Review: Josie Long @ Warwick Arts Centre, 23rd January 2020

Josie Long: Something better

What does it mean to bring a child into the world? Josie Long‘s latest offering, Tender, delved into this in a uniquely touching and comic way, despite a lack of surprising subject matter, with childbirth, motherhood and climate change as the foundations underpinning it.

It’s always been the treatment of such ideas which has distinguished Long from other performers; dealing with bigger themes which audiences can relate to, but using them to make something much smaller and more intimate, surrendering the macro in favour of the micro, and zooming in onto tiny moments or fragments of thoughts and feelings – both as part of her stand-up and in her storytelling/documentary series, Radio 4’s Short Cuts.

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Preview: The Horne Section @ Warwick Arts Centre, 9th May 2019

Round the Horn(e): The Horne Section head to Coventry on their UK tour

Musical comedy powerhouse the Horne Section are set to embark on their biggest UK tour to date this spring. The acclaimed sextet, led by stand-up Alex Horne, have thrilled audiences over the past decade, at the Edinburgh Fringe and with their eponymous Radio 4 show, not to mention a star-studded TV special filmed at the London Palladium and broadcast on Dave last year.

Their mammoth 36-date tour visits Coventry on Thursday 9th May for an evening at Warwick Arts Centre, with other Midlands dates including Nottingham Playhouse on 18th April, Dudley Town Hall on 2nd May, Leamington’s Spa Centre on 7th October and Northampton Deco on 18th October.

Read a syndicated interview with Alex Horne – creator and co-host of the BAFTA- and Emmy-nominated Taskmaster, also broadcast on Dave – below for an insight into what the tour has in store for audiences, as well as more about how the Horne Section were formed, what makes them tick, and all that jazz.

Review: Danny Baker @ Warwick Arts Centre, 5th May 2018

Danny Baker: From the cradle to the stage

It’s more than 20 years since I first encountered Danny Baker on the airwaves and the experience made an indelible mark. A famed career in front of the TV cameras notwithstanding, it was on the radio where Baker sounded – and felt – most at home, with his hugely popular shows tracing the absurdity of football and everyday life at an almost molecular level. Never had minutiae seemed more vital, or more universal.

In more recent years, Baker’s has turned his enormous skill as a raconteur to books – he’s published three volumes of his autobiography and has hinted on Twitter that there are more to come – and latterly the stage. It’s odd to think that such a masterful storyteller had never graced the boards for a full live tour prior to last year’s Cradle to the Stage outing, but its follow-up Good Time Charlie’s Back has come barely twelve months later.

Review: Mark Steel @ Warwick Arts Centre, 6th May 2018

Mark Steel: Alright?

Mark Steel is angry. That isn’t a new thing, as anyone who’s followed the career of the long-time Radio 4 favourite will know, but on his latest tour Steel wasn’t just irate about the current state of UK and world politics, but also had lots to get off his chest about his personal life too.

Titled Every Little Thing Is Gonna Be Alright, this show found him in a slightly different mode than usual, flitting between exasperation at what’s going on in the world and picking at the things about the modern world which confuse and frustrate him, along with tracing the decline of his marriage.

Review: No Such Thing As a Fish @ Warwick Arts Centre, 2nd December 2017

Quite interesting: The QI elves host the No Such Thing As a Fish podcast

First broadcast in 2003, QI has become something of an institution. The BBC panel show which shines a spotlight on comedians’ knowledge and ignorance has been running since then with Stephen Fry and now Sandi Toksvig at the helm – along with creator and producer John Lloyd – but it’s behind the scenes where a lot of the (Quite) interesting action happens.

Writers and researchers on the hit TV show, the line-up of Dan Schreiber, James Harkin, Andrew Hunter Murray and Anna Ptaszynski joined together to create the podcast No Such Thing As a Thing, which acts as a sort of spin-off from, and logical extension of, the parent show. With more than 190 episodes under their collective belts, the podcast is fast becoming a staple of the burgeoning comedy podcast scene in the UK, which seems to be undergoing another boom lately.

