Reviews & features: Suzanne Black
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Ernest and the Pale Moon
10 Aug 2009
Spellbinding gothic horror
Writer Oliver Lansley has once again reached into his wonderfully twisted mind for this dark gem. After beguiling and terrifying children in equal measure with macabre fairytales in The Terrible Infants in 2007 and 2008, his company, Les Enfants…
My Queer Valentine
8 Aug 2009
Rick Lau sings the rainbow
‘I’m a poof, I’m a poofter, I’m a ponce. I’m a bum-boy, batty-boy, backside-artist, bugger. I’m bent,’ stated Stuart Alan Jones ten years ago in Queer as Folk, his harsh language mirroring the harsh reality of one’s very existence being controversial.
Frisky and Mannish
24 Jul 2009
Pop song parodies and mash-ups from anachronistic vocal duo
Popular music is a serious matter, with the risk of ridicule for those who don’t know the Sugababes from the Sugarcubes, and Flo Rida from Tinchy Stryder. Luckily, singing duo Felicity Fitz-Frisky (Laura Corcoran) and Hansel Amadeus Mannish (Matthew…
Miniprofile: Jay Brannan
21 Aug 2008
Sound sugar-coated acoustica with crystal clear swooping vocals and an edge of stark sexuality.
Was it terrifying releasing your first album Goddamned yourself? It seems like the natural order of things to me because I’m such a weird person with very specific ideas and opinions and beliefs. It’s a lot of work, for sure. I’m like, ‘do I get to…
Janey Godley
21 Aug 2008
Family tale from straight-talking Glaswegian
The title of this show, Domestic Godley, doesn’t refer to the cooking, cleaning, dinner parties ‘domestic goddess’ stereotype. Janey Godley’s candid stand-up is specific to her east end of Glasgow upbringing and subsequently eventful life. With a…
Kei Miller
21 Aug 2008
Jamaican voice aching to be heard
In a famous sketch by Bill Hicks, the great comedian is stumped by the question, ‘What are you reading for?’ The enquiry – and its correlative, ‘What are you writing for?’ – are deceptively simple. For Kei Miller, the Jamaican-born poet, novelist and…
Umbrage Swain
21 Aug 2008
New Romantic heroes stand and deliver
The New Romantic Gentleman Thief (looking uncannily like Eddie Izzard dressed as Adam Ant), his Cure-loving sidekick and Tina Fray (an excellently faux innocent Millie Reeves) swash and buckle in battle with evil baddie The Darkness (no, not Justin…
Junk Band Story: Uh?!
21 Aug 2008
'Uh?!' is right. Billed as music, comedy and martial arts, in reality it's a bewildering musical comedy played on instruments assembled from junk (think Stomp with a glue gun). The show is cobbled together from comedic skits, tantalisingly brief…
Raymond Mearns
21 Aug 2008
Mearns is a formidable character, an apoplectic hurricane of bluster as he details his exploits on the cruise ship comedy circuit, family life and other unrelated topics. The gathering rage whips up momentum but the punchlines often fail to land. He's…
And the Devil May Drag You Under
21 Aug 2008
Diabolical cabaret in which the audience must vote each act into Heaven or Hell based on the purity of said act's soul. Host and hostess the Devil and Miss Mephisto are satanically delightful with their songs and skits, but some of the acts (which range…
Secret Agents
21 Aug 2008
This tale of a terrorist incident posits, refutes and amends aspects along the way in a risky attempt at meta-drama. When it works, the structure builds like a house of cards in a comment on the construction of truth, but plot holes and an obvious…
Saving Tania's Privates
21 Aug 2008
This show should come with a warning. Not because of the references to lesbian sex and liberal attitudes to everything else - being open to that should go without saying. But because one woman (Tania Katan) exposes her survival of breast cancer (twice)…
Sideshow: The Weirdest Show on Earth
14 Aug 2008
Electric cabaret with a dark side
This isn’t any cabaret show. This is a circus on acid (or perhaps the poppers that the beautiful freak crowds are into nowadays). This is a late-night step into the realm of nightmares for a dastardly conglomeration of comedic, titillating…
Motherland
14 Aug 2008
Narratives of soldiers’ mothers who bear the burden of war
Motherland is a piece of verbatim theatre, which gives voice to the testaments of women from the north east of England who had children serving in the armed forces in war zones. With the least amount of staging, the individual voices, which are studied…
Gavin & Gavin
14 Aug 2008
The two bickering Gavin sisters pillage their Irish heritage to offer up domestic skits and 'aren't the Oirish funny' jokes while lamely trying to undercut their nice-girl personas with misjudged vulgarity bombs. When they reach an anecdote about…
Ismo Leikola
14 Aug 2008
The Finnish stand-up has the stage persona of a deceptively cuddly, long-haired faux-naïf, which makes his irreverent and slightly risqué material seem even more shocking. Despite starting well with some observational belters, his nonchalant style…
Greg Fleet
14 Aug 2008
He's Aussie, ex-Neighbours stock and a reformed drug abuser but none of these facts are important. Eschewing high concepts, he moulds observations about Edinburgh, confessional soul-baring and deconstructions of controversial humour into anecdotes that…
Pig Island - Simply Fancy
14 Aug 2008
These Australian players call themselves Pig Island, but they may as well hail from Mars. Their absurd adventure pits witless non-hero Brian, his spunky daughter and possibly robotic son against stock fantasy characters and a manta ray. Each line…
Desert storm
7 Aug 2008
‘The disease in question had, as its main deleterious effect, the fact that it renders its victims perfectly unable to write anything but 500-page books about the civil war in Sudan.’ The ‘victim’ in this case is US author Dave Eggers, but the…
Brendon Burns
7 Aug 2008
Award winner is back and still pretty angry
What do you get when you take an aggressive Aussie comic with a history of psychosis, substance abuse and vitriolic rants about every sector of humanity and award him the if.comeddie main award? Gladiator costumes, Schwarzenegger impressions and a…
Circus Oz: 30th Birthday Bash
7 Aug 2008
Acrobatics with an Aussie accent
Characters in colourful costumes exchange banter with the audience, the live band plays a constant stream of Gogol Bordello-like polka and one act involves a dramatic take on Frankenstein's monster. This isn't your average circus. Far more theatrical…
Jonny Woo: International Woman of Mr ‘E’
7 Aug 2008
Moving and darkly comic one-(wo)man show
Moving and darkly comic one-(wo)man show. Jonny Woo, drag queen darling of the London alt.queer scene appears onstage beneath sequined butterfly make-up and various costumes. He knows that the act of wearing a mask is designed to reveal rather than…
Lucky You
7 Aug 2008
Carl Hiaasen novel translated into slick madcap romp
If redneck losers Chub and Bode are going to fund their confederate militia they need JoLayne's winning Lotto ticket. But nature-loving JoLayne (who happens to be black) needs it to save local woodland. The church needs her help to legitimise their…
Teddy Bares
7 Aug 2008
Making the leap with cheek and charm
Stand-up comedy is an act of onanism. The trick is to make the audience feel like their satisfaction is the aim and Teddy observes this rule well in his rambling discourse on his travails in love. The Dunfermline-born 28-year-old with pinchable cheeks…
Matt Green
7 Aug 2008
Observational notes and familial anecdotes on the theme of childishness are all bound up in a neat structure that ties the strands together and tucks the ends in. Genial and self-aware, Green's manner and material is wholly inoffensive, which means…
