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The new "What Stand Up Have You Seen Lately?" thread

Started by Small Man Big Horse, July 16, 2016, 08:16:30 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

up_the_hampipe

Quote from: Small Man Big Horse on July 13, 2022, 06:51:16 PMThat's really interesting, I almost went to this but by the time I'd found someone to go with it had sold out, I'm almost glad it had now as given the price of the tickets I'd expect a five star show, plus as her last show with John Early was recently recorded for Peacock hopefully this will be too.

I believe she is filming a special of this show and it's being directed by Bo Burnham.

edwardfog

It's got filmed special written all over it tbf

Small Man Big Horse

Quote from: up_the_hampipe on July 13, 2022, 07:03:14 PMI believe she is filming a special of this show and it's being directed by Bo Burnham.

Oh cool, that's good to know.

Small Man Big Horse

I posted an abbreviated version of this in the Edinburgh thread last night, but thought I'd expand upon it a little:

Two Hearts (Laura Daniels + Joseph Moore) - I love musical comedy and this was some of the best I've ever seen, as the songs are extremely well written and tackle subjects you might not expect to normally hear sung. Plus there's a minor narrative running throughout concerning
Spoiler alert
Laura's fear of witches who steal women's voices, and commentary on how their relationship went from platonic to romantic
[close]
, and there wasn't a weak moment in the entire show. 4.75/5

Snort (NZ Improv) - While this was even better, featuring among others Rose Matafeo, Alice Sneddon, Steen Raskopoulos, Laura Daniels, Tom Walker and Joseph Moore, the set up is that they ask for a word from the audience, one of them will do five minutes of stand up based on it, before the rest act out sketches inspired by that. All three sections were extremely strong, with Tom Walker's impersonation of a talking cat making me laugh so hard I was crying tears of laughter and wanted him to stop as I was worried I'd pass out from laughing so much, well almost, anyhow. Rose Matafeo, Steen Raskopoulos, Laura and Joseph and Alice Sneddon were also on fantastic form too, and this was the best improv show I've ever seen. 5/5

edwardfog

I want to check out Snort. Tom Walker's a special guest rather than a regular player, right? He's so fucking funny

Keep hearing good things about Eric Rushton too but my schedule is fit to bursting already and I'm sure there'll be a whole new wave of buzz once the festival actually starts

Finally watched The Delightful Sausage's Ginster's Paradise via Go Faster Stripe last night and absolutely loved it. I don't have anything to add to the conversation apart from that I got big Peacock & Gamble vibes off it, which is a very good thing.

DrGreggles

Quote from: Wayman C. McCreery on July 26, 2022, 09:25:10 AMFinally watched The Delightful Sausage's Ginster's Paradise via Go Faster Stripe last night and absolutely loved it. I don't have anything to add to the conversation apart from that I got big Peacock & Gamble vibes off it, which is a very good thing.

Great fun isn't it.
The fact that they're clearly having a great time just adds to it.

And the
Spoiler alert
"What if I told you I wasn't really from Scotland"
[close]
line gave me far greater giggles than something that silly ever should.

Small Man Big Horse

Quote from: edwardfog on July 25, 2022, 11:06:25 PMI want to check out Snort. Tom Walker's a special guest rather than a regular player, right? He's so fucking funny

I didn't realise that, but no, the Edinburgh guide suggests it involves Rose Matafeo, Laura Daniel, Joseph Moore, Eli Matthewson, Nic Sampson, James Roque, Brynley Stent, Paul Williams, Rhiannon McCall, Freya Finch, and Alice Canton, though not all will be their every night.

Quote from: Wayman C. McCreery on July 26, 2022, 09:25:10 AMFinally watched The Delightful Sausage's Ginster's Paradise via Go Faster Stripe last night and absolutely loved it. I don't have anything to add to the conversation apart from that I got big Peacock & Gamble vibes off it, which is a very good thing.

I loved it when I watched it a couple of weeks ago, and according to the British Comedy Guide they're writing a tv pilot based on it (which is different to the taster that the BBC stupidly turned down) - https://www.comedy.co.uk/tv/news/6949/the-delightful-sausage-pilot/

up_the_hampipe

I'm sad to say that I saw Patti Harrison in Soho and it was the worst show I've seen in recent memory. She had some good stuff, particularly up top, but there were so many half-baked, poorly judged bits and the most painfully long set-ups. At first, it felt like she was overexplaining and waffling as a joke, but then it became pretty clear that she was trying to fill her time due to such sparse material. It was almost torturous at some points, with a fair amount of the crowd getting noticeably restless. Such a shame.

