Luke McQueen's return to the Fringe is an audacious bonfire of the vanities - both his own and the comedy ecosystem more generally; the gatekeepers, the chummy podcasts, the expensive clowning courses. Directed by Jordan Brookes, the show shares clear DNA with Brookes's own solo work, playing with what's real and what's not, and interrogating… Continue reading Comedian’s Comedian
Author: emmalmsullivan
Aristotle’s Cuttlefish: a rare treat
Matthew Dooley's debut about ice cream wars in the north west of England, Flake, won the 2020 Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse prize for comic fiction, and his second graphic novel has been much anticipated. Aristotle's Cuttlefish uses the same rundown locale - Dobbiston, and there's another odd couple, this time, Mr Daniels, the elderly manager of… Continue reading Aristotle’s Cuttlefish: a rare treat
Taskmaster
A widely beloved cultural institution, and now on its 19th season, we might have become inured to the ways in which Taskmaster quietly subverts precedent. Re-inventing both the double-act and the panel-show, as well as the evaluative model so central to light entertainment (Britain's Got Talent, Project Runway, American Idol), the show deserves on-going celebration.… Continue reading Taskmaster
Ahir Shah: Ends
Ahir Shah's recent Netflix special, Ends, is both a celebration of British multiculturism and a testimony to the sacrifice of his grandparent's generation, who arrived in the 1960s in search of a better life for their families. Rightly celebrated as a very beautiful act of commemoration - and an unusually positive account of multiculturism, Shah's… Continue reading Ahir Shah: Ends
Miranda July: All Fours
Miranda July's new novel, All Fours, continues her preoccupation with mediation and role play in the service of intimacy, and her challenge to the notion of an authentic or consistent sexual identity is as daring and disruptive as ever. Several things have changed, however, one being a shift in tone away from her first novel,… Continue reading Miranda July: All Fours
Female masculinity
'Tiny bisexual women are realising masculinity doesn't have to be attached to men', Chloe Petts observes in a sly aside, and as a bit of a geezer, she's clearly delighted. And it's not just the tiny bisexual women: due in part to the work of stand-ups like Petts, there's an increasingly widespread awareness of the… Continue reading Female masculinity
Strategic vulnerability
A degree of vulnerability is central to stand-up, and integral to the expectation of candid revelation. It's a vexing concept from a feminist perspective, however, because of its association 'both with femininity and with weakness and dependency' (Gilson, 2016, 71). In stand-up, vulnerability is perhaps most apparent in self-deprecation or self-satire, an aspect of comic… Continue reading Strategic vulnerability
Bottoms
An offbeat triumph, Bottoms is a film about two lesbian high-school losers who plot to seduce their cheerleader crushes by creating a fight club for girls. Celebrated for the casualness of its presentation of queerness, so different from earnest coming-out narratives, the film is also significant for the ways in which it sloughs off a… Continue reading Bottoms
Practice Makes Purrfect
Aloof, and beautifully inscrutable, cats have been described as ‘infinitely interpretable texts’ (Hearne, 1982). Hugely popular as memes, perhaps even the classic subject of viral popular culture, it’s only fitting that they should feature in Mauro Martinez’s work, an artist deeply engaged with that culture. Martinez exploits the cat meme as a spent force –… Continue reading Practice Makes Purrfect
Dick jokes
The dick joke retains its dominant conceptual status, but it’s no longer the straightforward staple it once was. #MeToo, concerns about ‘toxic masculinity’ and social justice campaigns which prioritise minority groups while challenging the centrality of the white, male perspective are all working to complicate the conventional forms of sexually explicit material. However, these new… Continue reading Dick jokes
Humour in the Arts 