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The 10 best things to do this week: from Jude Law’s new play to Rookie’s podcast

April 14, 2017TheGuardian

The actor finally returns to the Barbican stage and the precocious Tavi Gevinson interviews her pal Lorde, while elsewhere Stormzy’s cousin plays live

Cambridge literary festival
Although many people worked themselves into a fury after the US election, few managed to bash out a savagely satirical novella in response. Howard Jacobson’s talk on his Trump-inspired book, Pussy, is sure to be one of the highlights of this top-class literature festival.
At various venues, 18-23 April

The 10 best things to do this week: from Jude Law’s new play to Rookie’s podcast

April 14, 2017TheGuardian

The actor finally returns to the Barbican stage and the precocious Tavi Gevinson interviews her pal Lorde, while elsewhere Stormzy’s cousin plays live

Cambridge literary festival
Although many people worked themselves into a fury after the US election, few managed to bash out a savagely satirical novella in response. Howard Jacobson’s talk on his Trump-inspired book, Pussy, is sure to be one of the highlights of this top-class literature festival.
At various venues, 18-23 April

Charlie Murphy, Chappelle’s Show star, dies aged 57

April 13, 2017TheGuardian

Brother of Eddie Murphy, who turned his encounters with Hollywood’s great and good into much-loved TV skits, has died

Charlie Murphy, the older brother of Eddie Murphy and a comic performer who turned his encounters with Rick James and Prince into standout sketches on Chappelle’s Show, has died at the age of 57.

In the show’s recurring segment Charlie Murphy’s True Hollywood Stories, Murphy would recount how his brother’s fame brought him into the orbit of the biggest stars. His versions of the experiences, played out by him, Chappelle and others, became enduring hits. In one sketch, Prince is at first mocked for his frilly shirt but then shows his slick moves on the basketball court. The music legend then serves everyone pancakes.

TJ & Dave review – wizards of improv conjure a comedy gem

April 12, 2017TheGuardian

Soho theatre, London
The Chicago pair show they are masters of their art with an off-the-cuff performance that is as poignant and sharply observed as any scripted show

Most writers and comics spend months – even years – honing scripts and refining gags. Chicago improvisers TJ Jagodowski and David Pasquesi make mincemeat of all that, plucking from thin air a one-act, multi-character play that is as funny, shrewdly observed and emotionally complex as many a slaved-over work. Right up there with the best of the Pajama Men and Improbable Theatre, they really are Zen masters of their art. I found their unshowy and beadily intelligent improv blissful to watch.

There are no frills, gimmicks or audience participation, just two middle-aged men building a story detail by extemporised detail. It begins with two office workers wondering at the late arrival of a third. One of them wears a new watch, bequeathed by his dead dad; the other, touched, spontaneously phones his own father. On these bare bones, fragments of a tale are fleshed out, in which an elderly couple fret about macaroni etiquette, a 7-Eleven attendant kvetches about his uncle Marcel, and a driver with blood spattered across the grill of his car “has no idea if it was a kid or a raccoon”.

Adam Kay review – ex-doctor dispenses mirth and strong medicine

April 11, 2017TheGuardian

Soho theatre, London
As well as diagnosing the entertaining eccentricities of patients, musical comic Kay issues an electrifying clarion call on behalf of NHS staff

Musical comic Adam Kay is a former doctor, of obstetrics and gynaecology – or “brats and twats” as he demurely puts it. His new show (from which a book has been commissioned) now addresses that career, partly for political reasons, as his blistering denouement makes clear. Those closing 10 minutes are tonally a thing apart from what precedes them: an emotionally naked disclosure of a career-ending incident, turned politically blunt clarion call for the staff of our beleaguered NHS. It doesn’t even pretend to be comedy, and makes a mockery of aesthetic judgment.

It’s stirring stuff; Jeremy Hunt should be fed this show on a drip. Even its main section – blackly comic extracts from Kay’s hospital diary, intercut with punning songs – counters the Tory claim that striking junior doctors are in it for the money. Here, we find our diarist missing Christmases, cancelling longed-for holidays and sacrificing relationships at the altar of medicine. He meets the eccentricities and idiocies of the British public with infinite patience and an infinitesimally raised eyebrow, and daily endures sights – geysers of patients’ blood; “the worst penis I had ever seen” – that would make lesser mortals (critics, say) quail.

Rich Hall: ‘Albert Brooks is one of the funniest comedians ever’

April 7, 2017TheGuardian

From squid pelts to neurotic standup, the misanthropic US comic, writer and musician reveals the things that make him laugh the most

Kevin Meaney, the recently departed Boston comedian, had the flat-out funniest 20 minutes of any comedian I’ve ever seen. It was basically an interior monologue delivered at a level of camp hysteria that literally had people in the room pounding the table with their fists and falling out of their chairs.

Tom Rosenthal: ‘I thought it would be cool to dye my hair into a Mongolian flag’

March 31, 2017TheGuardian

The standup and Friday Night Dinner star on the things that make him laugh the mostDave Chappelle on Sesame Street. Continue reading…

Henning Wehn review – Brit-baiting banter from Germany’s comedy ambassador

March 31, 2017TheGuardian

Leicester Square theatre, London
In his upbeat new show, Westphalia Is Not an Option, the playful standup tackles the EU referendum result

In the age of Brexit, is self-styled German comedy ambassador Henning Wehn an immigrant, a Londoner, or both? “I woke up on 24 June thinking, ‘Cor, blimey!’,” he says, setting the sly tone for a show – Westphalia Is Not an Option – that is determined to disrupt simplistic definitions of what an immigrant is and isn’t.

Wehn never considered himself one, he says, partly (cue supercilious smirk) because the word immigration implies a step up in the world. There are plenty of trademark mocking gags about Britain’s inferiority to his home country, including an old Wehn favourite about our non-German tendency to self-deprecation, and another marvelling at British buildings’ external plumbing.

Sammy J: the Phantom may be a dud superhero – but he changed my life

March 28, 2017TheGuardian

A chance encounter set off a chain of events that led to me meeting my wife and ended with police searching my attic

I should have picked Batman. Or Superman. Or the X-Men.

Pretty much any other superhero would have been cooler than the Phantom. In fact, I’m not even sure that “superhero” is the correct label, given his lack of super powers. All he had was a wolf, a horse and a skull ring which he punched his enemies with.

Andy Parsons review – punchline king makes the world more bearable

March 27, 2017TheGuardian

Nuffield, Southampton
Parsons’ cynicism about comedy’s transformative potential doesn’t stop him impaling his political targets with some smart barbs

Satire has minimal effect, Andy Parsons tells us in his touring show Peak Bullshit. Jokes don’t change anything. It’s a deflating sentiment to express midway through a satirical show. Whether or not political comedy will ever precipitate the revolution, I prefer my satirists to look as if they’re giving it a try.

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