PlanktonSideburns

Quote from: up_the_hampipe on July 27, 2022, 12:15:34 AMI'm sad to say that I saw Patti Harrison in Soho and it was the worst show I've seen in recent memory. She had some good stuff, particularly up top, but there were so many half-baked, poorly judged bits and the most painfully long set-ups. At first, it felt like she was overexplaining and waffling as a joke, but then it became pretty clear that she was trying to fill her time due to such sparse material. It was almost torturous at some points, with a fair amount of the crowd getting noticeably restless. Such a shame.
That's a real shame - she's been hilarious in any sketch or online format I've seen her in

CaledonianGonzo

Eek. Seeing her next weekend, and there's definitely quite a bit of hype around her show.

up_the_hampipe

Yeah I'm a fan of her sketch work and heard some great things about her live show. She said it was work in progress and talked about her agents making her do gigs, but I'm not sure if that was also just for a bit. Could be an off night, so let me know what you think.

edwardfog

I've seen her twice in the last few months and really loved her both times. She has a very different rhythm to most stand-ups though. The songs and sketches are explosively funny but she does like to do long sections between them where she (seemingly) talks earnestly about her feelings, behind a barely-perceptible mask of irony. I'm 100% sure it's intentional, and also a feature rather than a bug, but it's not going to work for everyone.

Also, talking about her agents making her do the gigs was definitely a bit

up_the_hampipe

I understand it's the usual rhythm, I've seen her stand-up before. This just felt like a majorly unfinished show, to the point where it's almost not acceptable to do a whole hour and charge people £23 for it. Most of the songs were not "explosively funny" even though I know she's capable of that. As for the long sections, as I said it was more waffling than what you describe. If the whole thing is a sort of troll, and she's bleeding things out on purpose, it's impeccably done because I can usually tell when a comic is dragging something out for effect. There were jokes that flopped, and not in a Tim Heidecker sort of way. There were moments where you could tell she was being ironic and it worked a lot better, but then some attempts at dark or political material that didn't earn the pay-off.

Maybe this is the moment I'm getting old, even though she's older than me. I was with and around people who seemed quite sharp (and bigger fans of her than I am), and they were very frustrated as well. I dunno. The powerpoint at the start and the joke about kicking her friend off a boat were really funny.

edwardfog

Maybe you're right and it was a bad night then? Crowd was enormously positive when I was there

edwardfog

Some final Edinburgh previews

Sheeps - Ten Years, Ten Laughs
Can't really remember this one very much as I saw it over a week ago, which on the face of it would seem to not be a great sign for a comedy show. The opening song and dance number is a very fun conceit that starts the show on an immediate high note, and although the sketches that follow are never bad they also never reach the heights you'd expect from three such talented performers. Al Roberts especially gets some big laughs and sells the acting parts very well. Certainly it's a fun night out, but the energy seems a little lacking.


Seann Walsh - Is Dead. Happy Now?
Energy is not a problem for Seann Walsh, who's giving one of the most animated and intense hours I've seen in some time, rolling off the back of the Strictly Come Dancing Kiss incident into some further personal reflections about addictive tendencies, struggling with mental health in a hostile climate, and growing up with a heroin addict for a father. He's one of only a couple of acts who can totally barnstorm the tricky 6pm free slot at Top Secret, which probably points to his mass appeal. He steamrollers his material at high volume and speed wildly whipping his head back and forth to keep the focus tight on himself at all times. There's a bunch of good stuff in the observational storytelling mode and some surprisingly frank confessions but also a strain of laddiness that feels kind of retro. His joke about only gay men liking women's football was one of the few which didn't go over super well.


Tom Walker - Javelin
This was one of a handful of London warm-ups before Walker returns to the fringe, this time without Demi Lardner, which is a shame since We Musn't was one of the most cutthroat bonkers shows I've ever seen up there. Javelin is fantastic though, loosely tied together with a knowingly pointless javelin conceit, but spending the majority of its time veering into sections of weirdo standup and lots of the brilliant mime stuff that made his last show Very Very so good. I really think he's exceptionally talented as a mime artist, not just in using the art to show sketches that would be very funny whether they were mimed or not, but also just in the clarity of his movement and facial expression. He makes a lot of "full-time" mimes seem kind of muddy and indecipherable in comparison. And the ideas behind them are so good: I loved the recurring section about a bull politely browsing a china shop only to accidentally gore the owner at the till. This is a bit of a grab bag but also one of the funniest previews I've seen this year.


