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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.

Emotional rescue: can art ever be cathartic for its creators?

May 12, 2017TheGuardian

Jonathon Young’s dance-theatre show Betroffenheit explores his grief after a family tragedy. The author Max Porter, comic Jayde Adams, performer Mojisola Adebayo and Young himself discuss their artistic responses to personal traumas

Jonathon Young sits on a hard bed, the kind that speaks of institutions. Green light tinges the walls around him on the stage. This is “the room”, a space triggered by an event referred to as “the accident” throughout his show Betroffenheit. “The night of the accident we’re all asleep,” his character recites. “The alarm wakes me and … I run. I’m the first on the scene and they’re in there. I try to help them get out but it’s too late.”

Eight years ago, Young was on a family holiday north of Vancouver when the cabin in which his daughter, 14, and two cousins were sleeping, caught fire. Young tried to save them, but the flames were 150 feet high. All three children died.

I’m there on the stage, appearing as though I am present and experiencing these events anew. But of course I’m not

There is something about a release that is a letting go, the body relaxing … But for me it was the opposite

Spencer Jones review – Upstart Crow’s clowning comic is irresistibly daft

May 11, 2017TheGuardian

Soho theatre, London
Ludicrous tights, crude puppetry and dialogues with a chattering toilet brush make Jones’s alter ego The Herbert irresistibly daft

We should probably forgive Spencer Jones for his show Eggy Bagel – revived after an Edinburgh fringe run – being ramshackle. For a start, that’s the point: Jones’s alter ego The Herbert is a gormless clown, and his prop comedy is, intentionally, the antithesis of slick. Then there’s Jones’s schedule, with a role in Ben Elton’s Shakespeare comedy Upstart Crow, and recent pilots for his own Mr Bean-ish sitcoms on both Sky and the BBC, alongside a booming live career.

Given all that, what matter that his Eggy Bagel performance is short, disjointed and, on this occasion, prone to bouts of forgetfulness? It remains a disarming 45 minutes, because Jones has devised several irresistibly daft set pieces and because he radiates relentless, goofy self-delight.

Reginald D Hunter review – ranting and spanking as comic hunts for controversy

May 8, 2017TheGuardian

Orchard, Dartford
The standup considers kinky sex, politics and Angela Merkel’s alter ego but his new touring show is seldom striking

You might have heard I’m controversial, Reginald D Hunter tells his audience, by way of an introduction to this new touring show. All that means, he says, is that he uses the N-word. And yet, later on, he’s humblebragging about his supposed inability to crack “light, easy” gags. The Hunter brand is joking where others fear to joke, and he’s determined to tell you about it – as opposed to demonstrate it, which happens a little less frequently.

Perhaps it comes down to how you interpret “controversial”. Is it controversial for a celebrated, middle-aged straight male comedian to spend five minutes ridiculing transgender females? Well, yes, some people might take offence. But it’s also highly orthodox, given that Hunter’s colleagues Ricky Gervais and Dave Chappelle have both done the same in recent shows. It’ll be a surprise the next time I see a celebrated, middle-aged straight male comic who leaves transgender people alone.

‘My body shall be all yours’: the startling sex letters of Joyce, Kahlo and O’Keeffe

May 2, 2017TheGuardian

An eye-wateringly explicit new stage show celebrates erotic correspondence sent by famous figures through the ages

“I did as you told me, you dirty little girl, and pulled myself off twice when I read your letter.” He might be celebrated for his epic and allusive novels, but James Joyce came straight to the point when writing to his partner, Nora Barnacle. This was the opening salvo of a letter from 1908 and is just one of scores of explicit missives he sent her.

A new stage show is celebrating such letters of desire sent by famous figures through the centuries, whether explicit or coded, erotic or romantic. Theatre-maker Rachel Mars is curating a selection to be read aloud in the performance which is part of the Hotbed “festival of sex” at Camden People’s theatre in London. These will be interspersed with anonymised modern messages: texts, tweets and dating app sexts.

