Theatre – Page 65 – ComedyNews.Org :: Comedy News Organization

The 10 best things to do this week: Lovebox and Painting Pop

July 7, 2017TheGuardian

Frank Ocean tops the bill at the east London festival, while Abbot Hall in Cumbria celebrates Blake, Hockney, Boty and more

Dog-friendly screening
Dog lovers and fans of stop-motion animation rejoice! London’s Picturehouse Central is hosting a special dog-friendly (well-behaved canines only, please) screening of My Life As a Courgette on 9 July. Water bowls and blankets will be provided (for the dogs, obvs).
At Picturehouse Central, W1, 9 July

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

‘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.

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

TJ & Dave review – wizards of improv conjure a comedy gem

April 12, 2017TheGuardian

Soho theatre, London
The Chicago pair show they are masters of their art with an off-the-cuff performance that is as poignant and sharply observed as any scripted show

Most writers and comics spend months – even years – honing scripts and refining gags. Chicago improvisers TJ Jagodowski and David Pasquesi make mincemeat of all that, plucking from thin air a one-act, multi-character play that is as funny, shrewdly observed and emotionally complex as many a slaved-over work. Right up there with the best of the Pajama Men and Improbable Theatre, they really are Zen masters of their art. I found their unshowy and beadily intelligent improv blissful to watch.

There are no frills, gimmicks or audience participation, just two middle-aged men building a story detail by extemporised detail. It begins with two office workers wondering at the late arrival of a third. One of them wears a new watch, bequeathed by his dead dad; the other, touched, spontaneously phones his own father. On these bare bones, fragments of a tale are fleshed out, in which an elderly couple fret about macaroni etiquette, a 7-Eleven attendant kvetches about his uncle Marcel, and a driver with blood spattered across the grill of his car “has no idea if it was a kid or a raccoon”.

Whoopi Goldberg to Secret Cinema: top things to do in the UK this week

February 10, 2017TheGuardian

From the actor’s rarely seen character comedy to an immersive version of Moulin Rouge: your at-a-glance guide to the best in culture

Whoopi Goldberg
A brilliant one-off: the award-winning actor brings two performances of her character comedy to the London Palladium for the first time on Saturday 11 February. Her standup deals in alter-egos, so expect to meet Fontaine the career dope-smoker or Lurleen the southern matriarch.
At London Palladium, W1

Silver Lining review – witty lines can’t save Sandi Toksvig’s care-home comedy

February 9, 2017TheGuardian

Rose theatre, Kingston
Toksvig’s play has plenty of good gags but there’s far too little characterisation, leaving an experienced ensemble treading water

Sandi Toksvig’s new comedy, set in a retirement home during a flood, puts five older women firmly centre stage. That should be something to cheer about: but in order to win itself a feelgood ending, Silver Lining plays to the stereotype that these women are useless old biddies whose stunted lives are far behind them, and who now exist in the stultifying limbo of the care home, protected from a terrifying outside world of technological, social and cultural change.

Silver Lining review – witty lines can’t save Sandi Toksvig’s care-home comedy

February 9, 2017TheGuardian

Rose theatre, Kingston
Toksvig’s play has plenty of good gags but there’s far too little characterisation, leaving an experienced ensemble treading water

Sandi Toksvig’s new comedy, set in a retirement home during a flood, puts five older women firmly centre stage. That should be something to cheer about: but in order to win itself a feelgood ending, Silver Lining plays to the stereotype that these women are useless old biddies whose stunted lives are far behind them, and who now exist in the stultifying limbo of the care home, protected from a terrifying outside world of technological, social and cultural change.

Still Game: Live 2 review – hilarity ahoy as the TV sitcom takes a sea cruise

February 5, 2017TheGuardian

SSE Hydro, Glasgow
Ford Kiernan and Greg Hemphill return to the stage with an even more ambitious live show – and just as many laughs

When does a sitcom get too big for its boots? It’s a worry that must have crossed the minds of Ford Kiernan and Greg Hemphill on returning to the hangar-like Hydro where, in 2014, Still Game played to 210,000 people in 21 nights.

There’s something surreal about seeing the TV escapades of Jack and Victor in a venue where bouncers guard the stage and the audience needs two giant screens just to see what’s happening. Undaunted, they’ve come back with a show of even greater ambition – and just as many laughs.

Get ready, here I come: 20 talents set to take 2017 by storm

January 7, 2017TheGuardian

The singer who stunned Pharrell, the writer to rival Pynchon, the son of a stone carver making art out of his body … we choose 20 names to watch in stage, film, books, art, design, music and TV

More on the unmissable culture of 2017

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