Christopher Bliss - Captain Words Eye
Rob Carter's character creation always seemed to play off Tim Key's idea of reading "poems" on stage, and Bliss's "novels" read in pretty much the same way, although I suppose they play off the humour of bad writing more than Key's stuff does. It's also a little harder to buy into as a premise: this weird little guy in Shropshire who spends all his time writing thousands of nonsensical two-page pamphlets that he thinks are novels. I've really loved Bliss shows in the past, particularly his last one which was performed as a full-length play. This one's a bit more back-to-basics: regular novel readings, character comedy, and some funny critiques of Shakespeare and Dickens. His stuff is always whimsical and enjoyable with lots of clever literary manglings, but the format feels like a slight step backwards this year, like it hasn't really found its hook as a standalone show. The climax, where he gets the audience to write a novel one word at a time, comes across as a recycled parlour game only barely sustained by his interjections.

Small Man Big Horse

Quote from: edwardfog on July 27, 2022, 11:30:45 PMTom Walker - Javelin
This was one of a handful of London warm-ups before Walker returns to the fringe, this time without Demi Lardner, which is a shame since We Musn't was one of the most cutthroat bonkers shows I've ever seen up there. Javelin is fantastic though, loosely tied together with a knowingly pointless javelin conceit, but spending the majority of its time veering into sections of weirdo standup and lots of the brilliant mime stuff that made his last show Very Very so good. I really think he's exceptionally talented as a mime artist, not just in using the art to show sketches that would be very funny whether they were mimed or not, but also just in the clarity of his movement and facial expression. He makes a lot of "full-time" mimes seem kind of muddy and indecipherable in comparison. And the ideas behind them are so good: I loved the recurring section about a bull politely browsing a china shop only to accidentally gore the owner at the till. This is a bit of a grab bag but also one of the funniest previews I've seen this year.

I'm glad to hear that this was so good, and it's a show I really hope I'm able to catch post festival.

QuoteChristopher Bliss - Captain Words Eye
Rob Carter's character creation always seemed to play off Tim Key's idea of reading "poems" on stage, and Bliss's "novels" read in pretty much the same way, although I suppose they play off the humour of bad writing more than Key's stuff does. It's also a little harder to buy into as a premise: this weird little guy in Shropshire who spends all his time writing thousands of nonsensical two-page pamphlets that he thinks are novels. I've really loved Bliss shows in the past, particularly his last one which was performed as a full-length play. This one's a bit more back-to-basics: regular novel readings, character comedy, and some funny critiques of Shakespeare and Dickens. His stuff is always whimsical and enjoyable with lots of clever literary manglings, but the format feels like a slight step backwards this year, like it hasn't really found its hook as a standalone show. The climax, where he gets the audience to write a novel one word at a time, comes across as a recycled parlour game only barely sustained by his interjections.

Bliss is doing another preview on Sunday at 2Northdown, I've bought tickets for the following three shows but thought four might be a bit too much as the seating isn't exactly the most comfortable. Now I'm vaguely tempted to head down earlier, though I'll probably make my mind up on the day itself.

Small Man Big Horse

Quote from: edwardfog on July 27, 2022, 11:30:45 PMTom Walker - Javelin
This was one of a handful of London warm-ups before Walker returns to the fringe, this time without Demi Lardner, which is a shame since We Musn't was one of the most cutthroat bonkers shows I've ever seen up there. Javelin is fantastic though, loosely tied together with a knowingly pointless javelin conceit, but spending the majority of its time veering into sections of weirdo standup and lots of the brilliant mime stuff that made his last show Very Very so good. I really think he's exceptionally talented as a mime artist, not just in using the art to show sketches that would be very funny whether they were mimed or not, but also just in the clarity of his movement and facial expression. He makes a lot of "full-time" mimes seem kind of muddy and indecipherable in comparison. And the ideas behind them are so good: I loved the recurring section about a bull politely browsing a china shop only to accidentally gore the owner at the till. This is a bit of a grab bag but also one of the funniest previews I've seen this year.

Dates have just been announced for this at the Soho Theatre from the beginning of September and I've already bought two tickets! https://sohotheatre.com/shows/tom-walker-javelin/

Small Man Big Horse

Olga Koch - Just Friends (WIP) - Very strong hour about her sex life, desire to have a threesome, and dating a guy who seemed to only want to be friends. It's not reinventing the comedy wheel, or interested in doing that in the slightest, but it's a solid show with a lot of great jokes. 4/5

Tony Tony Tony

Jayde Adams "Men I Can Save You" as a WIP at Bedford "Bedfringe" which grows each year as a warm up for Edinburgh.

