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Henning Wehn review – Brit-baiting banter from Germany’s comedy ambassador

March 31, 2017TheGuardian

Leicester Square theatre, London
In his upbeat new show, Westphalia Is Not an Option, the playful standup tackles the EU referendum result

In the age of Brexit, is self-styled German comedy ambassador Henning Wehn an immigrant, a Londoner, or both? “I woke up on 24 June thinking, ‘Cor, blimey!’,” he says, setting the sly tone for a show – Westphalia Is Not an Option – that is determined to disrupt simplistic definitions of what an immigrant is and isn’t.

Wehn never considered himself one, he says, partly (cue supercilious smirk) because the word immigration implies a step up in the world. There are plenty of trademark mocking gags about Britain’s inferiority to his home country, including an old Wehn favourite about our non-German tendency to self-deprecation, and another marvelling at British buildings’ external plumbing.

Sammy J: the Phantom may be a dud superhero – but he changed my life

March 28, 2017TheGuardian

A chance encounter set off a chain of events that led to me meeting my wife and ended with police searching my attic

I should have picked Batman. Or Superman. Or the X-Men.

Pretty much any other superhero would have been cooler than the Phantom. In fact, I’m not even sure that “superhero” is the correct label, given his lack of super powers. All he had was a wolf, a horse and a skull ring which he punched his enemies with.

Andy Parsons review – punchline king makes the world more bearable

March 27, 2017TheGuardian

Nuffield, Southampton
Parsons’ cynicism about comedy’s transformative potential doesn’t stop him impaling his political targets with some smart barbs

Satire has minimal effect, Andy Parsons tells us in his touring show Peak Bullshit. Jokes don’t change anything. It’s a deflating sentiment to express midway through a satirical show. Whether or not political comedy will ever precipitate the revolution, I prefer my satirists to look as if they’re giving it a try.

Tez Ilyas review – clever comedy about British National Pakistani life

March 23, 2017TheGuardian

Soho theatre, London
Light-hearted but trenchant, Ilyas’s show Made in Britain keeps the audience on their toes as he focuses on what unites, rather than divides us

After the EU referendum result, says Tez Ilyas, conversations about race and identity need to take place. Hence his current show, Made in Britain, which stakes a light-hearted but trenchant claim for the Britishness of his “BNP” – British National Pakistani – life so far. Ilyas is a cheeky chappie from Blackburn, more Opportunity Knocks than op-ed, and his show can easily be enjoyed as perky comedy. But he doesn’t soft-soap his indignation that some would consider him, and people like him, insufficiently British – and his show makes a persuasive counter-argument, thanks in part to its peaceable good humour in the face of such provocation.

A balance is adroitly struck from the off between ingratiating himself, and playing up his supposed difference. The opening routine, about the N-word, defuses tension by asserting his own, very British angst about political correctness, then follows up with some larky dancing to south Asian music. A later neat joke finds him struggling to remember the approved current terminology for white people; another – finding common cause with his likely audience, then instantly “othering” himself – tells us that: “Personally, I voted to remain in the European caliphate.”

An audience volunteer tells our British-Pakistani host that in the US he’d likely get described as Indian

If you think dating is hard enough, try being a female comedian | Nikki Britton

March 22, 2017TheGuardian

The choice to go into comedy coincided with the sharp descent of Nikki Britton’s love life. Here, she examines why

As I sit here alone on a Sunday night, hairy-legged and bloated, typing the words “hairy-legged and bloated”, it dawns on me that sharing, or oversharing, might be part of the reason why – when it comes to a successful dating career – I am far from an oracle.

When I was asked to write a comment piece about dating, I thought it was a joke. Which made sense as I am in the business of cracking them. “Dating as a female comedian,” they clarified – a piece tied to my new comedy show. “Share with our readers what it’s like.”

