Review: Richard Herring @ Warwick Arts Centre, 3rd June 2018

Richard Herring: Life begins at 50?

Does life begin at 50? Celebrated stand-up Richard Herring has been pondering this while on tour with his latest show, Oh Frig I’m 50, which ended with this date at Warwick Arts Centre. A sequel of sorts to his show titled Oh Fuck I’m 40, this new offering detailed how the biggest events during the past decade or so have shaped his life now, with the most momentous changes including him getting married and starting a family.

It’s a commonly held view in certain circles that those things can often lead to diminishing returns in the quality of a comic’s output, and while that may have been true in some examples Herring’s recent work has long proved its folly. The first half here was slightly more uneven, with keen observational material not always landing, but glimpses of his recognisable style, though a stronger second half of the show really took proceedings to a higher level.

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Review: Richard Herring @ Warwick Arts Centre, 29th April 2017

Richard Herring: Simply the best (routines from all his solo shows)

Compiling a Best Of compilation is a really difficult thing to do well. In music, it can generate hours of discussion about what constitutes a band’s best songs, before you even get as far as figuring out how to make those tracks fit together as a satisfying whole to appeal to curious listeners. A similar concept for a stand-up’s work must be impossible, right?

Richard Herring has had other ideas. Taking his favourite routines from each of his past twelve solo shows, The Best is him doing what he does, well, best. An interesting experiment, it was good to hear some of these routines again in a theatre – when past shows live on only as DVD releases, and new shows are written each year to go to the Edinburgh Fringe, there’s a constant cycle of renewal at the heart of stand-up which doesn’t lend itself to enabling new fans to discover older material on the stage, only on the screen.

Review: Richard Herring @ Warwick Arts Centre, 3rd March 2016

Richard Herring: Happy now?

Richard Herring is a stand-up veteran and also something of a workhorse these days. His disparate stream of podcasts and stage output in recent years has been an impressive example of productivity, not content to restrict himself to one new show every year and instead churning out hours upon hours of free entertainment for fans.

The real meat of his oeurve, though, remains his stand-up. In the past decade or so Herring has taken a unique comic look at subjects such as childhood, family, adulthood, love, death, religion and racism, among others, usually with stirring results.

Preview: Richard Herring on tour

Richard Herring: Happy now?

Acclaimed stand-up and podcasting king Richard Herring returns to the West Midlands next month as part of his first tour since becoming a father. His latest show, Happy Now?, sees him exploring what it means to be happy and asking whether we can ever be truly content.

Herring has often employed such personal subject matter in his past shows to great effect, with The Headmaster’s Son, What Is Love Anyway? and We’re All Going to Die being among his finest outings.

His tour dates include visits to Coventry’s Warwick Arts Centre on Thursday 3rd March, Birmingham’s Glee Club on Tuesday 15th March and Wolverhampton’s Slade Rooms on Friday 25th March. For ticket prices and booking please see the venue websites.