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Aparna Nancherla review – shy standup shares disastrous dating stories

June 7, 2017TheGuardian

Soho theatre, London
The self-deprecating US comedian delivers a set littered with droll remarks about life in New York but the show is hamstrung by her unease

From Master of None to Inside Amy Schumer, Aparna Nancherla arrives in the UK with a trail of hip comedy credits in her wake and her show doesn’t stint on witty wisecracks and tart asides. If her UK debut doesn’t make the splash her pedigree promised, it’s because Nancherla is a weaker performer than she is a writer, and because her hour-long show feels like several short sets strung together, never stretching its wings to fill a larger format.

It doesn’t help that she puts herself on the back foot from the off: her opening line warns us her performance might be affected by jet lag. That is of a piece with Nancherla’s self-deprecating style: a sizeable chunk of the material deals with her introversion – why she never removes her coat at parties, say – and her lack of get-up-and-go. Some people have a “lust for life”, she tells us, setting up a choice joke about her own, less zealous relationship with existence.

Freak out! Reggie Watts on jamming with James Corden and tackling Trump with improv

June 7, 2017TheGuardian

The freestyle standup and bandleader on The Late Late Show is in London for a gig and has no idea what he’ll perform. Improv, he says, can free the mind – and maybe silliness can help save the world

Vocal artist, musician, beatboxer, actor, alt-comedian and now bandleader: it might be quicker to list the few things freaky American entertainer Reggie Watts doesn’t do. Best known now as the frontman of the house band on James Corden’s Late Late Show on CBS, Watts may be the best example of the theory (which I’ve just made up) that a person’s hair is the physical manifestation of their ideas escaping into the world. Watts twinkles at his audiences from behind a vast sashaying afro, and his imagination is just as unrestrained. “Creativity is such a natural part of who I am,” he tells me cheerfully, over salad in a London eatery. “I find it easy to tune into – as long as I’m listening and I can get out of my own way.”

Stuart Goldsmith: ‘The funniest thing? A toddler falling over at speed’

June 2, 2017TheGuardian

The Comedian’s Comedian host and comic on the things that make him laugh the most, from Arrested Development to the South Park movie

I saw Brian Gittins a few weeks ago and don’t think I’ve laughed harder in years and years. Absolute joyous idiocy.

David Sedaris: ‘There are things nobody wants to hear. But the disturbing things are great’

June 2, 2017TheGuardian

The dry-witted US essayist talks about how he went from working as an elf in Macy’s to becoming ‘the American Alan Bennett’

David Sedaris’s partner of 25 years, Hugh Hamrick, calls the first chunk of the essayist’s diaries, published under the title Theft By Finding, “David Copperfield Sedaris”. And it’s true, Sedaris concedes, the book – which covers the years from 1977, when he scribbled his first entries on the backs of coffee shop placemats while travelling around, to 2002 – has a certain rags-to-riches quality. In the second volume, on the other hand, “I just go from shopping at Paul Smith to shopping at Comme des Garçons, and I’m on airplanes all the time”. The thought prompts a memory of a recent plane trip, first class from Hawaii to Portland, Oregon. “This woman said, you are so lucky to be seated up front, it’s a great spot for people-watching. And I said, hmm, it could be, but we don’t really count you as people.” He bursts out laughing, and so do I, even though I know I oughtn’t. What on earth did she say? “She laughed, she knew I was kidding. Hugh was horrified. Horrified.”

There’s something about that one-liner that characterises Sedaris’s writing: a flash of directness, even brutality, that threatens the social veneer (especially in first class); the reassuring feeling that of course he’s kidding, with the faint background feeling, “but not entirely”; the spreading realisation that he’s getting at something far more complex about human nature, absurdity and awkwardness. “He’s like an American Alan Bennett,” says the quote (from this newspaper) on the back cover of Theft By Finding. Both writers occupy that space in which their subversiveness and caustic records of daily life run up against the foam blanket of “humour”, as if we can maximise the cuddliness and minimise the edge by focusing on the laughs.

And I said, could you close the door, please? And he shut the door in her face and I never saw her again

In the lanes of Sussex, he is known as the American who picks up the litter, for which he has a passionate hatred

Arrest that comedian! How satire could swing the UK election

June 2, 2017TheGuardian

From disrupting dam-building to toppling dictators, comedy has shown itself to be a global force for good. Here’s what ‘laughtivism’ could do for British politics

At a protest to mark the inauguration of President Trump, film-maker Michael Moore volunteered an unusual rallying call. “Let’s form an army of comedy,” he cried. “Participate in the ridicule and the satire of the emperor who has no clothes. And we will bring him down.”

