TheGuardian – Page 221 – ComedyNews.Org :: Comedy News Organization

Amy Schumer: ‘I’m not invincible. I need to slow down’

April 22, 2018TheGuardian

Outrageously rude and shockingly funny, Amy Schumer has always made her audiences gasp. She talks to Sophie Heawood about falling in love, one-night stands and going nuts on stage

When I meet Amy Schumer, she has been married for exactly one month and is working on a joke about her husband’s penis. Something along the lines of, my husband is uncircumcised – for now. She had jotted it down on the Notes app on her iPhone, where she keeps a lot of ideas, but it duplicated the note five times “so now it looks like I really have plans to mutilate him,” she says.

She then admits that she actually first used that line about another man she used to date, “but you have to update it so it’s about the person you’re with now. And really, my husband is good, he can keep everything he has. At this point in my life, I’m cool with foreskin or not – God bless everyone and their penii,” she says, breezily, as if she might have exhausted herself by creating a persona who is supposed to care so much.

I think we should see more – I’m not letting them retouch me in the film

What the kids are just realising is that the adults are not actually in control

Arnab Chanda: ‘I cried when I saw Steve Martin live’

April 20, 2018TheGuardian

The actor, writer and standup on the things that make him laugh the most

American comedian Dr Brown [Phil Burgers]. And I cried when I saw Steve Martin touring with his bluegrass band because I’m a baby and he’s my hero.

Iliza Shlesinger review – dating, mating and crass Mars/Venus cliches

April 18, 2018TheGuardian

Queen Elizabeth Hall, London
The US comic has charisma and craft but reinforces gender stereotypes with cartoonish vigour in a set that falls flat

Iliza Shlesinger raised hackles last summer when she criticised other female comics for their “low-hanging fruit” material. It is hard not to recall that with a wry smile when watching this London date, which is almost exclusively dedicated to comedy of the “men do this, women do that” variety. And what women do, it seems, is ensnare men. We’re told this with charisma and craft on Shlesinger’s part, and there are decent jokes. But the gender essentialism gets wearing.

The US comedian starts by mentioning her recent engagement – which some worry will compromise her comedy, focused as it is on the single life. Perhaps by way of a last hurrah, she intensifies that focus tonight. Minus the final 10 minutes, the show is all about the dating and mating game. In which, apparently, men are lions and women gazelles. Men are physical, women verbal. Men are built for rejection, and women can’t handle it. No one ever lost an audience by reinforcing stereotypes, but for many of us residing in the 21stcentury (and certainly those who’ve seen Sara Pascoe taking these cliches to task), this stuff rings increasingly 2D.

Marc Maron review – a curious brew of swagger and self-loathing

April 17, 2018TheGuardian

Royal Festival Hall, London
The laidback raconteur gets political and personal with riffs on everything from the US vice-president to PG Tips

‘I don’t believe people’s joy,” says Marc Maron. It’s just a word we give, he says, to momentary distractions from self-hate. He gets a cheer for that, and welcomes it: “That’s my audience!” Maron has one of the most devoted followings in world comedy, even if it wasn’t his comedy that attracted them. He’s most famous for his WTF podcast, a nine-year, 900-episode series of substantial interviews with subjects ranging from Louis CK to Robin Williams, Barack Obama to recent guest Jennifer Lawrence. As in his podcast, so in his comedy, Maron trades in emotional and psychological intimacy – the difference being that on stage, his subject is (more explicitly) himself.

They’re laidback affairs, his stage shows. He sits – tonight, on a high stool that he doesn’t trust. He tells us stories about his neurotic, pessimistic life. And he stops often to deconstruct what he’s just said or done, to make public the voice fretting away inside his head. He’d rather be honest than slickly funny, although usually he’s perfectly capable of being both.

Mo Gilligan review – newfound star flexes his character-comedy chops

April 16, 2018TheGuardian

Leicester Square theatre, London
The south Londoner’s hit character sketches transfer smoothly from social media to the comedy club in this crowd-pleasing show

It’s been a big year for south London comic Mo Gilligan. Twelve months ago, he was selling jeans. Now, he’s playing the Albert Hall, Drake quotes his catchphrases – and he has sold out 22 nights at Leicester Square theatre. It all seems out of proportion to the cheerful amateurism of the online sketches that made Gilligan’s name. But there is no denying he’s equipped for this level of success: his show Coupla Cans is a good-time 90 minutes, showcasing an act with formidable character-comedy chops and a lovely ease and confidence.

The material is cosily familiar, but he brings it to smooth, sparkling life, always sharing in the amusement he generates. The set pieces are usually role plays (the family wedding; the girls’ night out; the school classroom), with Gilligan inhabiting many of the characters who populate his online work. (Different Type of Grime MCs; Types of Girls in a Club, etc.) The social rituals of young black Britons are laid bare as couples wine to bashment music. Another section finds schoolboy Mo ineptly stealing “ice poles” from under his authoritarian mum’s nose.

