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Silver Lining review – witty lines can’t save Sandi Toksvig’s care-home comedy

February 9, 2017TheGuardian

Rose theatre, Kingston
Toksvig’s play has plenty of good gags but there’s far too little characterisation, leaving an experienced ensemble treading water

Sandi Toksvig’s new comedy, set in a retirement home during a flood, puts five older women firmly centre stage. That should be something to cheer about: but in order to win itself a feelgood ending, Silver Lining plays to the stereotype that these women are useless old biddies whose stunted lives are far behind them, and who now exist in the stultifying limbo of the care home, protected from a terrifying outside world of technological, social and cultural change.

Is comedy infectious to doctors?

February 8, 2017TheGuardian

A white coat is often a sign of funny bones, as periodic outbreaks of medically trained comedians demonstrate

Is there an affinity between comedy and medicine? Certainly, a notable number of comedians used to work in the medical profession. One of them, Adam Kay of Amateur Transplants fame, has now signed a publishing deal for the book of his show about life as a junior doctor. Kay has spent most of his comedy career avoiding the subject of doctoring. Now he’s addressed it, he’s enjoying his biggest success since the viral London Underground Song that made his name.

On one level, it’s easy to explain why doctors, surgeons et al might make good comedians. As – to cite one recent example – Scott Gibson’s award-winning show demonstrated, life in the hospital ward is rich with comic potential precisely because it’s so deadly serious. Here is human life in extremis, all privacy and delusions of nobility stripped away (and that’s just the doctors – boom boom!). That’s what comedy often does too – it reminds us that we’re animals and punctures our pretensions to decorum or lofty self-esteem.

Is comedy infectious to doctors?

February 8, 2017TheGuardian

A white coat is often a sign of funny bones, as periodic outbreaks of medically trained comedians demonstrate

Is there an affinity between comedy and medicine? Certainly, a notable number of comedians used to work in the medical profession. One of them, Adam Kay of Amateur Transplants fame, has now signed a publishing deal for the book of his show about life as a junior doctor. Kay has spent most of his comedy career avoiding the subject of doctoring. Now he’s addressed it, he’s enjoying his biggest success since the viral London Underground Song that made his name.

On one level, it’s easy to explain why doctors, surgeons et al might make good comedians. As – to cite one recent example – Scott Gibson’s award-winning show demonstrated, life in the hospital ward is rich with comic potential precisely because it’s so deadly serious. Here is human life in extremis, all privacy and delusions of nobility stripped away (and that’s just the doctors – boom boom!). That’s what comedy often does too – it reminds us that we’re animals and punctures our pretensions to decorum or lofty self-esteem.

Angelos and Barry review – comedy pals’ barmy banter is a puerile delight

February 8, 2017TheGuardian

Soho theatre, London
The comic alter egos of Dan Renton Skinner and Alex Lowe claim to be the New Power Generation come to save us in a thin but skilfully written show

It’s a match made in – well, Ladbrokes, or round the back of Morrisons. Angelos Epithemiou (Dan Renton Skinner) is a gormless social misfit and erstwhile sidekick on Vic and Bob’s Shooting Stars. Barry from Watford is Alex Lowe’s wheezing octogenarian alter ego. Together, they present a popular podcast and now bring us the New Power Generation, their cult – sorry, spiritual movement – designed either to save the world or raise enough money to settle Barry’s debts to his pissed-off wife.

What follows can seem thinner than Angelos’s frayed Sainsbury’s bag, and frequently puerile. One routine trades on saying “tits” over and again at a picture of two songbirds; another on the amusingness of our hosts’ euphemisms (“plum bag”; “elderly nut-sack”, etc) for testicles. But at least the shambling and idiocy is entirely in character. And as the show develops and strains appear in this enfeebled duo’s relationship, subtler notes are played.

