Comedy and Nick Mitchell

Dan March

Stuffy MySpace dramedy

21 Aug 2008

Social networking may rear its fashionable head in this one-man comic play from Dan March, but it’s the more timeless topic of fatherhood that’s really up for appraisal. It is, ostensibly, a true story. March, a struggling actor, really did have a…

Generation Divide

21 Aug 2008

The tensions of the generation gap - lingo, music, gadgets - get a going over in this sporadically funny double-act show. Richard Rycroft is 48 and looks like a Tory minister; Cal Saville is half his age but equally posh, as he's first to admit. They're…

Ginger & Black

Dodgy songs and deadly put-downs

14 Aug 2008

Ginger & Black aren't just deadpan. They're the pan that's been buried, left to rot, dug up and smacked about a bit just to make sure. They would grimace at this metaphor, and thereby prove my point. In fact, they would grimace if you composed the most…

A Beginner's Guide to Happiness

14 Aug 2008

The highlight of Paul Conneely's torpid rumination on happiness is an anecdote about missing a train when a man at the front of the ticket queue asks a meaningless and complex question while those behind suffer silently. I can identify - not so much…

Nina Conti

14 Aug 2008

Charles Darwin is enjoying a bit of posthumous publicity on the 150th anniversary of On the Origin of Species, from Richard Dawkins' worthy TV celebration to Conti with her hand up a puppet monkey's rear. She's been bringing her postmodern ventriloquism…

Neil Delamere

14 Aug 2008

This year the big-at-home, not-so-here Irish stand-up Delamere has based his show on a farcical, boozy holiday in Stockholm. This is no travelogue but merely an anchor to tie down his breathless, amiable wit. Delamere may be your standard…

Harbingers

14 Aug 2008

Taking their cue from the absurd patter of the Mighty Boosh and the awkward naturalism of The Office, this trio of fresh-faced, well-spoken chaps make a decent but unoriginal stab at rejuvenating the sketch format. While the writing is consistently…

1000 Years of German Humour

Do mention the war

7 Aug 2008

Of all the shows you don't want (or expect) to run late, surely 1000 Years of German Humour is that show. After a five-minute delay, likeable comic Henning Wehn assures us that it's not going to be 1000 years in real time before beginning a ramshackle…

Fiona O'Loughlin

7 Aug 2008

The great thing about the manic O'Loughlin is her authenticity. Whether she's confessing to failing as a mother-of-five or raging at the 'ostentatious humility' of Nicole Kidman, the Alice Springs resident is utterly convincing. It takes real…