Have seen Jayde a while ago on her "Serious Black Jumper" tour which Mrs TTT talked me into and I thoroughly enjoyed despite myself.

This one was played to a smallish room and was a bit ragged in parts but wholly expected given it is still being worked up. Adams is getting a lot of exposure lately with TV work and this show was intended for a tour this year but put back due to film commitments on a movie about the music of Take That (not made up honest guv).

Once she got into her stride, sometimes literally, Jayde turns into a force of nature and both myself and Mrs TTT had a thoroughly enjoyable evening. Last time I saw her she finished on a booming operatic number. This time she treated us to a finale showing off contemporary interpretative dance skills couple with a a sad clown doing what many of us do to cheer up
Spoiler alert
having a wank
[close]
honest guv.

Left feeling that this show is only going to enhance her reputation for surprising folks even more and a wish that she will be back nearby once the show is fully worked.

Small Man Big Horse

One final day of 2Northdown previews:

Business Casual presents FERAL - Nicely weird American sketch group that I liked a lot, one bit went over my head about Joe Biden's wife, the rest was really great, with an impressive amount of babies being murdered. 4/5

Alexandra Haddow: WIP (Woman In Progress) - Potentially great show that isn't quite there yet (with Haddow still occasionally checking her notes), but her jokes are often very strong, and as she grew in confidence over the course of the show it got better and better. 3.75/5

Eli Matthewson: Daddy Short-Legs (WIP) - New Zealand comic (and NZ Dancing With The Stars participant) Eli talks about his long distance relationship during the pandemic, a review which sort of criticised him for talking too much about being gay, his desire to then write a show with no gay jokes in it, until his father came out to him a couple of years ago, so that idea went out of the window. It's a superb show, easily a 4.25/5 and with a little finessing it could be worthy of five stars.

Small Man Big Horse

Róisín & Chiara: Sex On Wheels (WIP) at The Bill Murray - I saw one of their shows on NextUp and quite liked it but this was all over the place. There was a lot of physical comedy, absurdism, short bursts of song, and commentary on what exactly is sexy, but also a lot about celebrities and how they look when they're older, some of which was silly but some of which didn't sit well with me, by the end they reach the conclusion that of course it's absolutely fine for your body to change as you grow older but the female friend I was with wasn't impressed at all, saying it was really misogynistic at times and I can't help but feel that while maybe not intentional, and that by being overtly silly it suggested they didn't really mean it, I think said friend was ultimately right. Even ignoring that aspect it was very patchy, there's some good ideas here and some funny moments, but a lot that just vaguely bemused, and unless I hear good things about their next show I doubt I'll see them again, and at best can only rate it a generous 2.75/5

Small Man Big Horse

Mairead Doyle-Heffernan: Here Comes The Ride at 2Northdown - As far as I can see this was the second work in progress of Mairead's debut hour, and you could kind of tell as parts of it were very funny, she has really interesting anecdotes about her life in Ireland and when she lived in the US for a while, as well as some sharp observations about the nature of appearance, beauty and how women are treated in general, but some parts of the show fell a bit flat, and needed more work. I think there's elements here which show real promise, and others which need to be jettisoned, in it's current state I can't say I'd really recommend it, but at the same time if she does a second hour next year I'll definitely check it out when it's in it's finished state, as I'm glad I saw this and did like a fair bit of it. 3.25/5

Small Man Big Horse

Two at the Soho Theatre tonight!

Rose Johnson - Awesome. Started off a little patchy but then became really fucking funny. Will post more tomorrow, but it was a 4.5/5 show.

Dr Brown - I loved the first show I saw of this, but I'm going to commit a Cab cardinal sin and suggest this was only okay. 3.25./5 - I'll post a much, much more details response tomorrow as well, but if anyone else was in tonight I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Small Man Big Horse

#594
Three work in progress shows - two from Monday and one from last night (as I'm on holiday this week!).