Unlike almost every satirised ruler ever, the new US president reacts to jokes – usually peevishly, usually on Twitter. Since he came to office, there has been an open war between the Donald and the nation’s late-night political satirists: John Oliver, Trevor Noah, Stephen Colbert. Responding to Trump’s daily scandals, this cohort of comics arguably form a more potent opposition than journalism and the Democratic party combined.

Russell Brand’s failure isn’t conclusive. There are plenty of examples of comedy making the world a better place

Count Arthur Strong review – blissfully, brilliantly bewildered

May 28, 2017TheGuardian

London Palladium
The malapropisms and garbled logic, plus a near-fatal encounter with Benedict Cumberbatch’s name, make Steve Delaney’s comedy character a giddying delight

Not the least of the achievements of Steve Delaney’s extraordinary character Count Arthur Strong is that he’s made mincemeat of the distinction between mainstream and niche. At points in his touring show, The Sound of Mucus, the spirit of popular, golden-age British comedy is distilled. At others, the Count’s confusion and constipated syntax so strains the patience, you could be watching the most audience-baiting genus of live art. What’s consistent is the blood-vessel-busting commitment of Delaney’s performance – a brand of character-comedy-as-transubstantiation that’s attainable only after 20 years’ meticulous refinement.

Alfie Brown: ‘John Gordillo made me laugh so much it became disruptive’

May 19, 2017TheGuardian

The inflammatory standup on the things that make him laugh the most, from Broad City to Victoria WoodJohn Gordillo in Kentish Town. His routine about Zippos Circus made me laugh so much it became quite disruptive and hard for him to continue. I have qu…

A right laugh: Geoff Norcott, the standup who turned Tory

May 15, 2017TheGuardian

He’s a likable performer capitalising on the idea that most of his fellow comedians are lefties. So is Norcott’s show Conswervative more wind-up than battle cry?

“Have I got any Tories in?” Geoff Norcott is “the UK’s only declared Conservative comedian,” his publicity claims – which will come as a surprise to Jim Davidson. Norcott has been doing the rounds as a comic for 15-plus years, and it’s only in the last couple that he’s come out as a right-winger. I’d guessed, from afar, that that was just a canny piece of branding. It’s certainly done wonders for his career: he’s now the Telegraph’s go-to man for comedy comment, and earlier this year, out of all proportion to his profile or accomplishment, he was drafted on to Question Time.

In his act, he has the good grace to admit that that gig came about only to satisfy diversity quotas, as he puts it, savouring the irony. In fact, on stage, he’s got good grace all round: I bow to no one in my dislike of the Tories, but Norcott comes across as a likable lad. Yes, his show, Conswervative, is an apologia for this working-class comic’s rightward drift, insulting Jeremy Corbyn, mocking the supposed sanctity of the NHS and defending tax avoidance. But it plays more like a wind-up than a battle cry: Norcott’s politics feel open-ended and lightly worn. I suspect he’d be back in the Labour fold before long, if it weren’t for the current state of the party, or for the shot-in-the-arm that Toryism has given to his standup career.

Natasia Demetriou: ‘Best In Show is the funniest film I’ve ever seen’

May 12, 2017TheGuardian

The People Time actor and character comic on the things that make her laugh the most

John Early. His body and brain were made for the world’s entertainment and pleasure.

Knock2Bag: home to the weirdo comics you won’t find on Live at the Apollo

May 12, 2017TheGuardian

The wild comedy night that hosts aggressive poetry, ‘sexy American girl cousins’ and unlimited oddballs is 10 years old – and as ramshackle as ever

Sandwiched between a Tesco and a Wetherspoons in the centre of Hackney is the Moth Club, a tiny venue whose chintzy shimmer curtains and gold glitter ceiling give it a faded glamour. Once a month, comedy fans witness all kinds of depravity within its confines: Brian Gittins with a rubber penis hanging out of his dungarees, Jayde Adams in a nude-suit singing opera, Tim Key aggressively barking poetry about men named Alistair, Cardinal Burns pretending to be frazzled drug dealers, pedalling Boris Bikes through the audience.

The Moth Club – along with Bethnal Green’s Rich Mix – is home to the mixed-bill comedy night Knock2Bag, which turns 10 this weekend. Knock2Bag specialises in the stranger end of the comedy spectrum, and has accrued such a cult following that going there feels a bit like being zapped back to Vic and Bob’s surreal Big Night Out in south London in the late 90s. Their chaotic shows sell out way in advance, with comedy’s most revered names often found in the audience. Earlier this year, I spied John C Reilly and Steve Coogan giggling at a Cardinal Burns sketch of spangled Spanish clubbers bickering with each other.

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