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Sara Pascoe: how I overcame my Jane Austen prejudice

September 1, 2017TheGuardian

Austen’s women have the same rights as children; her ‘romantic’ match-making smacks of desperation. So how did the standup see the funny side of Pride and Prejudice for her new stage adaptation?

“Why does no one talk about how funny Jane Austen is?” I ask my friend Katie. We’d done English literature for three years at Sussex University – how was I only discovering these perceptive comedies a decade later?

“It’s all anyone ever says!” Katie is annoyed with me. “I tried to tell you how great she was but you insisted you’d never read any 19th-century novels.” She’s right. I got through my entire degree avoiding anything from the 19th century. I didn’t care if the steam train ended up in the workhouse, or the bonnet ran out of gruel. Regency literature was too coal-y for me, too long-winded and describey. I preferred modern books where you had to read other books explaining what the first book meant to know what happened.

How could there be any romance, any love, when females were wedding-night virgins, dependants with little respect?

Alex Horne: ‘You’ve Been Framed is the funniest TV show I’ve ever seen’

September 1, 2017TheGuardian

The comedian and Taskmaster creator on the things that make him laugh the most, from Tim Key to The Blues BrothersEvery time I see Tommy Tiernan talking about sex or nothing or God I howl with laughter, and I rarely howl with anything. Continue reading…

Lydia Towsey: how I discovered the Venus in me

August 30, 2017TheGuardian

From Botticelli to glossy magazines, women have been idealised and misrepresented for centuries. Performance poet Lydia Towsey reveals how her own near-fatal eating disorder set her on a path to explore new ways of looking at female bodies

Botticelli’s painting of the Birth of Venus was the first female nude painted and exhibited life size, and in many ways the medieval blueprint for every covergirl to come. It was about the birth of beauty, sexuality and glamour. But what would happen if, instead of washing up on an ancient Cypriot beach on her magnificent scallop shell, the Roman goddess were to arrive naked and vulnerable on a UK beach in the 21st century? This question is the starting point for my show, The Venus Papers.

It’s about lots of things – a theatrical performance combining poetry, humour, art, movement and music, in which I introduce Venus to my world. She encounters customs officers, tabloid newspapers, the male gaze, bars, Primark, life modelling, the perils of breastfeeding in public and something I’ve previously struggled to talk about in my work – the eating disorder I had for approximately seven years.

Edinburgh festival 2017: the best standup shows going on tour

August 28, 2017TheGuardian

Now the fringe is over, comics from Desiree Burch to John Bishop are hitting the road with jokes about fertility anxiety, political correctness and life as a ‘virgin dominatrix’

Maybe you’re frustrated – or delighted – that the Edinburgh festival is over and you didn’t see a thing. Either way, fringe comedy can’t be so easily avoided. Not so long ago, only a handful of festival acts went on to tour or perform substantial runs elsewhere. Now, several dozen take to the touring circuit, and many more tip up at London’s Soho theatre – a perpetual Edinburgh fringe-on-Thames.

In the former category, John Bishop was one among several high-end standups (Jason Manford, Tim Key and Mark Watson also among them) using Edinburgh to road-test material in advance of a future life elsewhere. Some complain that these works-in-progress divert custom from emerging acts who work year-round to prep their Edinburgh shows. Others would rather have under-rehearsed big hitters than no big hitters at all. Bishop brings a notebook on stage and tells us he’ll be ticking and crossing off the try-out jokes that do and don’t work. But that’s just patter: his set doesn’t feel raw, the gags go unticked and uncrossed.

Edinburgh’s double comedy winners mix humour with darker takes on life

August 26, 2017TheGuardian

Shows about relationship breakdown and homophobia pick up a prize – or two – for John Robins and Hannah Gadsby

The longest ever shortlist. The first ever joint winners. And clearly, the most indecisive judging panel ever.

It was indeed, as the publicity would have it, an “unprecedented” year for the Edinburgh comedy awards. But, if there’s a worry that the currency of these awards is being devalued, there can be no real complaints about this year’s champs: probably the two most audacious stand-up shows on the fringe, and certainly among the funniest.

Edinburgh festival fringe comedy award shared for first time

August 26, 2017TheGuardian

Judges could not choose between shows by Hannah Gadsby and John Robins – so have given both the £10,000 first prize

For the first time in the history of Edinburgh’s festival fringe, the top comedy award has been shared between two acts.