Rose Johnson – WIP - Oddly there was a slightly shaky start to this with Rose talking about body positivity and not everything worked, but after that it was pretty much all killer and no filler, as the cliché loving journalists like to say. Even the body positivity stuff was developed well as she then started taking about body negativity, how her feelings about her own looks change on a daily basis, if not more often, and after that there was strong material on sex positivity, some genuinely angry but hilarious ranting about her husband's fantasy football obsession, Love Island and why she should be on it, and the importance of having negative as well as positive people, and by the end I was fully paid up fan and really loved this hour, if it had a better opening this would be five stars. 4.5/5

Doctor Brown – Workdsff Intlsdjfj Progressdsdfdfn - Oh boy. A Work In Progress and then some, I've only seen Brown once before in 2012ish but loved him, it was one of the best things I've ever seen, but yeesh, I struggled with a lot of it tonight. Apparently this was only the fifth time he's performed this show, a lot of it was new, and I'd say half of it was pretty weak, and one bit where he put a hat on a walking stick and pretended to give it a blow job for ages, before rimming it, was met by about two people laughing very hard, and the rest of the audience was silent. Other bits included fake smoking and coughing (and taking someone's mask off and coughing in to it before returning it, which I'm really not okay with), pouring water on himself a few times, and rubbing a microphone over his face before pretending it was a golf club or tennis racquet which had its moments but also went on for too long. On the plus side, the audience interaction was often great, towards the end Brown got the guy sitting next to me to spank his bare bottom, then he motioned for them to swap places and so Brown was sat next to me spanking the audience member's bare bottom (who was game, luckily, and had an amazing arse so I could see why) – and then both stood up and did a dance, taking turns to hit each other's buttocks, swapping from left to right and so on, and the dance was one of the funniest things I've seen in ages, to the extent that I asked afterwards if the guy was a plant but both he and his girlfriend claimed they were genuine audience members. There was also a fairly funny sequence where he got an audience member to wheel him around on the chair, and at the end he pretended he was his son, while another bit saw Brown point at headlines in the Metro and asking me to read them. I did, he then pointed at individual words and asked me to explain them, and I ended up reinterpreting the stories, I know this sounds painfully egotistical but I did get big laughs, and caused Brown himself to break character and burst out laughing twice. So yeah, a really mixed show, and at the end Brown asked people to stick around for 10 minutes and help him build a show (as the blurb in the pr mentions) and was completely open to criticism, and while some praised, a fair few said "I didn't understand that bit", or "that went on for a bit too long", or "It should have just been that guy doing the newspaper bit for one whole hour" (Okay, okay, I made that last one up) and at the end he seemed almost apologetic and suggested very little of what we saw tonight would go in the final show, that every show in this Soho Theatre run will be very different as he tries out new things, but while I'll definitely see a finished show from Brown again I doubt I'd go to a work in progress, especially at these prices. A generous 3.25/5 as that arse slapping dance really was hilarious.

Jen Brister - The Optimist (WIP) – This was my first time seeing Jen and I was impressed, even though the friend I was with only half liked her. It has a feel of a 3/4 of the way through WIP, with lots of great segments, and only a couple which either were a bit flabby or needed a better ending, otherwise this was very funny stuff I thought, as she discussed pessimism and negativity, the pandemic, the lockdown (the Thursday clapping came on for a kicking, which led to her angrily ripping the piss out of conservative voters which is never a bad thing), and also her twin sons, who are at times a nightmare, and towards the end a fair amount of anti Gwyneth Paltrow stuff which was slightly overlong but otherwise great. In short: Most of the hour I was laughing a good deal, and even though it's not finished yet I'd still rate it 4/5

Small Man Big Horse

Mike Capozzola - Self Defence For Time Travellers at the Museum Of Comedy - Where my friend Chloe and I were the only audience members, Mike suggested we could leave if we wanted but I was happy to stay (and we were joined by a guy who worked there so it wasn't only the two us) and so he did a slightly abridged 45 minute show missing out ten minutes of stand up at the beginning. The rest of it was (in his own words) a sort of Ted Talk about how to make sure you don't kill anyone when travelling in time and risk changing the time line, but how to defeat various individuals and animals you might meet. What makes this so great is that Capozzola's a pretty decent artist, so there's lots of very silly and very daft pictures, along with some great photoshopping and some deliberately slightly naff ones, and I really enjoyed it despite the unusual circumstances. 4/5

