mon 11/08/2025

Comedy Reviews

Britney, Soho Theatre review - finding the funny in a brain tumour

Veronica Lee

A brain tumour isn't usually the subject of a comedy show but Britney, written and performed by comedy duo Charly Clive and Ellen Robertson, is just that. It's “the true story of what happens to two best friends when one of them [Clive] gets a brain tumour” – the size of a golf ball, her father helpfully pointed out.

Read more...

Tommy Tiernan, Shepherd's Bush Empire review - playful and poetic

Veronica Lee

Tommy Tiernan is something of an institution in his native Ireland, as a stand-up comic, newspaper columnist, sometime chat show host and full-time controversialist. Now his appearance as Da Gerry in Channel 4's Derry Girls has brought him to a wider audience – both geographically and generationally – and deservedly so.

Read more...

Angela Barnes, Blackheath Halls review - a pessimist turning the tables

Veronica Lee

Angela Barnes is one of life’s pessimists, she tells us at the top of the hour, but she’s trying not to be so world-weary, and to turn negatives into positives. And, while there’s so much awfulness going on around us, why not try to lighten the mood a little?

Read more...

Aziz Ansari, Eventim Apollo review - show follows his #MeToo moment

Veronica Lee

Most people in the UK know American actor and stand-up Aziz Ansari from Parks and Recreation, where he played the sarcastic and underachieving local government official Tom Haverford. Comedy fans will also know him as a successful club comic on both US coasts, and from his Netflix specials.

Read more...

Ed Gamble, The Stand review - amiable hour touching on personal issues

Veronica Lee

Ed Gamble starts the hour by telling us why his latest show is called Blizzard; he and a bunch of comic friends we stranded in New York by bad weather and it made the news - yet, strangely, the headline wasn’t a play on his name - a gift for hacks - but on the monicker of one of his mates. Cue faux outrage.

Read more...

Lou Sanders, Soho Theatre review - shame put under the spotlight

Veronica Lee

Have you ever felt the hot shame of saying or doing the wrong thing? Not just embarrassment – that's for amateurs, says Lou Sanders in her wonderfully honest and revealing show Shame Pig, in which she essays some of her life's red-faced moments.

Read more...

Sheeps, Soho Theatre review - sketch comedy with a touch of the surreal

Veronica Lee

Sheeps, the sketch comedy threesome, had never really gone away but when they performed Live and Loud Selfie Sex Harry Potter at the Edinburgh Fringe last year after a four-year absence, it was called a comeback. More a welcome reunion, as its members – Liam Williams, Daran Johnson and Alastair Roberts – had been busy doing solo projects.

Read more...

Adam Riches Is The Guy Who..., Drink, Shop & Do review - super-suave Lothario on the prowl

Veronica Lee

The first line of this show is “I'm the guy who you meet right after you come out of a long-term relationship.” On the night I see The Guy Who..., Adam Riches has three tries with it before he meets his target, a woman who has been dumped by a long-standing boyfriend.

Read more...

Lost Voice Guy, Soho Theatre review - Britain's Got Talent winner finds the funny in disability

Veronica Lee

Lost Voice Guy – aka Lee Ridley – won Britain’s Got Talent last year. He's a unique talent in that his cerebral palsy means he is unable to speak, and so he delivers his comedy through a synthesizer controlled via his iPad.

Read more...

Daniel Sloss, Leicester Square Theatre review - toxic masculinity examined

Veronica Lee

Daniel Sloss's latest show is called X, to denote his 10th show. The Scottish comic started in comedy as a teenager in 2009 when a lot of his material was knob and wank gags, but in recent years his work has had a progressively edgier feel, including shows that delved into his sister's death from cerebral palsy and the childhood grooming from which he had a lucky escape.

Read more...

Pages

 

latest in today

'We are bowled over!' Thank you for your messages... ...
Budapest Festival Orchestra, Iván Fischer, Edinburgh Interna...

Fresh from their triumph at the Proms, the Budapest Festival Orchestra arrived at the Edinburgh International Festival with a programme that...

Tom at the Farm, Edinburgh Fringe 2025 review - desire and d...

As shockingly beautiful as it is horrifyingly brutal, actor Armando Babaioff’s deeply Brazilian adaptation of thriller Tom at the Farm...

MARS, Irish National Opera review - silly space oddity with...

The craft heads to Mars, the music remains below on earth. Which is partly intentional: composer Jennifer Walshe tells us she listened to “synth...

Edinburgh Fringe 2025 reviews - Desiree Burch / Andy Parsons

Desiree Burch, Monkey Barrel ★★★★

Desiree Burch is a bundle of energy as...

Album: Rise Against - Ricochet

Ricochet is Chicago punk veterans Rise Against’s 10th album and,...

Works and Days, Edinburgh International Festival 2025 review...

With the sheer density of theatrical creations jostling for attention across...

Eight Postcards from Utopia review - ads from the era when 1...

If you saw it blind, with no information about its origins, Eight Postcards from Utopia might look like 70 minutes of outtakes...

Music Reissues Weekly: The Final Solution - Just Like Gold

The booklet coming with Just Like Gold - Live At The Matrix frequently refers to the band as “The Solution.” It will be...

Every Brilliant Thing, @sohoplace review - return of the com...

The Fringe piece Duncan Macmillan devised with Jonny Donahoe in 2014 has since been round the world and back, finally landing in the...