On the plus side, if a guy turns out to be a jerk, revenge comedy is deeply satisfying

Desiree Burch review – stellar standup set about racism, sex and self-esteem

March 21, 2017TheGuardian

Soho theatre, London
The US standup takes a bull-in-a-china-shop approach to social anthropology – and riffs on the horrors of sleeping with someone born in the 90s

American comedian and theatre-maker Desiree Burch won the Funny Women award two years ago, then bagged a Poster award at the Edinburgh fringe by representing her own face as a collage of penises. This is the show in question, of which her “dick pic” material comprises, if you will, a small part. But Burch ranges widely across the landscape of racism, sex, family and her own autobiography. It feels like a lifetime of material crammed into one show, enough of which is insightful and heartfelt to make This Is Evolution a compelling 75 minutes.

It helps that Burch has ample charisma and a pleasingly bull-in-a-china-shop approach to social anthropology. She starts by reclaiming the word “fat”, joking about her size, and our discomfort at her doing so. That doesn’t feel confrontational: Burch is our friend, not our aggressor. She is eager to share, her easy amusement puncturing anxiety around routines about the “remedial racism” of the Brits, say, or women trying to outdo one another’s low self-esteem.

Desiree Burch review – stellar standup set about racism, sex and self-esteem

March 21, 2017TheGuardian

Soho theatre, London
The US standup takes a bull-in-a-china-shop approach to social anthropology – and riffs on the horrors of sleeping with someone born in the 90s

American comedian and theatre-maker Desiree Burch won the Funny Women award two years ago, then bagged a Poster award at the Edinburgh fringe by representing her own face as a collage of penises. This is the show in question, of which her “dick pic” material comprises, if you will, a small part. But Burch ranges widely across the landscape of racism, sex, family and her own autobiography. It feels like a lifetime of material crammed into one show, enough of which is insightful and heartfelt to make This Is Evolution a compelling 75 minutes.

It helps that Burch has ample charisma and a pleasingly bull-in-a-china-shop approach to social anthropology. She starts by reclaiming the word “fat”, joking about her size, and our discomfort at her doing so. That doesn’t feel confrontational: Burch is our friend, not our aggressor. She is eager to share, her easy amusement puncturing anxiety around routines about the “remedial racism” of the Brits, say, or women trying to outdo one another’s low self-esteem.

Lucy Porter review – comic is an honest tour guide to middle age

March 16, 2017TheGuardian

Soho theatre, London
The standup’s letter to her teenage self prompts some fine routines about maturity, parenthood and suburban living

There are only three types of standup show, jokes Lucy Porter, and one of them addresses midlife crisis. Et voila! – her new set Consequences is structured around a letter Porter was invited to write to her 16-year-old self, which triggers droll thoughts on how life changes when you’re fortysomething, married with kids and living in a Zone 5 suburban idyll. If its defence of mature quietude (“It’s good to become more pragmatic”) doesn’t exactly quicken the heartbeat, this remains an endearing hour, with Porter a more thoughtful tour guide to middle age than many who got there before her.

It takes time to warm up, as Porter acquaints us with her new life: invisible to lecherous van drivers, bearing no resemblance to her children (“I’ve been ethnically cleansed from my own bloodline”), married to an actor who keeps playing wife-killers. It’s diverting enough, even if Porter delivers much of it with her eyes fixed firmly on the middle distance.

Help! We’re trapped in an American sitcom – exclusive Comic Relief video

March 16, 2017TheGuardian

In Flatshare, created by the comedy sketch trio Massive Dad for Comic Relief, two mates walk into the world of a US sitcom, complete with canned laughter. The sketch is part of the Comic Relief Originals series to mark Red Nose Day on 24 March. Flatsha…

Ricky Gervais’s transgender jokes show we’re all in a kind of transition

March 14, 2017TheGuardian

The comic has been accused of transphobia after riffing about Caitlyn Jenner in his standup show. So does giving him a favourable review endorse those gags?

Ricky Gervais sometimes gets people’s backs up and so, it transpires, do reviewerswho write about him. “B4 you write another @guardian review endorsing jokes about #trans people,” I was advised on Twitter after covering Gervais’s recent show, “please consider the impact.” Gervais dedicates a section of his show Humanity to jokes about (specifically) Caitlyn Jenner but also, by sly association, the idea of transgendering more widely. “If I say I’m a chimp, I am a chimp,” one riff begins, as Gervais makes merry with the culture of identity as self-assertion – and scores dependable laughs with rudimentary monkey business too.

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