Sam Campbell (WIP) – A last minute preview at The Bill Murray as he's heading up to Edinburgh tomorrow, I posted a little about it in the Edinburgh thread but thought I'd expand on that. I'm a huge fan of Campbell's but right now the show's only 85% there, some of it had me laughing incredibly hard, but about 15% of the hour was clearly new and either didn't have an ending or he'd say "There's something in that, but I'm not sure what yet". I wouldn't want this to put anyone off seeing him, Campbell at 85% is, um, I don't know, 97% better than any other comedians?, but this isn't as polished as his last show was right now. There are some routines which are brilliant (
Spoiler alert
a guy scamming him in to thinking Netflix was illegal, a story about moving house, him calling Paddington Bear a pussy (which the audience good naturedly but loudly booing, and he thought that hilarious
[close]
), plus lots of one off jokes involving a photoshopped image which all hit home for me, but at the 45 minute point he asked if that was enough, and seemed both exhausted and unsure of the material he had left. He asked how much longer did he have to do at three other points, and um, I don't know, I kind of prefer it when the stand up has so much they want to do they can't fit it in to an hour, not the other way round. It pains me to say this as I do really love Sam, and I will definitely see this show post Edinburgh, but because of the above even though some material was amazing I can only rate it 4.25/5

Small Man Big Horse

Nikki Britton: One Small Step @ Soho Theatre - 2/3 of this was fantastic, 1/3 we never got to see as the tech broke down, and despite lots of Soho Theatre people coming in and rushing about and trying to fix it, and thinking they had but then failing too, sadly it never got sorted out in the end. Which could have been a disaster but thankfully during this time Nikki did some great crowd work, some material presumably not linked to the show, and overran by twenty minutes before being told that she couldn't finish her story because the next comedian was due on soon. Normally I'd say that was a shame but she's so good that even just her riffing was strong stuff (made easier by a mad couple who met in Second Life despite being in different countries and married to different people at the time), and I'll definitely see her next hour without any doubt. 4/5, and that might have been higher if I'd see the show as intended.

Tom Walker: Javelin @ Soho Theatre - One of the funniest shows I've seen, I think, it's definitely in my top 20 and maybe even in my top 10. A mixture of mime, tales about his obsession with Javelin, and just some all round madness (the close your eyes / reopen your eyes section had me laughing out loud pretty much every time), with Walker I find it a little difficult to explain just why he was so funny, other than that his incredibly expressive face, physicality in general, and his way with words really hit home with me, and I loved the show to pieces. 5/5

edwardfog

Glad you liked Javelin. I loved it too - thought it was his strongest work so far

Small Man Big Horse

Quote from: edwardfog on September 04, 2022, 12:05:47 PMGlad you liked Javelin. I loved it too - thought it was his strongest work so far

Yeah, I liked what I saw of "Very, Very" (having watched half of it one evening, my laptop decided to die), I'll definitely watch it again at some point but I'm not rushing to do so, whereas I loved Javelin to pieces.

I've got a good few more Edinburgh recommendations coming up like Jordan Gray and Lara Ricote, but I've been surprised that quite a few highly praised names haven't announced dates yet (or if they have I've somehow missed them). And as much as I love the place, the Soho Theatre seems to have raised it's prices a fair bit recently, and started doing 10.30pm performances that mean at best I'm going to be home / in bed by 1am, so I'm going to have to pick and choose who I see rather than just go mental and book in everyone I can.

edwardfog

Stewart Lee - Basic Lee (WIP)
I think this should probably be my last Lee show for a while. I used to love him so much, but he's successfully dampened my ardour over the last decade to the point where I was dying to get out of there by the end. The tricks which were so fresh in the early 2000s now seem almost as hack as the tropes he's making fun of. There's still a bit of entertainment to be had - I enjoyed the bitchy sideswipes at other comedians and the occasional improvised witticism. The dividing the audience shtick is still being worked to death, even though it's no longer reflective or responsive to the room, and hasn't been for many years. He talks like he's baffling and confounding us but really the audience is just 90% loving it and 10% over it; hard to imagine anyone here is still struggling with the basic concepts of deconstruction and repetition. Even with a veneer of new context, I can't believe he's still doing the "Jesus is the answer" bit (twice!) - material which Kitson was already calling "old gash" over 10 years ago. His audience as ever gives him too much credit and (I think) stops him from really challenging himself.

Reuben Kaye - The Butch is Back
Reclaiming some energy at the Soho Theatre, Kaye is an absolute powerhouse, with a 90 minute show of acidic laughs, barnstorming songs and overwhelming charisma. The opening barrage is mainly one huge song medley peppered with social commentary and plenty of stingers at the expense of conservatives everywhere. After "starting the show" around minute 38, he brings in a lot of personal stuff about his upbringing and the value of art to the queer community, blending theatricality and glamour of drag with the substance of an award-winning Edinburgh show. You shouldn't take me as any kind of expert on drag as an artform, but this was far and away the best drag or drag-adjacent show I've seen. As a night out it's a real blast. Two more nights at Soho Theatre! Catch it while you can!