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Different Party review – artful take on the absurdity of office life

January 11, 2018TheGuardian

Soho theatre, London
The drudgery of bureaucracy is sent up with great expressivity, loose-limbed flair and a heightened sense of the ridiculous

Absurdist takes on the office environment are as old as the office itself. From Herman Melville’s Bartleby via David Brent to the award-winning theatre show Paperweight, there’s a noble tradition of artists sending up the ritualistic drudgery of – well, almost everyone else’s working life. Now, New Zealand physical comics Trygve Wakenshaw and Barnie Duncan bring us their contribution to the genre, an hour of slapstick bureaucracy that has little new to say about office life, but says it with great expressivity and a heightened sense of the ridiculous.

Presented as part of the London international mime festival, it begins as it means to go on, with Wakenshaw (gangly, too big for his suit) and Duncan (stubby, too little for his) making as if their briefcases are frisky dogs. It’s artfully done and – like the later routines in which the cases float, or refuse to move – it might have been performed at any time since the salad days of music hall. Fuelling the old-school vibe, Wakenshaw and Duncan’s office is curiously retro: at Ruck’s Leather Interiors, orders are taken by phone, paper billows out of filing cabinets and there are no computers in sight.

Thirty Christmases review – a merry little comedy about festive stress

December 13, 2017TheGuardian

New Diorama, London
A reunited brother and sister try to repair their relationship at Christmas time in this amiable show with songs

Christmas is a time to be with family. But what if your family is fractured? That’s the question at the heart of this amiable show, written by and starring Jonny Donahoe, with songs from his duo Jonny & the Baptists. The tunes include that festive classic Don’t Be a Prick at Christmas.

Donahoe and comedian Rachel Parris play siblings, Jonny and Rachel, who were raised in a car by their socialist Jewish agnostic father, a man who lived by different rules. Christmas was spent in other people’s homes, often uninvited. There was the year they sat outside the house of their mother, eating corned beef sandwiches, watching her celebrate with her new family through the window. And there was the year they turned up unannounced on the doorstep of some Norwegians briefly met at an airport.

Ongals: meet the Korean clown babies baffling audiences of all ages

December 11, 2017TheGuardian

Mixing circus skills with finely honed comedy and bum jokes, these juggling, beatboxing man-toddlers are joyous – and more than a little menacing

My three-year-old son, Gregor, thinks farting is the funniest thing. He let one go while sat on my lap on the bus en route to the Ongals’ show and dissolved into giggles. My daughter, aged seven, is considerably more mature: she likes bums. When we arrived at Soho theatre, the first thing she noticed was the poster for Wild Bore, the performance art/theatre show deconstructing the art of criticism. Its poster features three naked female backsides, and Cora was transfixed by it. Why?, she wanted to know. How!? So I felt pretty pleased as we entered the auditorium for Babbling Comedy, a slapstick comedy from South Korea reportedly heavy on the farting and backsides gags. A surefire success, right?

Well, yes – and, I am happy to report, not primarily for bum-related reasons. OK, so on reviewing the show afterwards, both kids decided their favourite moment was when the pink big baby shoved a bicycle pump up the yellow big baby’s bottom and inflated the balloon sticking out of his mouth. But toilet humour is only a small component of what makes Babbling Comedy an endearing family show. It’s a circus-meets-slapstick hour, performed by grown men in candy-coloured romper-suits, non-verbal if you discount their frenetic gurgling and babbling. (“Ongali” is Korean for “goo goo gah gah”, apparently.) If you don’t like juggling, hold out for the beatboxing. There’s something here for everyone.

Choose your favourite stage show of 2017

December 4, 2017TheGuardian

’Tis the season to compile lists of your favourite productions of the year – let us know which ones left you spellbound

As December disappears and the new year beckons, we’re remembering the theatre, comedy and dance shows that stood out in 2017 – and we’d love to hear your favourites. Please fill out the form below before Thursday 14 December, writing up to 250 words about the one show you found unforgettable. We’ll publish a selection of your favourites on the site before Christmas.

Carry on Screaming’s Fenella Fielding on fighting with Kenneth Williams and bouncing back after bankruptcy

November 8, 2017TheGuardian

She survived a violent upbringing to become the 60s’ favourite comedy vamp. As she turns 90, the star remembers fending off Norman Wisdom, attempting suicide – and having two lovers for 20 years

Fenella Fielding, 90 this month, has lost none of her comic timing. She is about to publish her memoirs, and I tell her it’s a great gossipy read. “What’s that darling, endoscopy?” Her hearing isn’t what it was. but she’s grinning mischievously. “I thought that was something medical.”

Fielding is probably still best remembered for her star turn in Carry on Screaming! as voracious vamp Valeria. The title of the book is taken from her famous line in the film: “Do you mind if I smoke?” (At which point whirls of smoke rise from her writhing body.)