Comic delivery: Josie Long and Jonny Donahoe on having a baby

April 15, 2018TheGuardian

Just a month before their first child is due, the standup couple are doing a show together – seeking the audience’s parenting tips

“It’s mad,” says Josie Long, “but it feels like the right thing to do.” Braving the blustery weather at a pavement cafe near their east London home, Long and fellow comedian Jonny Donahoe are discussing their unlikely new project, which enjoys its first and only UK performance next week. For Josie Long and Jonny Donahoe Are Having a Baby (With You), the couple take to the stage to chat, joke and desperately seek advice on the imminent arrival of their first child. They’re taking one of the most intimate experiences a couple can have, and making it public when Long is eight months pregnant – heavy, exhausted and, she says, “physically vulnerable”. What are they thinking?

This isn’t the first time the couple have smudged the line between art and life. Long is a revered art-comic, activist and queen of indie standup; Donahoe is one half of bluesy lefty musical act Jonny and the Baptists. They met when she saw him perform the acclaimed solo theatre show Every Brilliant Thing. Impressed, she invited him to co-author a new project together – about a couple falling in love. “The plan was to have intimate conversations with each other,” says Long, “a very vulnerable writing process, and what came out of it would be very unusual.” But a few months in, both parties were deeply confused. “I remember saying to [the comic] Bridget Christie, ‘I think we might be in love with each other. But it might not be real, it might just be for the show’,” Long remembers. “And she was like: ‘Fuck the show! What do you want, a show or a baby?’ And I was like: I want a baby!”

Tiff Stevenson: ‘I looked like a giant tampon’

April 13, 2018TheGuardian

The standup and actor spills the beans on the things that make her laugh the most, from Wanda Sykes to magic mushrooms

White People Are Looking – Wanda Sykes’s bit on being black after Obama got in – is pretty transcendental.

Lil Dicky and the truth about comedy rap – it’s tricky!

April 13, 2018TheGuardian

Comedy rapper Lil Dicky has reached No 1, adding to successes such as Big Shaq and the Lonely Island. But as Honey G’s example shows, doing funny rhymes right takes sophistication

‘He’s not like a ‘rapper’ rapper,” the guy in the restaurant explains to his unimpressed girlfriend. “He’s like a ‘funny’ rapper.”

Those two statements – true and open to debate respectively – are from the opening scene of the video to Lil Dicky’s Freaky Friday, which is this week’s UK No 1 single, and which on Monday crossed 100m YouTube views, and will soon join its thriftiness-espousing predecessor $ave Dat Money in passing the same number of Spotify plays.

Lil Dicky and the truth about comedy rap – it’s tricky!

April 13, 2018TheGuardian

Comedy rapper Lil Dicky has reached No 1, adding to successes such as Big Shaq and the Lonely Island. But as Honey G’s example shows, doing funny rhymes right takes sophistication

‘He’s not like a ‘rapper’ rapper,” the guy in the restaurant explains to his unimpressed girlfriend. “He’s like a ‘funny’ rapper.”

Those two statements – true and open to debate respectively – are from the opening scene of the video to Lil Dicky’s Freaky Friday, which is this week’s UK No 1 single, and which on Monday crossed 100m YouTube views, and will soon join its thriftiness-espousing predecessor $ave Dat Money in passing the same number of Spotify plays.

Tom Allen review – quick-witted master of the nonstop rant

April 12, 2018TheGuardian

Soho theatre, London
Allen’s amiable routines about gay and working-class stereotyping foreground his abundant skills as a raconteur

If Tom Allen weren’t already hosting a primetime Saturday night TV show, you’d have to invent one for him. Thirteen years a standup, the Bromley man deploys a similar old-school, unthreatening camp and faux-imperious manner that Larry Grayson brought to The Generation Game. It’s a crowdpleasing combination and Allen wears it as elegantly as his soigné three-piece tweed suit. Now a host (one of several) on BBC1’s new prank-the-public gameshow Ready or Not, Allen is still touring his 2017 show Absolutely, itself a well-honed nugget of light entertainment and now running for a fortnight at Soho theatre, before another series of dates in July.

You leave wholly persuaded by Allen’s skills as an entertainer – even if he sometimes has to flog them hard to sell so-so material. He starts by setting out his stall. A chat with punters in the front row establishes his quick wit and his egoism; he feigns exhaustion with talking about anything but himself. He gives an account of his stage manner: posh voice but coarse background, and unapologetically fey. “I’ve finally made it as a gay stereotype!” There’s nothing simpering about Allen, mind you: he practically barks the opening 10 minutes of material and throughout, his voice is deployed – now singsong, now stentorian – very adroitly as a comic instrument.

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