Vault festival 2020: comedy and theatre shows to see

London’s eight-week underground arts fest returns to Waterloo and the South Bank in January. Here’s a dozen picks to get started …James McNicholas: The Boxer30-31 JanuaryThe former Beasts sketch comic should have been a contender for the 2019 Edinburgh…

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Pull the other one! Top 10 modern Christmas cracker jokes revealed

TV channel Gold announces the winners in a national competition for topical festive gags – can you do any better?What do Donald Trump, Santa and Olivia Colman have in common? No, it’s not a joke – but all three feature in the winning gags of a national…

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Ardal O’Hanlon: ‘Comedy never used to be a career – it was for slackers with ukuleles’

The star of Father Ted and Death in Paradise on his ‘unstable’ personality, his revealing new standup show – and the terrifying bomb scare he endured as a childArdal O’Hanlon is too embarrassed to have his picture taken in the restaurant where we’ve ju…

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Boulevard theatre, London’s new Soho venue, announces first shows

State-of-the-art West End theatre opens its doors with a season including plays by Cormac McCarthy and Lucy PrebbleA “novel in dramatic form” by Cormac McCarthy, a revival of Lucy Prebble’s The Effect and dramas directed by Kathy Burke and Yaël Farber …

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Eddie Izzard review – would-be MP’s ‘last’ standup show

Brighton DomeWunderbar is packed with surreal sugar – delightful animals and gobbledegook – but the pill of messianic politics is hard to swallow‘This is my last tour before politics,” says Eddie Izzard, who plans to stand as an MP at the next election…

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David Mitchell and Ben Elton’s Upstart Crow sitcom to become stage show

Comedian will make his West End stage debut as Shakespeare in comedy adaptation promising troubles, twins and a dancing bearBen Elton’s sitcom Upstart Crow, which imagines the beleaguered personal and professional lives of a floridly loquacious William…

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Richard Gadd on his stalker: ‘It would be unfair to say she was awful and I’m a victim’

The soul-baring comedian has turned his experience of being stalked into a gripping piece of theatre, Baby ReindeerIt had all ended so well. When Richard Gadd won the Edinburgh Comedy award three years ago with Monkey See Monkey Do, it wasn’t just a pr…

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Cracked actor: stage stars review Boris Johnson’s debut as PM

Impressionist Jon Culshaw, playwright James Graham, comedian Bridget Christie and critic Mark Lawson on the prime minister’s opening week in WestminsterI’ve been doing Boris impressions ever since he emerged as Boris the Menace in Private Eye. He stuck…

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From call centre worker … to top comedian on the Edinburgh fringe

‘Convention-busting’ Jordan Brookes steals the show at the most gender-balanced line-up in the event’s historyComedian Jordan Brookes yesterday scooped the top comedy award at Edinburgh fringe. His experimental, convention-busting show I’ve Got Nothing…

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Jordan Brookes is disturbingly funny – and a worthy Edinburgh Comedy awards champ

Brookes has won the biggest prize in live comedy, with Catherine Cohen named best newcomer and Jessica Brough recognised for her Fringe of Colour projectThe Edinburgh Comedy award has found itself another deserving winner in Jordan Brookes, who has bag…

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