TheGuardian – Page 234 – ComedyNews.Org :: Comedy News Organization

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.

Tim Minchin: ‘If you ask Mum who was the most trouble, she’d say it was me’

October 27, 2017TheGuardian

The comedian, actor and musician on being part of a strong, close family, his parents’ high expectations, and discovering he could write good riffs

My granddad had a 1,500-acre hobby farm that he had built up from scratch in Western Australia, so my siblings and I spent our childhoods going there a lot. That place – and the beach – was a huge part of our lives. I would define myself as someone who had a completely idyllic childhood. Except, of course, that childhood’s complicated!

I was the middle of three children and then the second of four kids when my little sister came along, when I was 10. We all got along, and were expected to do so. We had periods of arguing, but it is a real privilege being part of a gang. I guess that is something I worry about with my kids – that there are only two of them [Minchin and his wife, Sarah, have two children, Violet, 11, and Caspar, eight]. We kids did a lot together, so we never found a reason to reject each other’s choices. I guess it is an affirmation of our relationships – why wouldn’t we want to be with each other?

Related: Tim Minchin: My life as a dad

With the piano, I had that insatiable need to prove myself

Frank Skinner’s impro odyssey: should we expect more for a fiver?

October 27, 2017TheGuardian

The master comedian’s off-the-cuff routine gets more laughs than most scripted standup. But he’s hardly breaking sweat. Will Skinner ever pull out all the stops?

Is Frank Skinner a restless standup comedian, or a lazy one? Since he returned to live shows a decade ago, he’s tried on a few guises. His 2013 show Man in a Suit promised a new, more sophisticated Skinner. Before that, a Credit Crunch Cabaret in the West End cast him as an old-school variety MC. Now, aged 60, he’s embarking on his third stint at Soho theatre in The Man With No Show, for which he steps on stage without a script and improvises an hour’s worth of standup.

He’s expert at including us in his thought processes: the self-delight at a gag nailed

Nathan Caton review – a cosy cruise down the middle of the road

October 25, 2017TheGuardian

Soho theatre, London
The charmingly self-mocking standup is not short of decent gags but appears almost devoid of strong opinions. He may not offend but he certainly exasperates

What do you want your comedy to deliver? Laughs, in the first instance – and sometime Live at the Apollo man Nathan Caton can be relied upon to deliver them. He’s got a winning laid-back manner and a handful of solidly constructed set-pieces to which few could take exception. But I’d welcome a little more creative ambition. Caton’s topics, personality and opinions are all unexceptional. I’m not trying to offend anyone, he repeatedly assures us – to which the only response is: more’s the pity.

That’s not to say comedy has to be outspoken, just that Caton is too attached to the middle of the road. Never more so than when, midway through the show, he talks politics. Others may get less frustrated than I do by his “they’re all as bad as each other” perspective, or his lamely apolitical joke about cherry-picking the best of what each party has to give. But there’s no forgiving the weakness of gags such as the one about Boris Johnson being “the political equivalent of Mr Bean”. (On the UK’s most joked-about man, we’ve a right to expect better than that.) Elsewhere, a section on Caton’s recent house move leans on cosy class cliches about cardigans and The Archers.

It’s business time as Flight of the Conchords announce UK tour

October 24, 2017TheGuardian

Musical comedy duo Bret McKenzie and Jemaine Clement reunite for a string of live dates after solo roles in Hollywood and on TV

OK, band meeting! The Flight of the Conchords have announced that they are preparing to tour the UK and Ireland. The musical comedy duo, comprising Bret McKenzie and Jemaine Clement, will be dusting down classics such as Hiphopopotamus v Rhymenoceros, Foux du Fafa and Business Time for a string of dates starting at the Hammersmith Apollo, London, in April 2018.

