The actor, writer and standup on the things that make him laugh the most
American comedian Dr Brown [Phil Burgers]. And I cried when I saw Steve Martin touring with his bluegrass band because I’m a baby and he’s my hero.
Continue ReadingQueen Elizabeth Hall, London
The US comic has charisma and craft but reinforces gender stereotypes with cartoonish vigour in a set that falls flat
Iliza Shlesinger raised hackles last summer when she criticised other female comics for their “low-hanging fruit” material. It is hard not to recall that with a wry smile when watching this London date, which is almost exclusively dedicated to comedy of the “men do this, women do that” variety. And what women do, it seems, is ensnare men. We’re told this with charisma and craft on Shlesinger’s part, and there are decent jokes. But the gender essentialism gets wearing.
The US comedian starts by mentioning her recent engagement – which some worry will compromise her comedy, focused as it is on the single life. Perhaps by way of a last hurrah, she intensifies that focus tonight. Minus the final 10 minutes, the show is all about the dating and mating game. In which, apparently, men are lions and women gazelles. Men are physical, women verbal. Men are built for rejection, and women can’t handle it. No one ever lost an audience by reinforcing stereotypes, but for many of us residing in the 21stcentury (and certainly those who’ve seen Sara Pascoe taking these cliches to task), this stuff rings increasingly 2D.
Continue ReadingRoyal Festival Hall, London
The laidback raconteur gets political and personal with riffs on everything from the US vice-president to PG Tips
‘I don’t believe people’s joy,” says Marc Maron. It’s just a word we give, he says, to momentary distractions from self-hate. He gets a cheer for that, and welcomes it: “That’s my audience!” Maron has one of the most devoted followings in world comedy, even if it wasn’t his comedy that attracted them. He’s most famous for his WTF podcast, a nine-year, 900-episode series of substantial interviews with subjects ranging from Louis CK to Robin Williams, Barack Obama to recent guest Jennifer Lawrence. As in his podcast, so in his comedy, Maron trades in emotional and psychological intimacy – the difference being that on stage, his subject is (more explicitly) himself.
They’re laidback affairs, his stage shows. He sits – tonight, on a high stool that he doesn’t trust. He tells us stories about his neurotic, pessimistic life. And he stops often to deconstruct what he’s just said or done, to make public the voice fretting away inside his head. He’d rather be honest than slickly funny, although usually he’s perfectly capable of being both.
Continue ReadingLeicester Square theatre, London
The south Londoner’s hit character sketches transfer smoothly from social media to the comedy club in this crowd-pleasing show
It’s been a big year for south London comic Mo Gilligan. Twelve months ago, he was selling jeans. Now, he’s playing the Albert Hall, Drake quotes his catchphrases – and he has sold out 22 nights at Leicester Square theatre. It all seems out of proportion to the cheerful amateurism of the online sketches that made Gilligan’s name. But there is no denying he’s equipped for this level of success: his show Coupla Cans is a good-time 90 minutes, showcasing an act with formidable character-comedy chops and a lovely ease and confidence.
The material is cosily familiar, but he brings it to smooth, sparkling life, always sharing in the amusement he generates. The set pieces are usually role plays (the family wedding; the girls’ night out; the school classroom), with Gilligan inhabiting many of the characters who populate his online work. (Different Type of Grime MCs; Types of Girls in a Club, etc.) The social rituals of young black Britons are laid bare as couples wine to bashment music. Another section finds schoolboy Mo ineptly stealing “ice poles” from under his authoritarian mum’s nose.
Continue ReadingJust a month before their first child is due, the standup couple are doing a show together – seeking the audience’s parenting tips
“It’s mad,” says Josie Long, “but it feels like the right thing to do.” Braving the blustery weather at a pavement cafe near their east London home, Long and fellow comedian Jonny Donahoe are discussing their unlikely new project, which enjoys its first and only UK performance next week. For Josie Long and Jonny Donahoe Are Having a Baby (With You), the couple take to the stage to chat, joke and desperately seek advice on the imminent arrival of their first child. They’re taking one of the most intimate experiences a couple can have, and making it public when Long is eight months pregnant – heavy, exhausted and, she says, “physically vulnerable”. What are they thinking?
This isn’t the first time the couple have smudged the line between art and life. Long is a revered art-comic, activist and queen of indie standup; Donahoe is one half of bluesy lefty musical act Jonny and the Baptists. They met when she saw him perform the acclaimed solo theatre show Every Brilliant Thing. Impressed, she invited him to co-author a new project together – about a couple falling in love. “The plan was to have intimate conversations with each other,” says Long, “a very vulnerable writing process, and what came out of it would be very unusual.” But a few months in, both parties were deeply confused. “I remember saying to [the comic] Bridget Christie, ‘I think we might be in love with each other. But it might not be real, it might just be for the show’,” Long remembers. “And she was like: ‘Fuck the show! What do you want, a show or a baby?’ And I was like: I want a baby!”
Continue ReadingThe standup and actor spills the beans on the things that make her laugh the most, from Wanda Sykes to magic mushrooms
White People Are Looking – Wanda Sykes’s bit on being black after Obama got in – is pretty transcendental.
Continue ReadingSoho theatre, London
Allen’s amiable routines about gay and working-class stereotyping foreground his abundant skills as a raconteur
If Tom Allen weren’t already hosting a primetime Saturday night TV show, you’d have to invent one for him. Thirteen years a standup, the Bromley man deploys a similar old-school, unthreatening camp and faux-imperious manner that Larry Grayson brought to The Generation Game. It’s a crowdpleasing combination and Allen wears it as elegantly as his soigné three-piece tweed suit. Now a host (one of several) on BBC1’s new prank-the-public gameshow Ready or Not, Allen is still touring his 2017 show Absolutely, itself a well-honed nugget of light entertainment and now running for a fortnight at Soho theatre, before another series of dates in July.
You leave wholly persuaded by Allen’s skills as an entertainer – even if he sometimes has to flog them hard to sell so-so material. He starts by setting out his stall. A chat with punters in the front row establishes his quick wit and his egoism; he feigns exhaustion with talking about anything but himself. He gives an account of his stage manner: posh voice but coarse background, and unapologetically fey. “I’ve finally made it as a gay stereotype!” There’s nothing simpering about Allen, mind you: he practically barks the opening 10 minutes of material and throughout, his voice is deployed – now singsong, now stentorian – very adroitly as a comic instrument.
Related: Tom Allen: ‘Well this is all very well but we still haven’t had our soup!’
Continue ReadingAs Maxine Peake takes the mic to play a club comic in Funny Cow, here are five movies that capture the lacerating, soul-baring world of live comedy
There’s something so intimate, exposing and ruthless about their artform that standups make perfect symbols for the battle we all wage to assert ourselves against an unappreciative world. So most movies about standup focus on failures rather than successes – none more so than King of Comedy, Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro’s less celebrated follow-up to Taxi Driver and Raging Bull.
Continue ReadingThe standup and actor on the things that make him laugh the most, from terrible tofu dinners to Shooting StarsDinner Party Conspiracy from The Armando Iannucci Show. A brilliant series but that sketch stands out. Continue reading…
Continue ReadingThe standup and actor on the things that make him laugh the most, from terrible tofu dinners to Shooting StarsDinner Party Conspiracy from The Armando Iannucci Show. A brilliant series but that sketch stands out. Continue reading…
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