This is a blast from start to finish. I haven't heard such screams of laughter since, well, the last Mischief production I saw! The Mind Manger is a crap magician dealing with his shitty home life, a tosspot stooge, and an audience full of idiots. Naturally, everything that can go wrong does go wrong. Imagine a very grumpy Tommy Cooper who despises his audience and, against all the evidence to the contrary, is convinced of his own mesmeric ability. It's a fully interactive show - the whole…
Continue reading →
"This is a show which rewards punctuality!" Thus spake Ross - they only comedian I know of who can successfully heckle his own audience, chastise himself for doing so, go on a twenty-minute segue about cancer-sniffing dogs, and then return (more-or-less) to where he started. It is exhausting to watch him prance around the stage, screaming at invisible interlocutors, and miming the painfully slow death of a slug being dehydrated by the tears dripping down the face of a crying man. At times he…
Continue reading →
Bill's back! Fresh from winning some dance show on linear-TV and ready to... well, do the same thing as he's been doing for years. Rambling tales, dozens of instruments, innovative tech, and a charming whimsy - undercut with, perhaps, a little more darkness than usual. It is a classic, if unsurprising gig. There's an odd segue into Pachelbel's Canon - material which has been mined to extinction by a dozen other musical comedians - but Bill manages to find something new in it. Just about. The…
Continue reading →
This play is exhausting. It is an absolutely relentless comedy. I don't mean a few scattered laughs, I mean a full-on assault on your comedy nerves. It starts as a high-energy farce and escalates and escalates and escalates until you can't trust your senses any more. If you're unfamiliar with the plot - as I was - it's a remake of a 1970s piece of agit-prop theatre in which the death of a suspect in police custody is investigated. The titular Anarchist died after falling from a 4th floor…
Continue reading →
It's always slightly weird when entertainment transfers from one medium to another. The actors on stage never look like the characters you imagined when you read the book. A prog-rock concept album loses its grandeur when transferred to 27 part Netflix series. And the subversive intent of the comic book is neutered to make a blockbuster movie. So what happens when a hit radio show is transformed into a West End Spectacular? Magic! Radio 4's Bleak Expectations always surpassed other radio c…
Continue reading →
I finished watching Frasier over lockdown - the miserable tale of a self-destructive incel - and decided to continue watching old American sitcoms. I thought Cheers was a hellish dystopia populated with malicious tormentors. So now on to M*A*S*H. It's hailed as a masterpiece of comedy. But, really, it's an exercise in military propaganda. The first season is genuinely hilarious and, at times, moving. But there's no disguising just how fun it makes war look. Imagine being so vital to the war…
Continue reading →
I've never heard such whooping and hollering from a Bloomsbury Theatre audience. When Rachel Bloom prances on to the stage it is like seeing a revivalist preacher work the faithful. It would have been so easy for Bloom to rest on her laurels and give a "best of Bloom" revue - the crowd would have lapped it up. But, instead, she puts in the hard work to make something new and incredible. Because Rachel Bloom is a fucking professional. All comedy shows for the foreseeable future are going to be…
Continue reading →
After spending 2020 watching every episode of Frasier, we thought we'd binge watch its predecessor sitcom "Cheers". It's a tough watch. It obeys all the familiar tropes of a sitcom - a static location, characters drawn in broad strokes, and whacky banter. On paper, it's great. But on screen... Look, let's get this out of the way - Cheers is pretty funny! We're only on the first 3 seasons, but each episode has a strong comic plot, plenty of chuckles, and general mayhem. Sure, a few of the…
Continue reading →
(This was written in response to a Reddit question. Lots of people seemed to like my answer, so I thought I'd re-blog it. I think the asker was expecting answers like "1980s - Young Ones, Red Dwarf, etc" - but I decided to answer it in a slightly different way.) When you were about 14. Everything in comedy seems new to you. You start to understand some of the more sophisticated jokes - and the ruder ones. The call-backs to things that you saw as a kid seem incredibly edgy and help you feel…
Continue reading →
When carefree Nyles and reluctant maid of honour Sarah have a chance encounter at a Palm Springs wedding, things get complicated as they are unable to escape the venue, themselves, or each other. It's almost impossible to review this movie without giving away the twists and turns that it takes. Just know that it is deeply funny in unexpected ways. It stars the cop from the TV sitcom and the mom from HIMYM (look, just accept that they play the same characters) and has a bunch of "Oh!…
Continue reading →
In today's edition of "All My Faves Are Problematic..." I was re-watching Life of Brian for the umpteenth time, when I suddenly felt uncomfortable. You can probably recite this scene from memory: REG: What's the point of fighting for his right to have babies when he can't have babies?! FRANCIS: It is symbolic of our struggle against oppression. REG: Symbolic of his struggle against reality. It feels a bit... Well... Grim. In 2020 it kinda reeks of transphobia. Lots of people on the…
Continue reading →
Welcome to 97-hour weeks. Welcome to life and death decisions. Welcome to a constant tsunami of bodily fluids. Welcome to earning less than the hospital parking meter. Wave goodbye to your friends and relationships... Welcome to the life of a junior doctor. I saw Kay perform his delightfully disgusting parody songs on the Amateur Transplants tour way back in 2008. The humour in this book is much the same - bodily fluids, a healthy disregard for squeamishness, and some big-and-clever s…
Continue reading →
