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Dying Laughing review – savagely funny documentary about standup

June 16, 2017TheGuardian

Sarah Silverman, Jerry Seinfeld, Chris Rock, Stewart Lee, Garry Shandling and Victoria Wood feature in this film about the craft and catharsis of comedy

A murderer’s row of standup talent has been assembled for this documentary on the craft and catharsis of comedy. Chris Rock, Steve Coogan, Jerry Seinfeld, Sarah Silverman and Stewart Lee are among the many faces providing testimony to the euphoria and agony that telling jokes to a group of strangers can bring. The film is stronger on the latter point, with some savagely funny accounts of the many ways that comedians deal with hecklers, and one devastating account of a gig going horribly wrong.

The endless conveyor belt of talking heads does rather lose its lustre over time, and some actual standup would have been welcome, but there’s a dizzying amount of insight, not to mention a real poignancy to some of the contributors: including Garry Shandling and Victoria Wood, both of whom died in 2016.

The must-see standup of summer 2017: Daniel Kitson, Sara Pascoe, Rob Delaney and more

June 13, 2017TheGuardian

The star of Catastrophe brings carnality, the elusive Kitson attempts to ‘alter language’, Sara Pascoe goes dating, while Hannah Gadsby goes out with a bang

Penn and Teller
Las Vegas’s loss is Britain’s gain, as the veteran magic double-act return for UK tour. Publicity has focused on Penn Jillette’s relationship with the US president, with whom he worked on Celebrity Apprentice in 2012. “We wish we could make Trump disappear,” ran the headlines. That’s not, unfortunately, the prospectus for their new show, which should feature the usual impressive combination of jazzy set pieces hyped by Penn and tender conjuring vignettes by Teller.
• At Hammersmith Apollo, London, 20-25 June. Box office: 0844-249 4300.

Rob Delaney
When he first gigged in the UK, the American comic Rob Delaney was mainly famous for being funny on Twitter. Two years ago, cresting Channel 4’s hit show Catastrophe, he delivered a depraved (his word) standup show entitled Meat. This summer, that carnival of carnality is back.
• At Leicester Square theatre, London, 5-15 July. Box office: 020-7734 2222.

Tom Green: ‘It demystifies the presidency when you’ve had Trump scream in your face’

June 13, 2017TheGuardian

He was the original online prankster who married Drew Barrymore and got fired by Trump. As he returns to standup, he talks about not getting his dues – and where you draw the line in comedy

Tom Green has been rapped about by Eminem, fired by Donald Trump and married briefly to Drew Barrymore. He made an influential and outrageous MTV series (The Tom Green Show), as well as one of the most reviled films of all time (Freddy Got Fingered). He also documented his experience of testicular cancer in a TV special that didn’t blanch at the sight of the surgeon’s scalpel. And it is not merely a figure of speech to say that he has guts – millions of viewers have seen them, unpacked on the operating table during surgery to inspect his lymph nodes.

Sitting in a London bar, the 45-year-old, 6ft 2in Canadian comic is more contemplative than the manic, bug-eyed goofball who made his name in the 1990s. Back then, he blurred the line between pranks and performance art, prowling the streets with baguettes strapped to his head, addressing passing businessmen as “Mummy” or gyrating against roadkill. It was the roadkill stunt that earned him a namecheck from Eminem, who complained in The Real Slim Shady: “Sometimes I want to get on TV and just let loose, but can’t / But it’s cool for Tom Green to hump a dead moose.”

Related: Freddy Got Fingered

It can be a little frustrating not to get credit for what YouTube became

Comedians for Corbyn? They were keeping shtoom – or serenading Farage

June 9, 2017TheGuardian

Standup is supposedly a leftie haven. But from what I saw this week, the scene offered little support for the Labour leader – and, despite some droll insights, a lack of real debate

Where were you when you heard the exit poll? I was at a comedy show: Matt Forde’s Election Party Lock-In at Soho theatre in London, to be precise. The satirist, self-proclaimed Blairite and host of Dave TV’s Unspun had just canvassed his (all-white, all-male) politician panel for predictions, which ranged between a 45- and 75-seat Tory majority. Cut to David Dimbleby on the BBC live feed, the dropping of a political bombshell – and raucous delight and disbelief in this subterranean room. Comedy is about surprise, right? Here was a bigger shock than anyone present anticipated.

I spent the final week of the election campaign seeking out live political comedy. Away from the TV screens, able to be as current, candid and non-partisan as they pleased, what were comedians saying about May v Corbyn? One of the country’s most venerable political jokers is Andy Zaltzman, whose Bugle podcast enjoyed a rare live outing, also at Soho. The guest co-host when I attended was Nish Kumar: another fine social commentator, whose leftwing sympathies are usually clear – although at the Bugle I attended, no one was pinning colours to masts.

Sarah Kendall: ‘I once dreamed that I grew a penis and it was an arthritic finger’

June 9, 2017TheGuardian

The Aussie comic on the things that make her laugh the most, from tomatoes on toast to 30 Rock

My favourite would have to be Ellen DeGeneres’s HBO specials. She hugely influenced me when I first started because she made the whole thing look like a casual one-sided conversation.

