Facial Herr: Richard Herring launches Who's Laughing Now Presents...
Since October 2008 Who’s Laughing Now? has brought you news and reviews of all of the biggest comedy events in Birmingham and the Midlands. But where do we go from there?
Here at WLN we’re very excited to announce that from July we will also be bringing you an array of the best stand-ups around, in the flesh, as part of Who’s Laughing Now Presents… Read the rest of this entry »
Close to the Mark: comedian and activist Mark Thomas
Sometimes comedy can benefit from the serendipitous timing of events. Witness the fantastic In the Loop, Armando Iannucci’s film spin-off of Whitehall sitcom The Thick of It.
Minister Simon Foster sits in a hotel room, worrying that if he orders an adult film it will become public knowledge, only for an eerily similar story broke around the time of the film’s release.
Mark Thomas hasn’t been quite so fortunate. His latest show, It’s the Stupid Economy, started out with the premise of…well…sorting out the economy. Yet since the beginning of the tour, the global recession has been usurped as the top news story by the MPs’ expenses scandal. Read the rest of this entry »
Twist and shout: Lewis Black
In stand-up, substance will always go further than style. This was certainly true of Lewis Black’s stint on the Glee Club stage. From the subdued entrance to the understated exit from the stage, the Daily Show regular was on fine form, showing a command of the room that few comedians can match.
A world away from the lyrical eruptions of rage which pepper his ‘Back in Black’ segments across from Jon Stewart, or his own show Root of all Evil, here Black seemed oddly restrained in comparison, but always in control. Read the rest of this entry »
Doubting Thomas? The currency of comedy
For comedy which is articulate, impassioned and political, few stand-ups can match Mark Thomas. Blending the roles of comedian an activist is a tricky thing to do, but with his former TV show The Mark Thomas Product and, more recently, a number of documentaries about subjects ranging from arms dealers to Coca Cola and lots in between, he has long been a consistent thorn in the side of the establishment and multinational corporations.
Ahead of bringing his latest show, It’s the Stupid Economy, to Birmingham’s Town Hall for a one-off date, Who’s Laughing Now? caught up with Mark to ask him probing questions…not all of them entirely serious.
Longin' for Laughs
To paraphrase a wise old saying; Life is what happens between the events we spend all our time planning. Or in other words, I know this review is over a week late, but shit happens, ok?
My life is pretty can be pretty weird sometimes and one of the advantages to going to comedy gigs is that I can see other peoples are too.
Canadian stand-up Tony Law: a Law unto himself
Two comics with altogether different styles took on the ever-peculiar surroundings of Birmingham’s Old Joint Stock Theatre – a dark-lined box on the second floor of an old pub hosted by a Victorian butler-type figure, on Wednesday night.
Tony Law with his over-the-top cartoonish comedy and John Gordillo, with his – perhaps unintentional - loveable uncle routine. Read the rest of this entry »
Pierre Hollins on holiday
Dads are great aren’t they?* Useful for many things; long rambling stories of excruciating detail that ultimately have no point or ending, terrible jokes repeated ad-nauseam, a cheap yet effective taxi service, and - as I found out last Thursday – a great way to gauge a comedy show if you suffer a blinding headache.
It wasn’t my fault you see, my best mates birthday was on the same day and we went for a pub lunch, and that turned into a pub afternoon, and a pub early evening. Breaking my usual rule of no heavy drinking before kids would leave school, I inevitably developed my hangover by about seven. Because it was my dads birthday as well I had arranged to take him with me to the Glee club.** And laughter IS the best medicine after all.***
Read the rest of this entry »
Russell Howard
When a show opens with Alan Carr, you know you’re in for a good night of laughter. The Comedy Junction in Sutton Coldfield pulled off a real coup in attracting an all-star line up. They were even appearing out of the goodness of their own hearts in aid of Comic Relief. Audience members even had to bid for tickets online for this money can buy performance.
Carr whipped the crowd into an early frenzy. The town is of obviously shorn of celebrities. He probably could have stood there, posed for photos for fifteen minutes and people would still have loved him. His role as auctioneer in chief of money can’t buy prizes needs work. By the end he was feigning deafness and dementia when he missed or forgot people’s bids. On the plus side, he did manage to sell a Blu-Ray disc of Mama Mia for £45 to a man who doesn’t own a Blu-Ray player. Now that’s star quality!
Comedy, at its best, cleanses the soul. It shocks us with our own ugliness and forces us to laugh it down to nothing, and by doing so, freeing us from self loathing. And sometimes it’s just a bit shit.
You see comedy at its worst is as ugly as the gunk in our heads that were trying to get rid of, its tired, predictable and appeals to the worst parts of us. Henning Wehn fits this description perfectly – Wehn is a German fella that looks like a cross between a scrotal sack and a sock puppet made by an abusive uncle, and his entire act rests on his nationality, and our own racist perceptions of it. Read the rest of this entry »
Robin Ince
Opening with sketches about press reaction to the release of Binyam Mohamed and Jade Goody’s wedding, you can quickly surmise the theme of Ince’s show. Having a child and turning forty, he was worried about turning more right-wing.
Well, not on the basis of his this two hours of anger management. If you are an avid reader of the Daily Express – stop reading now.