Stand-up performers Hannah Gadsby and John Robins have both been given the Best Comedy Show award, this year sponsored by lasminute.com.

‘Why did the lefty cross the road?’ How liberal Edinburgh comics are panning PC

August 25, 2017TheGuardian

A new wave of comedians probing faults in leftwing politics provoke a crucial debate, but does their exaggerated antagonism hamper the cause?

Identity politics has gone too far. PC has gone mad. These aren’t unfashionable opinions: they’re practically mainstream. What’s new in fringe comedy is that we’re now hearing it from leftwing comics. That’s both a fascinating phenomenon, and a troublesome one. Fascinating because there may be some truth in these propositions, and the left needs to interrogate them. Troublesome because standup doesn’t always favour nuance and fine margins, and one or two of these leftwing comedians – whether they’re mocking champagne socialists, rehabilitating slavery or defending the Iraq war – can start to sound (accidentally or on purpose) pretty rightwing.

Fin Taylor is pre-eminent among them – a rising star whose 2016 show Whitey McWhiteface made hay with white identity and privilege. It was an excellent show, as is its follow-up Lefty Tighty Righty Loosey, with which he again lays siege to the complacency of his (presumed to be) white, leftwing audience.

Spencer Jones review – dorky clown lobs gags in gleefully madcap comedy

August 25, 2017TheGuardian

Heroes @ Monkey Barrel, Edinburgh
The laughs keep coming in The Audition, a ramshackle tale of Steven Spielberg, talking robots and a bank-robbing fish

There aren’t many ways that a Spencer Jones show resembles the work of Anton Chekhov. But you can be sure that when he mentions in passing that he has accidentally purchased 250 tennis balls, the principle of Chekhov’s gun will hold: those tennis balls are coming for us, probably in the form of one of the unlikely prop gags with which dorky clown Jones is fast making his name.

In his previous two shows, performed in character (sort of) as his alter ego The Herbert, Jones’s ramshackle brand of comedy has supplied big laughs but minimal structure or coherence. Here, no longer sure whether he’s in character or not, he delivers his richest show yet. Its story, about Jones being invited to audition for a Steven Spielberg robot movie, furnishes it with a stronger backbone, while our host has dialled down the childlike dorkiness a notch.

Spencer Jones review – dorky clown lobs gags in gleefully madcap comedy

August 25, 2017TheGuardian

Heroes @ Monkey Barrel, Edinburgh
The laughs keep coming in The Audition, a ramshackle tale of Steven Spielberg, talking robots and a bank-robbing fish

There aren’t many ways that a Spencer Jones show resembles the work of Anton Chekhov. But you can be sure that when he mentions in passing that he has accidentally purchased 250 tennis balls, the principle of Chekhov’s gun will hold: those tennis balls are coming for us, probably in the form of one of the unlikely prop gags with which dorky clown Jones is fast making his name.

In his previous two shows, performed in character (sort of) as his alter ego The Herbert, Jones’s ramshackle brand of comedy has supplied big laughs but minimal structure or coherence. Here, no longer sure whether he’s in character or not, he delivers his richest show yet. Its story, about Jones being invited to audition for a Steven Spielberg robot movie, furnishes it with a stronger backbone, while our host has dialled down the childlike dorkiness a notch.

Elf Lyons review – daffy take on Swan Lake delivered in Franglais

August 25, 2017TheGuardian

Underbelly Med Quad, Edinburgh
With a parrot costume, Jacques Brel songs and silly set pieces, Lyons dreams up an almost aggressively winsome hour of complete nonsense

Is it comedy, or a spirited child let loose on a dressing-up box? In Elf Lyons’ Swan, it is not always easy to tell. The show – a one-woman-plus-puppets rehash of Swan Lake – is almost aggressively winsome. A graduate of Philippe Gaulier’s clown school, Lyons delivers it all in wide-eyed Franglais, while dressed in a party-shop parrot costume. “Quoi?” as she might say. “Quoi not?” You could parse the show for satire on the gender politics of ballet, or for its supposed insights into Lyons’ mental health (“I’m on Prozac!”). But in fact this is dottiness for the sake of celebratory dottiness, an hour of our time (and many more of hers) dedicated to complete nonsense – which Lyons just about justifies.

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