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David Porter » Entries tagged with "stand-up comedy"

Andy Kind, Stand-Up Comedy

Andy Kind Stand-Up Comedy Night, The Depot, Lowestoft Review published in the Eastern Daily Press, 22 September 2015 and The Lowestoft Journal, 2 October 2015 Stand-up comedy that’s not in a pub or club atmosphere might appear to present certain challenges. A Christian stand-up may sound like an oxymoron. However, the mark of a good performer is to take the show to an audience. Andy Kind is a talented storyteller, not simply a joke-teller, pointing out our common frailties and absurdities in the human journey with his unique observational comedy style. Improvising through banter with a few individuals in the audience he cleverly exploited every comment, every piece of unintended material. Needing neither bad language nor cruel mockery, his stories of people in situations we recognise – his family, marriage, children, school, living in Britain … Read entire article »

Filed under: Reviews

100 Acts of Minor Dissent

Mark Thomas at the Seagull Theatre, Lowestoft Review published in Eastern Daily Press, 15 June 2013 Political activist and comedian Mark Thomas’ one man stand-up show, 100 Acts of Minor Dissent is touring before the Edinburgh Festival. It’s timely, sharp, keenly observed and sends the thrill of the possible down the spines of people becoming numbed by the way life is. He makes his dissent sound reasonable. The little acts of rebellion against authority are frequently subversive, anarchic, mainly legal and invariably cleverly funny. He labels himself ‘normal’, married with children and 50 years old. His self-imposed task is 100 actions to highlight stupidities, loss of individualism and corporatism in a year. His targets are tax-light companies like Amazon, shops like Harrods and Selfridges, misleading brands, bankers, pornography and politicians. Rapid-fire one-liners are followed by a tale … Read entire article »

Filed under: Reviews

Impressionists Have Had Their Day in the Spotlight of UK Stand-Up

Satirising politicians has lost its appeal as they are so bland and because political reality parodies itself. You can no longer make it up. Long-time stalwart of the British comedy impressionist circuits, Rory Bremner, confessed to the Daily Telegraph (October 2011) that he was experiencing difficulty finding work. Channel 4 (who had employed him for 20 years) had no need of his particular services because ‘people no longer recognise the voices’ of top political players. He told Bryony Gordon in her interview that a brilliant impression now ‘would be like showing a dog a card trick’. In the next day‘s edition of the Telegraph, Matthew Norman wrote a personal opinion on Bremner being forced to do a turn on Strictly Come Dancing to earn a crust, believing it was because public interest … Read entire article »

Filed under: Articles at Suite 101

The British Stand-Up Is Today’s Fashionable, Must-Have Performer

  Alternative comedy is now mainstream centre stage, comedians are celebrities, humour is a popular leisure pursuit. Edinburgh is part of the explanation. UK media is full of comics, people who’ve made it working a comedy crowd, arguably the hardest school of performance art. Successfully being funny on stage and screen seems to be sufficient to travel overseas being filmed in unusual/difficult/troubled places. There are more comedy clubs, comedy on television, comedians making TV ads: it has definitely gone respectable. They host game shows (Alexander Armstrong: Pointless; Michael McIntyre: Britain’s Got Talent). Up-and-coming comedians, like Sarah Millican, appear on numerous shows, too (The One Show, The Marriage Ref). But are today’s practitioners funny? Veteran comedy legend Ken Dodd told TV Times (August 2011) after 57 years of professional performing, he found modern comedy ‘aggressive … Read entire article »

Filed under: Articles at Suite 101

Unbelievable-But-True Stories Amuse Media, Public and Comedians

Cynics would say that tales of the bizarre cannot possibly be factual. But actually, the weird, unusual and strange show that ‘you couldn’t make it up’. Ripley’s Believe It Or Not has been thrilling people with odd and amazing, unbelievable exploits, mishaps, deformities and human failings from the ‘World of the Weird’ in museums and attractions since 1919. In effect, it’s a franchise, enabling entrepreneurs to open museums of artifacts so strange and unusual that people might doubt their claims. The idea has also been developed into radio and TV programmes, events, books, posters and a pinball game. Over 12 million visitors a year marvel in the museum chain, confirming the fact that people like to be amazed; that the unbelievable-but-true has a place in a world where technology has made the … Read entire article »

Filed under: Articles at Suite 101

Life’s Aphorisms are as Good for Comedy as for Living By

Laws, theories, principles, rules, fallacies and conundrums explain life. The most memorable maxims are the funniest and truest. Across much of the world ‘Murphy’s Law’ or a variant is used to explain the notion that ‘if something can go wrong, it will’. It’s based on the idea that there is a perversity operating in life, and the human lot is to expect the downside. If toast falls, it will fall buttered-side down. In Britain, such tiresome inconvenience is often styled ‘Sod’s Law’, while in the US the handy epithet SNAFU (Situation Normal All Fouled Up) serves the same purpose. It’s claimed this term began in the US military around 1941, when radio message encoding required scrambling into five letter code groups. When these groups were used to make sentences for fun, SNAFU … Read entire article »

Filed under: Articles at Suite 101