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Can you do comedy about rape? Natalie Palamides thinks so

July 22, 2018TheGuardian

The LA comic, who won best newcomer at last year’s Edinburgh fringe, has tested her electric new material on American audiences. But how will Nate – her ‘douchebag’ male alter ego – go down in Britain?

We should know, after last year, to expect the unexpected from Natalie Palamides. Who could have foreseen that the buzziest comedy in 2017 would come from an unknown LA actor making performance art about fertility, parental anxiety and eggs? But so it proved. In a blizzard of yolk and shattered shells, her show Laid wowed Edinburgh and poached the Comedy award for best newcomer. So we should have been braced for more surprises. But this? A cross-dressing comedy show for the #MeToo era that workshops, with audience participation, the idea of consent?

The show is called Nate, after a male character the 28-year-old has played since college. “He does come off as a douchebag, as we say in America,” says Palamides, speaking by phone from Los Angeles, where she has been developing the show with her director, the cult clown and previous Edinburgh Comedy award champ Doctor Brown. “At first you think Nate’s a jerk,” she adds. “But people warm to him because he’s sweet – a sweet lovable idiot.”

All the fun of the fringe: the best comedy to see in Edinburgh, part two

July 22, 2018TheGuardian

The tricky subjects of identity politics, consent and mental health make for electric shows

• The best comedy to see in Edinburgh, part one

“Unless you can say in one media-friendly soundbite exactly what it is that you’re talking about and exactly what it is that you stand for, people lose interest.”

All the fun of the fringe: the best comedy to see in Edinburgh, part one

July 22, 2018TheGuardian

A drag queen who impersonates Nicola Sturgeon, Gujurati home life and a truly terrible novelist… we meet the comics behind the hottest Edinburgh festival shows

• The best comedy to see in Edinburgh, part two

Some of the most biting political satire at this year’s Edinburgh festival won’t come from ranting, right-on standups in sweaty basement venues. It will come from a 6ft 2in drag queen who occasionally bursts into Steps numbers.

Tom Ward: ‘Shooting Stars is the funniest TV show – Vic and Bob are gods’

July 20, 2018TheGuardian

The standup and 2017 Chortle best newcomer award winner on the things that make him laugh the mostCardinal Burns as Dean and Murf, playing two drug casualties dining out on their minor dance hit from 1993. I actually dropped to my knees laughing. Conti…

Paul Mayhew-Archer: ‘I want to show people with Parkinson’s can do comedy

July 20, 2018TheGuardian

The writer of The Vicar of Dibley and Mrs Brown’s Boys discusses the funny side of living with the illness and his new Edinburgh show, Incurable Optimist

“Good news,” the comedy writer Paul Mayhew-Archer likes to say of the moment he learned he had Parkinson’s disease. “The neurologist said I could expect five good years.” There is, of course, some bad news too. “The diagnosis was seven years ago.” “You find it quite difficult to smile, don’t you?” the neurologist said to him at that fateful meeting. “Well, that could be because you just told me I’ve got Parkinson’s,” Mayhew-Archer replied.

It’s tempting to fill this entire article with Mayhew-Archer’s gags about his Parkinson’s. The fact that it takes him so long to fumble for his wallet that he never has to pay for a drink in a pub. Or the irritation that all his limbs get stiffer except for the one he’d occasionally like to get stiff. Immediately after his diagnosis, he decided he could either laugh or cry about Parkinson’s. He chose to laugh, and is now taking the one-man show he’s developed around the disease to the Edinburgh festival.

I have more difficulty getting out of the bath. On the other hand, I quite like being in the bath

End of the Pier review – Les Dennis plays a washed-up standup in Blackpool comedy

July 17, 2018TheGuardian

Park theatre, London
The politics of comedy is examined through the prism of faltering father and son comedians played by Les Dennis and Blake Harrison

‘I realised why I never liked jokes,” says a character in Danny Robins’s new play, channelling comedian-of-the-moment Hannah Gadsby. “It’s because they’re almost always based on a lie.” So should standups make people laugh, or tell their truth? And what if the standup in question – a TV superstar, loved by millions – is a closet bigot? That’s the stuff of End of the Pier, an argument about comedy that flares occasionally into dramatic life.

It begins in the Blackpool home of ex-comic Bobby (rumpled Les Dennis), whose career was destroyed when a Guardian journalist, no less, shopped him for telling racist jokes. Today, he’s visited by his son Michael (The Inbetweeners’ Blake Harrison), a primetime comedy star now fretting over the career-threatening fallout from a stag night gone awry. Enter Michael’s snooty wife Jenna (Tala Gouveia), and the stage is set for schematic debates about class, comedy and PC, and plenty of improbable exposition, as family members spout backstory at one another as if they’ve never met before.

