by Luisa De la Concha Montes
Mustafa Algiyadi’s stand-up comedy show is a breath of fresh air. He knows better than to try to convince his audience that the stereotypes they hold about Arabs are wrong. So instead, he does the unexpected, turning the show around, making his listeners the victims of his jokes.
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by Luisa De la Concha Montes
This stand-up comedy double-act features Jamie Lerner and Mariah Girouard, two Americans living in Barcelona. The act starts with Mariah, who tells us about her disastrous dating experiences, her crack-ridden town in the US, and how cats and women have more in common that we may think. Her delivery is confident, balancing dark jokes with silly remarks in natural way.
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by Zahid Fayyaz
After previous runs at the Soho Theatre in the upstairs space and at Edinburgh Fringe, this American comedian returns to the to the bigger cabaret space for her most recent, hour-long set. This is the story of Emily Wilson’s starring role in the first X-Factor USA, first as part of a duo and then later in an ill-advised, 10 kid group.
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by Laura Kressly
As “the man she always wanted to be”, Chloe Petts is a devoted Crystal Palace football fan who embraces and is (mostly) embraced by lad culture. Her fellow season ticket holders who sit nearby, all very manly men, accept her as one of their own but she has issues when she goes to the loo. Over the course of this low-key hour Petts considers the effects of whether she is perceived as a woman or a man by those around her, and how this relates to the right-wing instigated culture war about trans people. It’s a pointed, provocative and very funny debut with heaps of promise.
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by Dora Bodrogi
Lockdown-schmockdown, the show must go on! While live shows and immediate feedback are usually at the heart of stand-up, comedians have had great successes through DVD sales and streaming services such as Netflix or YouTube. Edinburgh’s The Stand Comedy Club is still standing even without a live audience, as yesterday’s broadcast has shown, one of the first of its kind. Live comedy in the time of COVID-19. Can it work?
by Evangeline Cullingworth
Molly is working things out. But grief is difficult, comedy is difficult and trying to stop your dead boyfriend’s grandma from assassinating the president is difficult.
by Amber Pathak
Sukh Ojla brings tonnes of charm to the stage as she takes us through the grievances of a single, 30-something Punjabi woman living with her parents.
by Stephanie Hartland
It was supposed to be an hour of “funny, shitty jokes”, or at least that is what Alex tells us. However what the audience is presented with is 60 minutes of non-stop laughs at relatable, witty and relevant jokes that deal with small and huge issues alike.
by Meredith Jones Russell
Tom Lenk is Trash is trash.
That’s not even a cruel review, it’s literally what he told me to say. And after seeing the show, I am not going to be so stupid as to say anything he doesn’t want me to.
by guest critic Joanna Trainor
Mark Thomas knows his audience. He starts the show with a dig at Quentin Lett’s racist review before calling audiences at the Royal Court “a bunch of Tory fuckers,” and the room’s already onside. It’s obvious that almost everyone at the Theatre Royal Stratford East has seen Thomas gig before. The whooping coming from the elderly gentleman sat next to me when he came on stage was particularly lovely.
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