McKenzie and Clement met at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand and began to play genre-mashing spoof songs at fringe nights, gaining an international audience with their award-winning set at the Edinburgh festival in 2002. The following year they returned to Edinburgh and played the Gilded Balloon, where their show High on Folk was heralded by the Guardian as a “late-night gem”. After recording a BBC radio series and winning a Grammy for best comedy album, they made two seasons of an Emmy-nominated TV series for HBO, charting the band’s attempts to break America.

Remembering Sean Hughes: ‘The sadness is he didn’t get to be old, just lonely’

October 19, 2017TheGuardian

Since his death, a complicated picture of the comedian has emerged. We were friends at the height of his fame and I saw his cruelty first hand. Others say that he later changed, before his drinking spiralled out of control

Carl Donnelly was driving on Monday morning when his phone rang. He could not pick up, but when he saw who had called – someone who was friends with him and Sean Hughes – he guessed what was coming. He called back and learned that Hughes, just 51 years old, had been picked up from his home by an ambulance on Sunday night. On the way to hospital he went into cardiac arrest. He died shortly afterwards. It transpired that he was also suffering from cirrhosis of the liver.

Related: Sean Hughes obituary

We were honest with each other and listened to one another’s insecurities continually. He was very open with me

In the last year, since his mum died, the drinking spiralled. It was horrible. We’d speak at 10am and he’d be pissed

Ivo Graham: Educated Guess review – Eton schooldays and leftie laughs

October 18, 2017TheGuardian

Soho theatre, London
There’s plenty to admire in Graham’s new show, including a teenage appearance on The Weakest Link and a fresh-minted routine about the £1 coin

‘Push the envelope, but don’t lose sight of the envelope.” Ivo Graham’s show is full of nifty coinages sending up his own restraint. “This maverick,” he’ll call himself, before telling us the seat-of-the-pants tale of how he left renewing his Young Person’s Railcard till the last possible moment. It’s funny – but might be more so were he not a mite restrained on stage too. Transferring from the Edinburgh fringe, Educated Guess is a strong show, but the longer it goes on, the more I wanted Graham to unzip the burbling, punctilious persona, unshackle from the script – and lose sight of the envelope entirely.

Sean Hughes imagines his death: ‘I know how boring funerals can be’

October 17, 2017TheGuardian

In a poem that has been widely shared by fans after his death, the comic thinks of his ashes being scattered in a bar – and getting a mention in the Guardian

‘Charming, soulful, a proper comic’: Sean Hughes tributes

I want to be cremated

‘Charming, soulful, a proper comic’: Sean Hughes tributes – and his funniest jokes

October 16, 2017TheGuardian

By his mid-20s he had scooped the Perrier award and landed his own TV show. But Sean Hughes never wanted to be a stadium standup. Mark Steel and Rhona Cameron pay tribute to a troubled talent – and we pick some of his best gags

I knew Sean from before he won the Perrier award in 1990. He was a Crystal Palace fan and we used to go to the football together. I remember going to a match with him in the early 90s, when he was on the telly quite a lot, and I took him down the pub with me. He was really warm with people and we ended up staying the evening. There was a genuine charm to him that was way beyond showbiz. He liked that world: being sat in the corner of a pub with a load of people who’d been at the football. Being funny with them but not in a show-off way.

Related: Sean Hughes obituary

Farewell to Sean Hughes, sparky comedy gadfly in a league of his own

October 16, 2017TheGuardian

From the bumbling misadventures of Sean’s Show to the jaunty misanthropy of his later standup material, Hughes – who has died aged 51 – was a master of telling messy truths

There were two distinct chapters to Sean Hughes’ career: the comedy prodigy and ubiquitous TV star, then – after a period of silence – the rumpled refusenik, a celebrity opt-out ploughing an ever grouchier (but just as funny) furrow along standup’s margins. Not many comics run away from commercial success, but at the turn of the century Hughes quit standup for several years. “I found myself playing 4,000-seater venues packed with 14-year-old girls screaming at me,” he said. “That wasn’t why I did comedy.”

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