Reviews & features: Comedy, Henry Northmore
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Asher Treleaven: Troubadour
28 Aug 2012
The Aussie comedian amiably breaks his life down into six parts
It’s a question you wish more stand ups would ask before embarking on a 30 date Festival run: ‘is my life actually interesting enough to talk about for a whole hour?’. Of course by posing this query at the start of his show Asher Treleaven sets himself…
Wil Hodgson: Kidnapped by Catwoman
22 Aug 2012
A personal history of sexual turn ons
With The Dark Knight Rises ruling the box office this summer, Wil Hodgson has chosen a timely crush for the title of his new confessional comedy show on kinks, turn-ons and fantasies. As it turns out, he’s more interested in the 60s Adam West-era feline…
Sound & Fury's Doc Faustus
22 Aug 2012
Comedy troupe deliver a low-quality western pastiche of the famous morality tale
When you first read, or saw an adaptation of, Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus, was your first thought: ‘it’s okay but what it really needs is more cowboys’? If you did Sound and Fury have answered your prayers with a country and western take on the…
Darkness Rising
7 Aug 2012
Comedy-horror mash-up is generally great entertainment
Comedy and horror might seem like unlikely bedfellows but when you get it right it can be an inspired mix of pitch black humour and creeping dread. The shocks heighten the relief the gags offer, just witness the gore soaked laughs of Shaun of the Dead…
Beckett & Smith
24 Aug 2011
A genuinely funny 60 minutes
There are some real gems on the free festival circuit, but picking the wheat from the chaff can be a daunting prospect. Split into two halves, Ian Smith launches this hour of stand up with some freewheeling rambling that at times cuts close to the bone…
Terry Alderton
16 Aug 2011
Hour of clever nonsense with surreal twist
Taking many of the conventions of old-school stand-up – observational comedy, sound effects, impressions – Alderton gives them a surreal twist before cramming them all together. Some punchlines get lost in the chaos of songs, dancing and vocal mimicry…
Isy Suttie
15 Aug 2011
Cute, clever music-based comedy from the Peep Show comedian
Best known as geek love interest Dobby from Peep Show, Suttie’s an incredibly likeable comedian. Mixing stand-up and music, her humour has a real warmth and the stuttering love story of Pearl and Dave that runs through the show is instantly engaging and…
Sink or Spin
8 Aug 2011
It’s gym life, but not as we know it
A site-specific comedy set in the working environs of Bannatyne’s Health Club (you even need to fill in a fitness form as you enter), you’ll spend most of Sink or Spin on an exercise bike in a distinctly unusual class taught by Clement (Donal Coonan).
The Last Circus
20 Jun 2011
Spanish black comedy/horror takes in clowns, circus life, love and madness
The latest film from writer/director Alex de la Iglesia is almost unclassifiable, a love story, a black comedy and horror all apply and as fans of his Accion Mutante (1992) will know it’s this glorious mess of ideas and themes that makes for such a…
Axis of Awesome
18 Aug 2009
Spoof songs and inter-band bickering aplenty
Rock comedy, spoof songs and inter-band bickering aplenty here from this Aussie trio. Some of it is dumb fun and some is pretty sharp, particularly their destruction of the ‘four chords’ that make up so many pop songs. Unfortunately, the music itself…
One Man Lord of the Rings
10 Aug 2009
Baffling speeded-up Middle Earth affair
The trend for cutting down and speeding up plays/films/text kicked off with the Reduced Shakespeare Company, and Charlie Ross is a veteran of the subgenre, having brought his One Man Star Wars to the Fringe in previous years. Dressed in a sturdy boiler…
Justin Moorhouse
7 Aug 2008
Moorhouse is not after any more friends. In fact he's bored of the poking and social contrivance of Facebook and its ilk; he wants to cut his 681 'friends' down to just the five who really mean something, that make a difference, that you can rely on. So…
X-Files Improv
23 Aug 2007
Dean Haglund played Langley, a nerdy conspiracy theorist, in the phenomenally successful X-Files. He uses the show’s format as a structure for some improv staples, and if you’ve ever seen Whose Line is it Anyway? you’ll know the drill. It’s not original…
Steve Hughes
16 Aug 2007
Former drummer in death metal band Slaughter Lord, what Hughes means by ‘Heavy Metal Comedy’ is an outsider attitude and refusal to compromise (much like his heroes Slayer). This is hard-edged satire covering everything from Australia’s treatment of the…
