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
Category: comedy
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
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
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
Berlant and Early: Intellectual vaudeville
It feels a little superfluous analysing Kate Berlant and John Early’s work when the commentary is largely built in; to point out that they revisit certain preoccupations, like social performance and competition, for example, feels somewhat redundant when the revisiting is itself a theme of the work. That interest in refining an idea or an… Continue reading Berlant and Early: Intellectual vaudeville
Leo Reich: Literally, Who Cares
Leo Reich’s debut Fringe show is dazzling. A portrait of rabid Gen Z narcissism that is brilliantly funny, and despite the artfully superficial persona, threaded through with melancholy and rage; emotion which is ironic and also not. Reich is incisive about the conditions that have generated contemporary pathologies - the warping effects of technology for… Continue reading Leo Reich: Literally, Who Cares
Catherine Cohen: the twist?… she’s gorgeous
‘The Twist...? She’s Gorgeous’, Catherine Cohen’s recent Netflix special, sees her concoct a flamboyant spectacle of feminine narcissism, in a show characterised by a rather perfect tension between self-regard and self-deprecation, conceit and vulnerability, play and pain. Part of what’s dazzling about Cohen’s performance is the sheer speed and precision with which she moves through… Continue reading Catherine Cohen: the twist?… she’s gorgeous
Humour in the Arts 