The Canadian standup on what makes him laugh the mostThe late Foster Brooks played the greatest drunk ever and the pilot sketch with Dean Martin is a work of art. It should be studied in universities. Continue reading…
Continue ReadingO2 Arena, London
The royal couple get a cheerful ribbing from the Daily Show host in a set that’s a delight – even to huffy republicans
What a gift to Trevor Noah that his one-off UK date coincided with Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s wedding. The Daily Show host dedicates a full 10 minutes to the event at the start of his set, and it’s high quality material given its presumably hasty composition. But then the nuptials of a mixed-race American and a member of the British royal family is meat and drink to Noah, a comic who majors in race and social mores across borders and who, as a South African, is no slouch on the imperial self-regard of Britain’s ruling class.
His wedding material certainly delights the locals – even those of us who’ve spent the day in a republican huff. He delivers a great line about the event’s supposed diversity (“Let me tell you something: a black cellist cancels itself out”), before imagining how it would have unfolded had it really been “a black wedding”. Yes, these jokes trade in broad stereotypes, and midway through Noah’s show I began to weary of his “white people do this, black people do that” shtick. But, for now, his cheerful ribbing of the claims being made for this establishment beanfeast were a pleasure to submit to.
Continue ReadingBrighton Dome
Award-winning standup serves up ruthless self-mockery in a show that is playful and pugnacious in equal measure
Lying, says Bridget Christie, has been tainted by association with Trump, Putin and the Brexit campaign. So she’s giving it up: now it’s the truth and nothing but from Christie. Hence: “I’ve been pretending to be a feminist for six years!” Her Edinburgh Comedy award-winning show, her book, radio series and Netflix special: all just a sham, she tells us now, like a dam bursting. “It’s an act! I don’t give a shit! I just wanted to be famous!”
What Now? is Christie’s first new show since Because You Demanded It, her fantastic, hastily assembled response to the Brexit vote in 2016. That set in turn followed several shows which combined clownish comedy and campaigning feminist zeal to thrilling effect. All of which makes What Now? unusual for Christie in having no specific agenda beyond making us laugh. Happy to report that it succeeds lavishly in that aim, as Christie goons around, sending up herself, her parenting, David Davis and the impoverished state of UK politics.
Continue ReadingSoho theatre, London
In her new show Mistress and Misfit the standup delivers droll tales, gasp-inducing skits and a Georgian history lesson
Mistress and Misfit, Shappi Khorsandi’s latest set, has been built around Admiral Nelson’s squeeze, Emma Hamilton. Or at least, that’s what it says on the tin. Certainly, there’s a portrait of Lady Hamilton on stage throughout the show, but for most of the 75 minutes it’s Khorsandi who hogs the limelight. We’re left with another diverting hour of Shappi chat – about mothering, reality TV, her poet dad – grafted more or less crudely on to a whistle-stop biography of the blacksmith’s daughter turned love of a national hero.
It’s never entirely clear why Khorsandi is telling that story in particular, beyond her obvious identification with Emma’s up-by-the-bootstraps life story. The comic makes a compelling case for Lady H as a strikingly modern figure, trapped in and stifled by life as a pawn and plaything of wealthy men. But Khorsandi’s parallels between her life and that of her Georgian-era subject are a bit forced, and Hamilton’s presence in the show – sitting alongside unrelated material about attending children’s parties and turning down literary prizes – can feel arbitrary.
Continue ReadingSoho theatre, London
In her new show Mistress and Misfit the standup delivers droll tales, gasp-inducing skits and a Georgian history lesson
Mistress and Misfit, Shappi Khorsandi’s latest set, has been built around Admiral Nelson’s squeeze, Emma Hamilton. Or at least, that’s what it says on the tin. Certainly, there’s a portrait of Lady Hamilton on stage throughout the show, but for most of the 75 minutes it’s Khorsandi who hogs the limelight. We’re left with another diverting hour of Shappi chat – about mothering, reality TV, her poet dad – grafted more or less crudely on to a whistle-stop biography of the blacksmith’s daughter turned love of a national hero.
It’s never entirely clear why Khorsandi is telling that story in particular, beyond her obvious identification with Emma’s up-by-the-bootstraps life story. The comic makes a compelling case for Lady H as a strikingly modern figure, trapped in and stifled by life as a pawn and plaything of wealthy men. But Khorsandi’s parallels between her life and that of her Georgian-era subject are a bit forced, and Hamilton’s presence in the show – sitting alongside unrelated material about attending children’s parties and turning down literary prizes – can feel arbitrary.
Continue ReadingThe South African standup and late-night satirical news anchor on what makes him laugh the mostIt has to be Ross Noble. I saw him at the Cape Town comedy festival in 2002. I was in high school. His improvising was so good it made me never want to try. …
Continue ReadingThe South African standup and late-night satirical news anchor on what makes him laugh the mostIt has to be Ross Noble. I saw him at the Cape Town comedy festival in 2002. I was in high school. His improvising was so good it made me never want to try. …
Continue ReadingSoho theatre, London
In her show One-Seventeen, the Australian comedian grapples with big ideas but these absorbing stories don’t fully connect
In a recent trilogy of shows, Sarah Kendall told long-form tales of her teenage years in Newcastle, Australia – tales that pirouetted on the line that separates truth from fiction (and indeed storytelling from standup). Her latest, One-Seventeen, deals as much with grownup as with adolescent Sarah, and tells not one long story but several interconnected short ones. Their connectedness is the point, at least according to Kendall’s closing tale, which invokes wonder at how lives (and stories) interrelate and overlap. But I’m not sure the show quite bears that philosophic weight: it’s absorbing from one moment to the next, but adds up to no more than the sum of its parts.
It’s introduced as “a show about luck”, and begins in 10-year-old Kendall’s garden, where her family gathers at night to watch Halley’s comet race across the sky. Stargazing is a recurring theme in a show that opposes two viewpoints on chance and mischance. To Kendall’s mum, almost everything can be construed as a bad sign. But her dad is phlegmatic: bad luck is often good luck in disguise.
Related: Sarah Kendall: the worst heckle I ever received – and what I did with it
Continue ReadingRhona Cameron, Rachel Fairburn and Shappi Khorsandi give their verdict on the film in which Peake plays an aspiring comic in a man’s world
Related: Funny Cow review – Maxine Peake blazes in the dark days of standup
Continue ReadingThe actor and comedian explains how her debut play, 3Women, captures the age divide within feminism – and the defiance of the #MeToo era
I recently gave a talk at a girls’ high school. I mention this not only because I am a virtue-signalling monster but also because one of the young women asked something that brought me up short: “How should we react, as young feminists, to older women who don’t seem to support us?”
I sat there and goldfished for a moment, keenly aware that these freshly minted teenage minds sat among their esteemed “older women” teachers. But this is one of the issues I have been grappling with in my debut play, 3Women, which is about three generations of the same family, aged 18, 40, and 65. They come together in an increasingly claustrophobic hotel suite the night before a wedding, ostensibly to enjoy some family bonding time. As more wine is ordered and drunk, the gloves come off, and there are old scores to settle.
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