Daddy used to knock me about with his fists, and my mother would egg him on

Famous comedians don’t want you to be funny. They want you to appreciate how funny they are by laughing engagingly

It’s rather awful sitting waiting for benefits and everybody knows who you are. I had a terrible feeling I was finished

Ken Dodd at 90: the rib-tickling genius is still crazy after all these years

November 4, 2017TheGuardian

With a gag for every occasion, the tattyfilarious comic clocks up 50,000 miles a year performing his epic standup shows. He talks about stage fright, playing Yorick for ‘Sir Kenneth All-Bran’ and taking on the audience like a gladiator

Is theatre the best rejuvenating pill on the market? I’ve recently talked to a sprightly, 92-year-old Peter Brook and seen the 90-year-old playwright Peter Nichols hold an audience spellbound. I’m also recovering from two extraordinary encounters with Ken Dodd, who turns 90 next week: one was a private lunch in Liverpool, the other a public lunch in London where Sir Ken was lauded by members of the British Music Hall Society. On both occasions, I got a glimpse into the transformative power of comedy. As Ken said to me: “I’m told that before I go out on stage, I look my age. Once I’m there, I suddenly turn into a 32-year-old.”

I was in the church choir – till they found out where the noise was coming from

How many men does it take to change a toilet roll? I don’t know. It’s never been done

A bleary agent of chaos: Tony Slattery returns to live impro

November 1, 2017TheGuardian

The charismatic Whose Line Is It Anyway? star is a blithely uninhibited lord of misrule at a new improvisation night in London

On the way to Slattery Night Fever, the new weekend impro night featuring ex-Whose Line Is It Anyway? man Tony, I read two old interviews with its star. One was from 15 years ago, when Slattery was just emerging, it seemed, from a breakdown that derailed his career. The other was from this summer, when he ventured back to the Edinburgh fringe with the Whose Line Is It? team. In each instance, the interviewer wrote about being reduced to tears by how low Slattery fell – and by his resilience. I’d not quite registered the extent of his difficulties – with mental health, drugs, alcohol. The lurid stories Slattery has to tell – chucking his possessions into the Thames, lying naked under a car, being bitten by rats – almost beggar belief.

Anarchy at the ice rink: when comedy, theatre and nonsense collide

October 11, 2017TheGuardian

Tony Law is going where no comic has gone before: staging a play about global warming – on ice. Our writer gets his skates on and crashes into a chaotic rehearsal

You might not guess it from looking at this bunch of brightly dressed characters, skating haphazardly around Alexandra Palace ice rink in London with an armchair in tow, but in just a few days they will attempt to put on what is surely a theatrical first: a two-hour comedy stage show on ice. About global warming. And Stalin.

“I don’t know what will happen, but it will 100% be entertaining,” says Adam Larter, the founding member of Weirdos Comedy Club, who wrote Tony Law and Friends in the Battle for Icetopia. That seems a safe bet: the project is a collaboration between Law – a cult figure on the alternative comedy circuit – and Weirdos, both of whom have form when it comes to anarchic, seat-of-your-pants live comedy. The former embarks on wild flights of time-travelling fantasy during his live shows, the latter built a cult audience through their annual charity pantos, which have tackled everything from feminist mermaids to war epics revolving around KFC’s Colonel Sanders.

One character is a combination of Phil Collins and Donald Trump, captured in foam form

Tim Minchin: ‘The world feels a bit post-jokes’

October 8, 2017TheGuardian

The comedian-composer on his children’s book, Australia’s same-sex marriage vote and why he’s glad to be leaving Hollywood

Australian composer and comedian Tim Minchin, 42, was born in Northampton but raised in his parents’ native Perth. After an award-winning comedy career, he wrote the music and lyrics for the Royal Shakespeare Company’s global hit musical Matilda, followed by the stage musical adaptation of Groundhog Day. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife, Sarah, a social worker, and their two children.

Tell us about your new children’s book, When I Grow Up, which is based on the lyrics of the song from Matilda.
It’s awesome – I didn’t even have to do anything [laughs]. That’s the incredible thing about Matilda, it keeps manifesting itself in different ways. It’s profoundly gratifying to have something else beautiful put into the world that was sparked by something you wrote eight years ago.

In a global world, nationalism is a fantasy and it’s poison. It used to be appropriate but it’s not any more

Angels and demons: the unmissable theatre, comedy and dance of autumn 2017

September 12, 2017TheGuardian

Hamilton hits London, Bryan Cranston’s news anchor goes berserk, Wayne McGregor turns his DNA into dance, Mae Martin revisits her teen addictions and Toyah Willcox is a time-travelling queen

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