Review: Milton Jones @ Warwick Arts Centre, 28th October 2017

Milton Jones: Surreal one-liners which are truly Out There

Gag merchant Milton Jones has been a mainstay of Britain’s stand-up circuit for quite some time now, though it took a number of years before he graduated to playing rooms the size of Warwick Arts Centre‘s Butterworth Hall. A deserved beneficiary of a television boost, thanks to his regular appearances on the long-running panel show Mock the Week, his relentless stream of perfectly-formed one-liners have won him a large following.

Before his belated TV exposure, though, Jones has been entertaining Radio 4 listeners for many years with his joke-packed sitcom series, and of course his frequent touring schedule is now as anticipated as his wild hair and brightly-patterned shirts.

Review: Mark Thomas @ Warwick Arts Centre, 14th February 2017

Mark Thomas: Stand-up with a social and political conscience

In recent years, stand-up and activist Mark Thomas has tended to flit between overtly political shows and more personal, theatrical flourishes, such as the deeply touching Bravo Figaro and the highly acclaimed Cuckooed. His latest effort in this sphere, The Red Shed, was perhaps the closest he’s come to merging the two strands of his recent output, being a personal voyage in political protest and recollection of the miners’ strike.

The titular shed, a Labour club based in Wakefield, celebrated its 50th anniversary last year, and this show was Thomas’ tribute to its influence and staying power throughout turbulent times. In truth, though, it was as much a reflection of the inner workings of the Red Shed as an investigation into Thomas’ own memories, notably of children in a school playground singing a workers’ anthem, and of whether his memory is accurate or a romanticised version of events.

Review: Danny Baker @ Warwick Arts Centre, 3rd February 2017

Danny Baker: From the cradle to the stage

It seems surprising that, having been in the world of showbiz for so long, this is Danny Baker‘s first solo stage tour. But then, despite jokingly referring to the theatre as his “first love” in the tour’s promotional material, few people have perhaps been more synonymous with radio in the past 30 years than Baker himself.

Having got the idea while doing book signings, this show – titled Cradle to the Stage – found Baker on scintillating form, showcasing his fantastic wit and his rarely matched skill as a raconteur; the sort of gift which has made him arguably the UK’s finest broadcaster during his curate’s egg of a career.

Review: Nish Kumar @ Warwick Arts Centre, 9th December 2016

Nish Kumar: Satire turned all the way up to 11

Nish Kumar is a frightened man. He has been ever since the EU referendum, and 2016 has made very little attempt to disabuse him of that fear. The critically acclaimed stand-up received a raft of great reviews at this year’s Edinburgh Fringe, and he brought that highly rated show – Actions Speak Louder Than Words, Unless You Shout the Words Real Loud – to Coventry as part of his current UK tour.

What’s most impressive about Kumar, who has in recent series been the host of Radio 4 Extra’s Newsjack, is his ability to pair biting satire with silliness, a combination also employed to great effect by acolytes such as Stewart Lee and Andy Zaltzman. That technique was firmly on display here, with Brexit and the US Presidential election understandably dominating, but where other comics tread a similar path, Kumar’s singular voice found fresh angles on well-worn topics, dispensed with winning comic lines and oodles of charm.

Review: Marcus Brigstocke @ Warwick Arts Centre, 3rd December 2016

Marcus Brigstocke: A sharp satirical voice

Radio 4 stalwart Marcus Brigstocke returned to Coventry with his latest show which was very much an evening of two halves. This new offering, self-deprecatingly titled Why the Long Face?, focused not just on the righteous ire and satirical anger which has dominated so much of his work (though there was plenty of that too), but was also about his personal troubles of late.

Certainly, the first half of the show dealt mainly with the somewhat mixed bag of a year that’s been 2016 – one of political upheaval, the rise of fascism and myriad deaths of beloved cultural icons. Brigstocke, not surprisingly, saved much of his outrage for the subject of the EU referendum, with his pro-European rant being greeted with applause and cheers of approval, but crucially managing to fit in a surfeit of gags along the way.