The Muppets Take the O2 review – Kermit quips with Kylie in a riot of silliness

July 15, 2018TheGuardian

O2 Arena, London
The anarchic comedy crew’s first ever UK date offers warmth, wit and mischief in an irresistible cavalcade of songs, skits and incongruous celebs

The Muppets long since conquered TV and the movies, and there’s been talk of a stage musical since Disney bought the franchise more than a decade ago. It hasn’t materialised – but last autumn, the furry ensemble tipped up at the Hollywood Bowl with this variety spectacular, a scaled-up version of the 70s TV show that made their name. To those of us who grew up with The Muppet Show, it offers a dreamy hit of nostalgia. To anyone else, it must still be a winning – if sometimes arbitrary – cavalcade of songs, skits and incongruous celebs, all marshalled by Jim Henson’s endearingly anarchic sock-puppet-and-stuffed-toy crew.

The conceit is that the Muppets have arrived with 30 minutes of material, only to discover that the O2 expects two hours-plus. “So just … stre-e-e-etch,” stage manager Scooter instructs MC Kermit the Frog – offering a hostage to fortune should what follow feel thinly spread. Sometimes, it does. There are several non-sequitur sketches – such as the skulls and ghouls singing “The Boo Danube” – whose absence few would regret. But they add to the show’s bricolage character. Nothing hangs around too long; the show never drags.

The Muppets Take the O2 review – Kermit quips with Kylie in a riot of silliness

July 15, 2018TheGuardian

O2 Arena, London
The anarchic comedy crew’s first ever UK date offers warmth, wit and mischief in an irresistible cavalcade of songs, skits and incongruous celebs

The Muppets long since conquered TV and the movies, and there’s been talk of a stage musical since Disney bought the franchise more than a decade ago. It hasn’t materialised – but last autumn, the furry ensemble tipped up at the Hollywood Bowl with this variety spectacular, a scaled-up version of the 70s TV show that made their name. To those of us who grew up with The Muppet Show, it offers a dreamy hit of nostalgia. To anyone else, it must still be a winning – if sometimes arbitrary – cavalcade of songs, skits and incongruous celebs, all marshalled by Jim Henson’s endearingly anarchic sock-puppet-and-stuffed-toy crew.

The conceit is that the Muppets have arrived with 30 minutes of material, only to discover that the O2 expects two hours-plus. “So just … stre-e-e-etch,” stage manager Scooter instructs MC Kermit the Frog – offering a hostage to fortune should what follow feel thinly spread. Sometimes, it does. There are several non-sequitur sketches – such as the skulls and ghouls singing “The Boo Danube” – whose absence few would regret. But they add to the show’s bricolage character. Nothing hangs around too long; the show never drags.

Jim Gaffigan review – a miscellany of jokes from a master of sardonicism

July 13, 2018TheGuardian

Leicester Square theatre, London
With his expert delivery, the US standup can lead even unpromising and overfamiliar material to giddy heights of comic dismay

Jim Gaffigan is touring the world, and he has jokes about every destination to show for it. Belgium? It was designed by 19-year-olds. New Zealand? Here’s a novel explanation for settlers’ uncommonly equitable treaty with the Māori …

I wouldn’t call globetrotting the subject of Gaffigan’s show – there is no subject. But he is taking the opportunity to unspool his miscellany of jokes about world tourism, from Anne Frank’s house and Ireland’s debt to the Vikings and beyond. But the same Viking gag – and a fair few others in the show – cropped up when Gaffigan last visited London, 18 months ago. He has not really created a new show; this is just a slightly refreshed collection of his jokes. Maybe the diminished novelty explains why it feels like a weaker set. There is a low-wattage section midway on castles and museums. A final bit, about his colonoscopy, is not notably distinct from many other middle-aged male comics’ routines about the same undignified procedure.

Jim Gaffigan review – a miscellany of jokes from a master of sardonicism

July 13, 2018TheGuardian

Leicester Square theatre, London
With his expert delivery, the US standup can lead even unpromising and overfamiliar material to giddy heights of comic dismay

Jim Gaffigan is touring the world, and he has jokes about every destination to show for it. Belgium? It was designed by 19-year-olds. New Zealand? Here’s a novel explanation for settlers’ uncommonly equitable treaty with the Māori …

I wouldn’t call globetrotting the subject of Gaffigan’s show – there is no subject. But he is taking the opportunity to unspool his miscellany of jokes about world tourism, from Anne Frank’s house and Ireland’s debt to the Vikings and beyond. But the same Viking gag – and a fair few others in the show – cropped up when Gaffigan last visited London, 18 months ago. He has not really created a new show; this is just a slightly refreshed collection of his jokes. Maybe the diminished novelty explains why it feels like a weaker set. There is a low-wattage section midway on castles and museums. A final bit, about his colonoscopy, is not notably distinct from many other middle-aged male comics’ routines about the same undignified procedure.

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