A name as loaded with dark, romantic foreboding as Poe's Last Night incurs comparison with the titles of Poe's own works; it suggests mystery, a locked room of buried secrets. Beginning at the end of a difficult life, this one man show promises revelation to match the Bostonian poet's writings...
Taking to the confined stage of Assembly’s ‘Box’, and looking for all the world like a key-note speaker at the world’s tiniest tech conference, Henry Paker sets the tone of Guilty very promptly: suspenseful music to make the audience both tense but also relaxed, Paker’s one-man narrative is a strange and rambling detective story, concerned with death of his life-coach, and Henry’s determined to find the responsible party...
One of the first things Peter Brush admits to the audience is that he’s “not very exciting”. This shouldn’t be an issue for a comedian, so long as they can use it to their advantage...
Is Komischer, starring Doug Walker, of Aaaand Now For Something Completely Improvised fame, too clever for it’s own good?This one-man sketch show, with a yoghurt-based theme running through the middle of it, is an extremely refined, high-concept show that stands on its sheer variety and its high-brow ideas, suspended between the sketch format and something a little more experimental...
Comedians can sometimes manifest as a raw nerve, desperate not to shield themselves from slings and arrows, but to erupt in glorious rage at the injustices and ridiculousness of the world...
What are a couple of self-deprecating, twenty-something stand-up comediennes to do at the Fringe, if not perform a stand-up act in two halves, in a rather shockingly intimate karaoke booth? That’s precisely what Charlotte Michael and Lucy Roper deliver in this just-shy-of-an-hour set, unequally divided between the two flatmates and colleagues, in Three’s a Crowd, Four’s an Audience...
Who doesn't like a loveable Yorkshireman? Or, more accurately, a West Yorkshireman, with dreams of making it big as a Tour de France-winning cyclist, or as a stand-up- comedy-sketch-and-radio- voice-actor? Well, at any rate, this David Tennant-lookalike is charming and instantly amusing, as are all of his adorable comedic creations: each seemingly a variation on Hodgson himself, the northern misfits, loners and weirdos, southern posho’s and ladies who may or may not be based on real ex-girlfriends, are all hilarious and steeped in bathetic glory...
Those without a snide, self-deprecating, sense of humour, step away from the Thermos Museum. Do not approach, under any circumstances, unless you are willing to be made a fool of and be treated to a thoroughly naff outdoor exhibition, wherein the eccentric and garishly-dressed Tour Guide seems to wish he were somewhere else, yet also quietly emanates anorak-levels of enthusiasm for flasks...
With a name like Confessions Of A Red-Headed Coffeeshop Girl you might expect a raw, bittersweet expose of the disappointments of a young dreamer, crushed by the tsunami of Post-Recession economics...
Pleasing an audience is difficult at the best of times, when they’re on your side you can read the room, and you’re in safe hands if tech and logistics all go to plan. So, imagine then a conventional stand-up gig with a multiple guest line-up, including the usual variety of styles, techniques, and experience, and then plunge that image into intentional, total darkness...
Beneath St George’s Church, Bloomsbury, on Remembrance Day, a man named Aatif Nawaz is performing a show about Muslims. Buttocks clench, audibly. But fear not: this is no fist-bitingly close-to-the-bone political diatribe, wrapped in politically saucy jokes...
It has been said that we all tell stories simply to stave off Death. For the storyteller Scheherazade, of One Thousand and One Nights, Death literally awaits the conclusion of a tale...
It’s hot in the Pleasance This: hot and dark and funny. Performed in one corner of this big tin box, In Cahoots: Two White Guys is back-to basics, character-driven sketch comedy, starring two talented blokes, Luke Manning and Paul G Raymond...
Aaaand Now for Something Completely Improvised spins out a fully-fledged, one hour show, firmly founded on nothing more than the performers’ wit, charm, comedic reflexes and audience responses to an old story book...