I'll admit, I was a little sceptical about returning to Avenue Q. I saw it on its original West End run back in… OH MY GOD I AM SO OLD! FUCK! Where did the time go? It's always hard to know how much to update a show. Does it need constant reinvention to stay in the zeitgeist or can it be pickled forever as a classic? "I wish I had taken more pictures" was something that utterly resonated with …
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This is a hugely extended version of Will Harris' "An oral history of Airplane". It goes through the pre-history of the project, how it eventually got made, and the aftermath. In many ways, it is like an old-fashioned DVD extra. The whole book consists of snippets of interviews with the cast, crew, and various talking heads. Like all DVD special features, it is fairly sycophantic. Yes, there…
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I find misery-memoirs like this difficult to read and disturbing to think about. Much like the tragic story of Mini and Me, reading this book made me feel like I was trapped in one of those nightmares where you try to scream a warning but no sound comes out. Fern has been refreshingly honest about autism and how it affects women in particular. I can't think when I last read an autobiography…
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There are some characters whose tone of voice is inimitable. You cannot fail to read this without Diane Morgan's languid cadence echoing in your big empty head. The book has been written with a very specific pace - one chuckle per paragraph, a big laugh every page, and a set number of uncontrollable giggles per chapter. Somewhat formulaic, but highly effective. I kept highlighting bits of it…
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In many ways it is refreshing that Ben Elton hasn't changed his act at all over the last 44 years. Go back to any YouTube clip of his 1980s stand-up and you'll hear the same rhythm, vocal tics, and emphasis as he does today. Even his politics haven't shifted (much) with identical rants about feckless politicians and the dangers of bigotry. What's lost is the sense of topicality. Hey! Don't we…
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This is three excellent plays in one. First, a ghost story. Second, a tribute act. Thirdly, a meditation on the nature of comedy. In many ways, it is the complement to Inside Number 9 playing next door. Cooper, Morecambe, and Monkhouse were dead to begin with. Perhaps you grew up watching them live at the Palladium, or on grainy VHS tapes, or in microbursts on TikTok. But they got their last…
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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…
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"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 …
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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…
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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…
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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 …
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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,…
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