggle Griffiths and his wife went through to conceive their children. The charm is that Griffiths is very upfront about who of them bore the greater burden. “We didn't give birth. We didn't do shit,” he says at the top of the show. “We were in the same room, in different places.” It's not the first time he's satisfyingly self-deprecating.So we know the result of their Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Rob Auton, Assembly @Roxy ★★★★ Rob Auton has previously done shows around a theme – the colour yellow, hair, the sky, to name a few - because, he says, he can become a little bit obsessed with a subject. Now, though, he wants to do his most personal show yet, hence The Rob Auton Show.It’s a lovely hour of storytelling as he decribes how he came to this point in his life. He talks about his childhood, his early career as a graphic artist, his swerve into comedy, his marriage last year. It’s gentle and heartfelt but packs some very big laughs.Auton, a laidback performer, isn’t a stand-up Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Amos Gill Gilded Balloon ★★★★Amos Gill used to be a human rights lawyer and describes himself as a lefty progressive. But some of his views – or at least those delivered here to great comedic effect – might suggest otherwise. In his hour of take-no-prisoners comedy in In Pursuit of Happy (ish), the Australian holds forth on mental health, euthanasia, marriage and sex – and bits of it are not for the faint-hearted.Gill is an energetic presence on stage and also an equal-opportunities offender, and starts by winding up the locals in the crowd to talk about what he sees as Scotland’s Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Krystal Evans, Monkey Barrel @The Hive ★★★★American comic Krystal Evans (now living in the UK) tells us she has a “resting sarcastic voice” but after five minutes in her company you realise she’s just naturally, hootingly funny. Which is a good thing because Krystal Evans: The Hottest Girl at Burn Camp describes a horrific childhood incident in which her younger sister died, and a less funny comic might not be able to pull it off.Evans begins her tale by describing her chaotic upbringing. Her family lived in a mobile home in Washington State – “Nirvana, rain and heroin, just like Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Ania Magliano, Pleasance Courtyard ★★★ When Ania Magliano made her Fringe debut last year, her show was rightly garlanded with four- and five-star reviews. She sounded like an original voice on the comedy scene and this year her show, I Can’t Believe You’ve Done This, sold out its entire run before the festival opened.An hour that is ostensibly about the comic’s worst haircut doesn’t sound enthralling, but of course it works both as metaphor about overcoming adversity and a structure for the comedy as Magliano talks about her recovery from a sexual assault.She uses the hairdresser’s lack of Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Ed Byrne Assembly Rooms ★★★★★ Ed Byrne has frequently referenced his loved ones in previous shows but this new hour is one he would never wanted to have written, as it was prompted by the death of his younger brother, Paul, last year. Its title, Tragedy Plus Time, is taken from an aphorism attributed to Mark Twain about the definition of humour.But this is no misery memoir, far from it – Byrne is too talented a comic for that, and it’s a gag-filled hour, albeit one that deals with death and its impact. Byrne also poses some questions about the nature of sibling love and rivalry, and the Read more ...