Laugh a minute: Edinburgh festival’s 2017 comedy lineup

June 8, 2017TheGuardian

Sara Pascoe looks at life after a breakup, Trygve Wakenshaw brings his baby on stage, and Alexei Sayle, Ruby Wax and talkshow king Craig Ferguson all return to the fringe this year

In recent years, they’ve populated the shortlists of Edinburgh’s major comedy awards. Now they’re back in town with all-new shows to unleash on the world. The 2011 comedy award champ, Adam Riches, returns with what he’s calling – accurately enough, I’d guess – Inane Chicanery. The 2015 best newcomer, Sofie Hagen, and 2016 best show nominee Al Porter – both excellent comics – return with new sets. Then there’s one of the country’s smartest, most inquisitive – and funniest – acts, Sara Pascoe, back at the fringe after a year off, with a new show, LadsLadsLads, about life after a breakup. (Her ex, John Robins, addresses the same subject elsewhere in town …)

Aparna Nancherla review – shy standup shares disastrous dating stories

June 7, 2017TheGuardian

Soho theatre, London
The self-deprecating US comedian delivers a set littered with droll remarks about life in New York but the show is hamstrung by her unease

From Master of None to Inside Amy Schumer, Aparna Nancherla arrives in the UK with a trail of hip comedy credits in her wake and her show doesn’t stint on witty wisecracks and tart asides. If her UK debut doesn’t make the splash her pedigree promised, it’s because Nancherla is a weaker performer than she is a writer, and because her hour-long show feels like several short sets strung together, never stretching its wings to fill a larger format.

It doesn’t help that she puts herself on the back foot from the off: her opening line warns us her performance might be affected by jet lag. That is of a piece with Nancherla’s self-deprecating style: a sizeable chunk of the material deals with her introversion – why she never removes her coat at parties, say – and her lack of get-up-and-go. Some people have a “lust for life”, she tells us, setting up a choice joke about her own, less zealous relationship with existence.

Freak out! Reggie Watts on jamming with James Corden and tackling Trump with improv

June 7, 2017TheGuardian

The freestyle standup and bandleader on The Late Late Show is in London for a gig and has no idea what he’ll perform. Improv, he says, can free the mind – and maybe silliness can help save the world

Vocal artist, musician, beatboxer, actor, alt-comedian and now bandleader: it might be quicker to list the few things freaky American entertainer Reggie Watts doesn’t do. Best known now as the frontman of the house band on James Corden’s Late Late Show on CBS, Watts may be the best example of the theory (which I’ve just made up) that a person’s hair is the physical manifestation of their ideas escaping into the world. Watts twinkles at his audiences from behind a vast sashaying afro, and his imagination is just as unrestrained. “Creativity is such a natural part of who I am,” he tells me cheerfully, over salad in a London eatery. “I find it easy to tune into – as long as I’m listening and I can get out of my own way.”

Stuart Goldsmith: ‘The funniest thing? A toddler falling over at speed’

June 2, 2017TheGuardian

The Comedian’s Comedian host and comic on the things that make him laugh the most, from Arrested Development to the South Park movie

I saw Brian Gittins a few weeks ago and don’t think I’ve laughed harder in years and years. Absolute joyous idiocy.

David Sedaris: ‘There are things nobody wants to hear. But the disturbing things are great’

June 2, 2017TheGuardian

The dry-witted US essayist talks about how he went from working as an elf in Macy’s to becoming ‘the American Alan Bennett’

David Sedaris’s partner of 25 years, Hugh Hamrick, calls the first chunk of the essayist’s diaries, published under the title Theft By Finding, “David Copperfield Sedaris”. And it’s true, Sedaris concedes, the book – which covers the years from 1977, when he scribbled his first entries on the backs of coffee shop placemats while travelling around, to 2002 – has a certain rags-to-riches quality. In the second volume, on the other hand, “I just go from shopping at Paul Smith to shopping at Comme des Garçons, and I’m on airplanes all the time”. The thought prompts a memory of a recent plane trip, first class from Hawaii to Portland, Oregon. “This woman said, you are so lucky to be seated up front, it’s a great spot for people-watching. And I said, hmm, it could be, but we don’t really count you as people.” He bursts out laughing, and so do I, even though I know I oughtn’t. What on earth did she say? “She laughed, she knew I was kidding. Hugh was horrified. Horrified.”

There’s something about that one-liner that characterises Sedaris’s writing: a flash of directness, even brutality, that threatens the social veneer (especially in first class); the reassuring feeling that of course he’s kidding, with the faint background feeling, “but not entirely”; the spreading realisation that he’s getting at something far more complex about human nature, absurdity and awkwardness. “He’s like an American Alan Bennett,” says the quote (from this newspaper) on the back cover of Theft By Finding. Both writers occupy that space in which their subversiveness and caustic records of daily life run up against the foam blanket of “humour”, as if we can maximise the cuddliness and minimise the edge by focusing on the laughs.

And I said, could you close the door, please? And he shut the door in her face and I never saw her again

In the lanes of Sussex, he is known as the American who picks up the litter, for which he has a passionate hatred

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