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The League of Gentlemen review – a brilliantly twisted return to the stage

August 26, 2018TheGuardian

Sunderland Empire
Exhilarating new material joins favourite vintage sketches as Mark Gatiss, Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton bring their chilling creations to life again on tour

TV tie-in live tours aren’t always artistic successes. Sometimes, they’re more about nostalgia than comedy; sometimes it’s just a thousand people shouting out catchphrases. Neither applies in the case of this cracking League of Gentlemen stage outing, the group’s first for 12 years. Perhaps it’s because they clearly delineate old material, in the first half, and new, after the interval. Maybe it’s because (with Sherlock, Inside No 9, and all that) their careers beyond the League are flourishing; they’re doing this not because they need to, but because they want to. Mainly it’s because what’s on show is just brilliantly written and performed.

The first half couldn’t be simpler, as the performing trio – Mark Gatiss, Reece Shearsmith, Steve Pemberton – zip through a selection of their vintage sketches. There’s the Go Johnny Go Go Go card game with its impossible rules, the dating agency run by a woman who despises her clients, and Pamela Doove’s feral audition for an orange juice commercial. The feel is old-school: the performers wear tuxedos and there are blackouts between sketches. But the performances throb with life. There’s real hatred in Charlie and Stella’s bickering over Trivial Pursuit, real resentment when Olly Plimsolls rails against the theatre industry – and when Gatiss’s “Mordant Mick” leads us on a Royston Vasey terror tour, the twist generates real chills.

Emma Sidi: ‘You can only fully write a character if you can love them’

August 6, 2018TheGuardian

The character comic switches roles like a regenerating Time Lord in her new Edinburgh show, Faces of Grace – from a wannable Love Island contestant to a cat-loving loner

It became clear to Emma Sidi this year that her interpretive dance about NHS waiting times would have to go. The 27-year-old comic, who has been seen in W1A and the BBC3 vlogging satire Pls Like, performed the sketch in January as part of a work-in-progress show in a studio space in London; Michael McIntyre was hogging the larger room next door.

Many comedians destined for Edinburgh each August put in a solid 10 or 11 months of workshopping beforehand. Sidi knows the drill, having taken two acclaimed sets to the fringe. Character Breakdown, in 2015, saw her play six different roles, including a feminism professor whose lecture, delivered entirely in Spanish, was prone to stray from the topic. At one point, she relates the tale of being interrupted by Dobby the House Elf during some “solo masturbación.” Sidi’s 2016 show, Telenovela, ended with the audience building giant foil wings for her to fly away.

Sara Pascoe: ‘My greatest fear? Animals choking on plastic I’ve thrown away’

July 28, 2018TheGuardian

The comedian on intimacy, teenage shoplifting and why she hates music

Pascoe, 37, appeared in the BBC series Twenty Twelve and WIA. In 2016, she wrote Animal: The Autobiography Of A Female Body and toured her Animal show. She is now writing her second book, Sex Power Money. From 16 September, she will tour the UK with her hit show LadsLadsLads, inspired by her breakup with fellow comedian John Robins.

What is your earliest memory?
Being in a pram and having a tantrum. I was being pushed and the trees above me were all blurry because of the tears in my eyes.

James Acaster: ‘Brexiteers get amazingly angry about my tea joke’

July 1, 2018TheGuardian

The standup on his Netflix show, corduroy trousers, his dad’s backhanded compliments and the brilliance of female comics

Kettering-born James Acaster, 33, a drummer turned comic, has been nominated for the Edinburgh comedy award a record five consecutive times. His current Netflix mini-series, Repertoire, comprises four hour-long standup performances. He is appearing at the Latitude festival, Suffolk, on 14 July.

You’re the first British comic to shoot more than one Netflix special. What’s your series about?
It’s four standup shows themed around the justice system: one about being an undercover cop, one about jury service, one about committing a crime and one about witness protection. There’s also a hidden narrative running underneath that becomes apparent as they progress.

Corduroy hits the sweet spot between jeans and slacks. They’re a trouser middle man

The Mash Report’s Rachel Parris: ‘There was a lot of excitement and fury’

June 25, 2018TheGuardian

The whip-smart comic talks about mocking Piers Morgan and Donald Trump, mixing scorn with good cheer and moving from songs to satire

‘Determined cheerfulness is something I happen to do very well,” says Rachel Parris. If you’ve seen her live musical comedy shows, you won’t need telling: they present Parris as a wholesome West End Wendy forever on the verge of a nervous breakdown, performing songs that put a brave face on a chaotic life (The Gym Song) or – like her terrific X Factor spoof I’m Amazing – clothe sharp satire in faux-positivity.

No one who saw her excellent but unheralded stage shows ever doubted Parris’s talent, but it’s a big surprise that she’s now found her mainstream niche in political satire. Her whip-smart work on the BBC show The Mash Report has been adored – and deplored – by tens of millions, and she’s become one of the most prominent political comics in the UK and beyond.

The Mash Report’s Rachel Parris: ‘There was a lot of excitement and fury’

June 25, 2018TheGuardian

The whip-smart comic talks about mocking Piers Morgan and Donald Trump, mixing scorn with good cheer and moving from songs to satire

‘Determined cheerfulness is something I happen to do very well,” says Rachel Parris. If you’ve seen her live musical comedy shows, you won’t need telling: they present Parris as a wholesome West End Wendy forever on the verge of a nervous breakdown, performing songs that put a brave face on a chaotic life (The Gym Song) or – like her terrific X Factor spoof I’m Amazing – clothe sharp satire in faux-positivity.