Hysterical Woman: the standup show blasting sexism in comedy

April 28, 2017TheGuardian

Fed up with heckles, hostility and predatory promoters, Kiri Pritchard-McLean set out to detail the industry’s misogyny in a raucous, revelatory performance

Are women funny? At a time when so many of comedy’s biggest names are female – from Bridget Christie to Katherine Ryan, Sarah Millican to Josie Long – you might imagine that that tired debate would finally have run out of steam. But that would be wishful thinking, according to standup Kiri Pritchard-McLean. The lurid misogyny that she repeatedly encounters has led her to speak out in her touring show Hysterical Woman, which tackles the question – and the zombie sexism it implies – head on.

Pritchard-McLean reports back from the frontline of circuit comedy, where predatory promoters roam and all-female bills are called “paralympic nights”. She details the heckles, hostility and patronising post-show comments to which female comics are daily subjected; the rarity of more than one female act appearing on any comedy bill; and the way scheduling works to position them in less prominent positions on those bills. It reveals as endemic the types of behaviour experienced by comedian Jenny Collier in 2014, when she publicised an email from a promoter who cancelled her gig because “the venue decided that they don’t want too many women on the bill”. Or the Canadian comic Christina Walkinshaw, “fired” from one club, she claims, for complaining about sexist heckling (“Show us your tits!”) at the venue.

Sophie Willan review – tales of neglect and addiction told with good cheer

April 26, 2017TheGuardian

Soho theatre, London
Flashes of tenacious positivity illuminate a gleeful set that ranges over Willan’s troubled early years in care, from teenage delinquency to a run-in with Santa

Rebellious, defiant, rude – words that Sophie Willan has been branded with since infancy. And she’s got the proof, in the form of social workers’ reports handed to her in bulk by Bolton social services when she turned 23. Excerpts punctuate On Record, her standup debut, which you might dub a misery memoir, if Willan didn’t tell this tale of her childhood in care – the daughter of a heroin-addicted mum – with such dogged good cheer.

That upbeat tone can feel contrived: her story seems to demand shades other than bright. But there’s no doubt it’s hard-won, nor that Willan makes of this hard-bitten history a lively hour of autobiographical comedy. Armed with an accent that makes Peter Kay sound like Rex Harrison, a bustling manner and a dash of camp, she relates tales of childhood neglect (“Think Mowgli with a mullet”), teenage delinquency and adult drift (getting sacked from Santa’s grotto was a low point) with gossipy glee. She’s at her funniest off-script, chatting to the audience. There’s not a shred of self-pity.

Joel Dommett: ‘Adrian Mole is the funniest book I’ve ever read’

April 24, 2017TheGuardian

The comedian and I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here! runner-up on the things that make him laugh the most

I remember seeing Frank Skinner do a set at Banana Cabaret in Balham about a year after I started comedy. It was the kind of laughter that stuck with me and made me want to do this job for the rest of my life.

Reginald D Hunter: ‘Getting married, having kids is one ideal. But it’s not my ideal’

April 21, 2017TheGuardian

The American comedian explains how his relationship with his mother affected his life and how you have to leave your home to make sense of it

I’m the fourth funniest person in my family, but No 1 for confidence. For years, Daddy was the funniest, but at 97 his memory is a bit off. I’m the youngest of nine children, although my eldest sister died in 1949 and I had another who died six years ago. My brothers and sisters are so much older than me that they were more like parents than siblings, especially my sisters. They shaped me. They all pitched in to fund my education and decided what experiences I would have, how I would spend my summers.

I grew up in a sleepy place called Albany in Georgia. As a teenager, I played basketball and baseball. I liked Saturday Night Live, chess and girls. My desire to act came from years of watching television. I was a 1970s child and grew up watching Star Trek, The Six Million Dollar Man and Man from Atlantis. By the time I was 18, I was a good mimic.

The 10 best things to do this week: Machynlleth festival, Arca and Mindhorn

April 21, 2017TheGuardian

Britain’s best standups hit the Welsh town, the Venezuelan producer plays London and Julian Barratt stars as a washed-up former TV cop

From Cradle to Stage
Mum’s the word! Literally, actually, as Foo Fighter Dave Grohl’s mother, Virginia, has gone around the world to interview mothers about their famous offspring, from Pharrell Williams’s ma Carolyn to Amy Winehouse’s mummy Janis for a new book. It’s out on 25 April.
From Cradle to Stage by Virginia Hanlon Grohl is published by Coronet, £20

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