Still Game: Live 2 review – hilarity ahoy as the TV sitcom takes a sea cruise

February 5, 2017TheGuardian

SSE Hydro, Glasgow
Ford Kiernan and Greg Hemphill return to the stage with an even more ambitious live show – and just as many laughs

When does a sitcom get too big for its boots? It’s a worry that must have crossed the minds of Ford Kiernan and Greg Hemphill on returning to the hangar-like Hydro where, in 2014, Still Game played to 210,000 people in 21 nights.

There’s something surreal about seeing the TV escapades of Jack and Victor in a venue where bouncers guard the stage and the audience needs two giant screens just to see what’s happening. Undaunted, they’ve come back with a show of even greater ambition – and just as many laughs.

How Bridget Christie found the funny side of Brexit

February 3, 2017TheGuardian

After the EU referendum result, Bridget Christie ripped up her Edinburgh show and created a new one in just a few weeks. This is an anatomy of a standup set that has changed with the headlines

Creating a new hour of standup can be a lengthy process. Most comics spend months writing material and honing punchlines. For many, performing a run in Edinburgh is the final goal. For more established names, there’s life after the fringe, with possible London runs and national tours. So what happens when, after months of labouring over an idea, world events derail your plans? On 23 June, Britain voted to leave the EU. Suddenly that seemed far more important to Bridget Christie than the topic she was writing about, so she ripped up her show and started from scratch.

I meet Christie in a cafe near her home in Stoke Newington, north London, to talk through the creation of that new show – how every idea was formed, every punchline introduced, all in just a matter of weeks. She sits down, opens her rucksack and pulls out reams of A4 paper – drafts, handwritten set lists and pen-marked notes like handed-back school tests. So let’s start at the beginning.

Bridget Christie and Drake: top things to do in the UK this week

February 3, 2017TheGuardian

From the super-sharp standup latest set to the hip-hop megastar’s mammoth tour: your at-a-glance guide to the best in culture

Bridget Christie
The queen of feminist comedy continues her two-week run in London, with a new show that faces up to our EU exasperation, before heading out on tour.
At Leicester Square Theatre, WC2, to Saturday 11 February; touring to Thursday 22 June

Richard Herring: ‘Rick And Morty is the most brilliant TV show I’ve ever seen’

February 3, 2017TheGuardian

The comedian, writer and blogger on what makes him laugh the mostWatching Billy Connolly at the Hammersmith Apollo in the late 90s was a masterclass of long-form comedy. I also shared a hotel lift with him at the Montreal festival and he was funnier in…

Danny Baker live review – geezer with an endless appetite for gossip

February 2, 2017TheGuardian

City Varieties Music Hall, Leeds
The broadcaster’s first standup tour, Cradle to the Stage, is a lucky-dip of nostalgic childhood stories and showbiz anecdotes

You’ve read the autobiography. You’ve seen the sitcom. Now here’s the solo stage show of Danny Baker’s life – or at least, the bits of it he can squeeze into its two-hour duration. It’s billed as a “first ever standup tour” but really, it’s just one story after another from a man with an inexhaustible capacity for gossip and anecdotage. “There’s no script,” he says, then later: “I’m pretty good company, but that’s all this is.”

I’m not about to contradict him: Cradle to the Stage is less a show than a lucky dip into the grab-bag of Baker’s storied past. Having spurned his mate Jimmy Carr’s suggestion to preview it, he now jokes with his off-stage technician that he hasn’t rehearsed the show either. Act One ends abruptly at the behest of a downstage stopwatch, when – to Baker’s dismay – we’re only 15 years into his life story. From then on, he keeps alluding to all the great material he failed to cover in the first half.

Why aren’t female comedians funny? You asked Google – here’s the answer | Ayesha Hazarika

February 1, 2017TheGuardian

Every day millions of internet users ask Google life’s most difficult questions, big and small. Our writers answer some of the commonest queries

We live in a time of profound change and challenge and even though we think we know it all, there are still some big existential questions that plague mankind. And I do mean man.

Having a fanny isn’t a barrier to being funny

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