No one who saw her excellent but unheralded stage shows ever doubted Parris’s talent, but it’s a big surprise that she’s now found her mainstream niche in political satire. Her whip-smart work on the BBC show The Mash Report has been adored – and deplored – by tens of millions, and she’s become one of the most prominent political comics in the UK and beyond.

Gina Yashere review – liberal anxieties defanged in homecoming triumph

June 24, 2018TheGuardian

Underbelly, South Bank, London
The Londoner turned US Daily Show star shows herself more clown than commentator as she unpicks British race relations and Anglo-Nigerian manners

Last month, UK comedy audiences had a visit from Daily Show host Trevor Noah; this month, his Brexit correspondent and so-called “actual British person”, Gina Yashere, follows in his footsteps. Famously, Yashere had to quit Britain and its low glass ceiling for black comedians, to get a break. But this homecoming gig shows she has left in body only. She remains every inch the Londoner, and her set navigates the landscape of British race relations and Anglo-Nigerian manners as deftly as if she had never been away.

And she does so while largely avoiding the stereotypes in which previous routines have traded. This new show Funkindemup finds Yashere on her finest form – prowling the stage, alpha female, effortlessly in charge, at last enjoying the professional status she always felt she had earned. After some ice-breaking gags about rap music, she starts with a section on Windrush, slavery, and the “subtle, side-eyed racism” of the Brits – who are much cleverer than the Americans, says Yashere, at covering their racist tracks.

Marc Maron: ‘I’m familiar with coke, anger, bullying, selfishness’

June 16, 2018TheGuardian

The Glow star and hit podcaster talks drugs, divorces and his ‘horrible’ feud with Jon Stewart

The night before I meet Marc Maron, I go to his standup show in London. These days Maron is best known for his hugely popular podcast, WTF with Marc Maron, which he started in 2009, and on which he has interviewed everyone from Barack Obama to Keith Richards and Chris Rock. He conducts most of the interviews from his garage in LA, and they are almost always revealing and always entertaining. In 2010, Robin Williams talked about his depression and addictions, four years before he killed himself. Obama talked about the racism and African American stereotypes that shaped his sense of self. WTF now gets 7m downloads a month.

But in the 90s, when I first discovered him, Maron was not known for his empathetic dialogues; rather, he was seen as an aggressive monologuer. Back then, he was a struggling standup, with a style that was often described as angry and arrogant – or, as his friend Louis CK once put it, “a huge amount of insecurity and craziness”. He was known as a comedian’s comedian, which is a nice way of saying the industry liked him, but audiences didn’t.

Some of my behaviour was not great. It was emotionally abusive

The food stuff is my deepest issue, more than the drugs. I guess it’s about self-loathing and control

‘The world of comedy has changed’: how queer comics are making their mark in America

June 8, 2018TheGuardian

While mainstream visibility is still limited, LGBT comics are moving past cliches and homophobic roadblocks to take their place in the US comedy scene

Twenty-five years ago, Lea DeLaria became the first openly gay comic to appear on American television when she performed on The Arsenio Hall Show. “It’s the 1990s,” she announced with characteristic gusto. “It’s hip to be queer, and I’m a bi-i-i-i-ig dyke!” At a time when homophobia was rampant, forcing queer comics to traffic in innuendo when discussing their sexualities onstage, DeLaria and other out standups like Kate Clinton and Scott Thompson were radically candid and brazenly political, sometimes at their own expense. On Arsenio, where she was invited back twice more that year, DeLaria, who now plays Carrie “Big Boo” Black on Netflix’s Orange is the New Black, uttered the words dyke, fag and queer 47 times in four minutes. “I didn’t just open the closet door,” she recalls to the Guardian. “I fucking blew that door off with a blowtorch.”

Our models of success have always been smaller, more boutique comedians

Michelle Wolf: ‘It’s weird that Trump doesn’t have a sense of humour’

June 1, 2018TheGuardian

As host of the White House correspondents’ dinner, comic Michelle Wolf insulted Trump, his inner circle and the press. What happened next?

In the past 35 days, Michelle Wolf has hosted the annual White House correspondents’ dinner, scandalised Washington DC, outraged the president, run a 50-mile ultramarathon, launched her own Netflix show, and turned herself into a household name. Yet “the hardest thing I ever did in my life”, according to the comedian, was none of these, but “getting myself fired on purpose.”

Five years ago, she was working for a tech company, but knew she wanted to be a comedian. The plan was to get paid for as long as possible, while she worked on her act, until they sacked her. “I don’t like being lazy, but I was like: ‘Just do less and less work.’ I was writing jokes all day, just constantly writing jokes.” She nearly lost her nerve when she received a formal warning. “It was the worst feeling. I hate disappointing people. I almost gave up then and there.” But she stuck at the plan, and “eventually I got fired, which was great”. She celebrated with cocktails.

In standup, you tell a joke and people laugh or they don’t. On Twitter, they correct and complain

The White House Correspondents’ Dinner was a failure last year, but this year was an embarrassment to everyone associated with it. The filthy “comedian” totally bombed (couldn’t even deliver her lines-much like the Seth Meyers weak performance). Put Dinner to rest, or start over!

There’s this whole section of political comedy that’s just saying things we want to hear, rather than pushing our brains

We keep tuning in to everything outrageous that’s happening. We’re not watching the news but a show

People say they want honesty, but when they hear it they’re like, Oh, that was a cold slap of honesty

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