Comedy
Best of 2019: ComedySaturday, 28 December 2019
It was a year in which we welcomed some big, big names back on stage, including Ben Elton, Clive Anderson and Jack Dee.Elton was back on sparkling form after 15 years away and, if you still need to know how bad a state we're in in the UK, suffice to... Read more... |
Adam Kay, Bloomsbury Theatre review - festive tales from the NHS coalfaceMonday, 09 December 2019
Medic-turned-comic Adam Kay had been performing for some years before he wrote his 2016 Edinburgh Fringe show Fingering a Minor at the Piano. It had a personal addendum – about why he left medicine – and was a call to arms to save the NHS. It hit a... Read more... |
Andy Parsons, Stamford Corn Exchange review - politics and the art of persuasionMonday, 02 December 2019
Andy Parsons is a comic known to like a good old rant, particularly on a political issue. But in Healing the Nation he takes a calmer, more conversational approach as he tries to do what it says on the tin in a show that he fully expected to be... Read more... |
Jack Whitehall, O2 Arena - a mix of posh and puerileTuesday, 26 November 2019
Jack Whitehall is hardly ever off the telly, appearing on gameshows or jollying around with his father, Michael, presenting the BRIT Awards and proving to be a decent actor in dramas such as Decline and Fall. But now he's gone back to live comedy... Read more... |
Ivo Graham: The Game of Life, Soho Theatre review - privilege and parentingThursday, 21 November 2019
Ivo Graham's latest show The Game of Life follows on from his previous hour, in which he talked about passing a milestone in life and the prospect of starting a family. Now he is a dad, and uses domestic detail as the starting point for some fine... Read more... |
Stewart Lee: Tornado/Snowflake, Leicester Square Theatre review - snark to SharknadoTuesday, 19 November 2019
Stewart Lee is back on the road after three years, and he comes back wonderfully refreshed and on marvellous form with this double header, Tornado/Snowflake.Tornado, the first hour, starts with Lee reading out the wrong blurb that his show Comedy... Read more... |
Jack Dee, Gordon Craig Theatre, Stevenage review - now he really is a grumpy old manMonday, 11 November 2019
Jack Dee has made a career out of being a grumpy old man, even though he started on the comedy circuit in 1986 when he was 25. Back then, his dour, seen-it-all-and-not-impressed material was wonderfully at at odds not just with his age but also the... Read more... |
Tim Minchin, Eventim Apollo review - fabulous triumph of rhyme and reasonSaturday, 09 November 2019
Is there anything Tim Minchin cannot do? He sings his own songs, plays hot bar-room piano and tells jokes about the existence of God. He composes musicals, performs in Lloyd Webber and Stoppard, writes a multimillion-dollar Hollywood cartoon which... Read more... |
Jonathan Pie, Eventim Apollo review - spoof reporter in coruscating formTuesday, 05 November 2019
Jonathan Pie is a YouTube star, a spoof television news reporter (created by actor and comic Tom Walker), who is prone to gaffes. It was one of those on-screen gaffes that led to Pie being sacked as the BBC's Westminster correspondent, footage of... Read more... |
Lou Sanders, Soho Theatre review - feminism and dodgy massagesMonday, 04 November 2019
Lou Sanders has named her latest show (which debuted at the Edinburgh Fringe) Say Hello to Your New Step-Mummy. But, as she tells us in her opening comments, she's not a mother or stepmother, and hasn't yet met a father she likes, but “by the end of... Read more... |
Ben Elton, Tunbridge Wells Assembly Hall review - magnificent return to stand-upThursday, 31 October 2019
It has been 15 years since Ben Elton, known as Motormouth in his 1980s heyday – last toured. A decade-and-a-half ago, one of the instigators of alternative comedy tells us at the top of the show, he could have still passed muster as young or cool.... Read more... |
Lenny Henry, Watford Colosseum review - enjoyable evening with genial hostMonday, 28 October 2019
It’s a long time since Lenny Henry performed live comedy, and a lot has happened in that interval. He has reinvented himself as a serious actor on stage and screen, become a spokesman for the black British experience, was knighted in 2015 and is now... Read more... |
