Comedy Reviews

Sarah Millican, Hammersmith Apollo

Jasper Rees Saturday, 09 November 2013

Sarah Millican’s career blossomed on the back of a divorce. Her husband upped sticks after seven years of marriage when she was 29. The rage and sorrow catapulted an innately funny office worker into a second career. For her new show, entitled Home Bird, the story has moved on and her subject is buying a home and installing her boyfriend. Only he’s not happy with the arrangements in the garden. The shed, he complains, is not suitable for self-abuse.

Bridget Christie, Soho Theatre

Veronica Lee Friday, 08 November 2013

Most years at the Fringe, there's considerable division over the winner of the Edinburgh Comedy Award, but not in 2013 when Bridget Christie won for A Bic For Her, a show that expertly fillets everyday sexism and misogyny. Even those who remarked that they never knew feminism could be funny - idiots all, of course - acknowledged the show is an hour of superbly crafted comedy.

Andrew Maxwell, Soho Theatre

Veronica Lee Saturday, 02 November 2013

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.

Jason Manford, Hammersmith Apollo

Veronica Lee Thursday, 31 October 2013

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.

Bill Bailey: Qualmpeddlar, Brighton Centre, Brighton

Thomas H Green Friday, 25 October 2013

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.

Pajama Men, Arts Theatre

Veronica Lee Saturday, 19 October 2013

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.

Abandonman: Moonrock Boombox, Brighton Dome Studio Theatre

Thomas H Green Friday, 18 October 2013

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.

Russell Brand, Hammersmith Apollo

Veronica Lee Wednesday, 16 October 2013

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.

Bryony Kimmings, Soho Theatre

Veronica Lee Friday, 11 October 2013

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.

The Commitments, Palace Theatre

Kate Bassett Wednesday, 09 October 2013

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.