The rapper, standup and actor – AKA Doc Brown – answered your questions on writing children’s books, the best of British hip-hop, Brexit confusion and rapping with Ricky Gervais 2.09pm GMT Time’s up!That’s my time y’all. Thanks for all your questions, …
Continue ReadingComedian also rejects suggestions that Parkinson’s disease has ‘dulled’ his brainBilly Connolly has announced that after a half-century career in standup, music, film and television he is retiring from live performing.The news came in an interview wher…
Continue ReadingWhen Roseanne Barr wrote a racist tweet, the comedian walked off the show – and 90 minutes later it was cancelled. She talks about the furore, coming out and being booed by Trump fansThe last time Wanda Sykes was booed was four days after Donald Trump …
Continue ReadingThe comedian and writer on her fear of flying, Adrian Mole and sniffing her cats’ pawsBorn in Glasgow, Susan Calman, 44, was a lawyer before becoming a standup in 2006. She was in the Channel 4 sketch show, Blowout, which won a Scottish Bafta in 2007, …
Continue ReadingThe big-collared clown’s new touring show is a galloping riot of idiocy aimed at children – and they love it. Whether they learn anything is another matterComedy for kids is on the rise. Phil Ellis’s knockabout Funz and Gamez won an Edinburgh Comedy aw…
Continue ReadingThe standup continued his contentious comeback in Paris – presenting a dilemma for the woman asked to gig with himBeing asked to open for a famous comic is every struggling standup comedian’s dream. A chance to be seen, to get a foot in the door. But w…
Continue ReadingAfter a turn on stage as George III, the co-founder of the League is returning to horror to recreate Dracula for TV. What he finds ‘frightening and debilitating’ now, though, is leaving the EUMark Gatiss is recalling an early memory, rocking back and f…
Continue ReadingAfter a turn on stage as George III, the co-founder of the League is returning to horror to recreate Dracula for TV. What he finds ‘frightening and debilitating’ now, though, is leaving the EUMark Gatiss is recalling an early memory, rocking back and f…
Continue ReadingAfter a turn on stage as George III, the co-founder of the League is returning to horror to recreate Dracula for TV. What he finds ‘frightening and debilitating’ now, though, is leaving the EUMark Gatiss is recalling an early memory, rocking back and f…
Continue ReadingAfter her standup success and podcast about death, the comic’s next step was obvious: starring in a cancer-ward romcom
It wasn’t, I assume, the toughest decision in the history of casting. Who you gonna call, Finborough theatre, to star in your new play about a comedian and improviser grieving her dead sister and tending to her dying mum? A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Gynecologic Oncology Unit at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center of New York City (yup, that’s the title) could have been written for Cariad Lloyd: comic, improviser and creator of Griefcast, the award-winning podcast about death. Talk about typecasting. Getting to grips with the role of Karla was hard, says Lloyd, “because I had to keep reminding myself, OK, this is where she’s not me.”
In fact, the play is a 2016 off-Broadway success, whose writer, Halley Feiffer, is now working on a new Jim Carrey sitcom. Its maiden UK production coaxed Lloyd back to theatre after years in comedy, improv and, latterly, parenting. “I’d wanted to do a play again for ages,” she tells me over tea on the afternoon of Funny Thing’s opening night. “But initially, because of the baby” – her daughter is 22 months old – “I wanted to say no. Then I read the script and I was like, ‘Oh, it’s really funny. It was annoying, but the part was just really funny.”
A Funny Thing Happened… is at the Finborough theatre, London, until 27 October.
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