14 h. ago The Comedy About Spies at Noel Coward Theatre review: bungling, buffoonish hilarity

Finally, Mischief may have found a match for their smash hit The Play That Goes Wrong

Events

19 h. ago PATRICK MARMION reviews The Comedy About Spies at the Noel Coward Theatre: A head

A Sixties spy spoof that is like Johnny English meets Basil Fawlty in a Piccadilly hotel. It's bigger, better and more brilliantly bungling than ever.

Events

5 d. ago PATRICK MARMION reviews Here We Are at the National Theatre: Top

The National Theatre has really pushed the boat out for the last show by the late god of musical theatre, Stephen Sondheim, but not even they can make this mongrel sing.

Politics

7 d. ago Summer of 69 film review – charming, if overfamiliar, teen sex comedy

Awkward teenager strikes deal with stripper played by SNL’s Chloe Fineman in moderately entertaining throwbackIn Summer of 69, a comedy that premiered at SXSW in March, poor Bryan Adams doesn’t even get a mention. Rather than coasting on the nostalgia summoned by his 1985 hit, the title is instead a reference to the top-and-tail sex position (Adams has claimed, much to the annoyance of his co-writer, that the song was also referring to the same thing).It’s the unusual focus of awkward teen gamer Abby (relative newcomer Sam Morelos) who has a long-running obsession with her classmate Max (Disney star Matt Cornett). The best she’s been able to manage throughout their time at school is small talk, but when he breaks up with his longtime girlfriend, she sees an opportunity. Through the grapevine she hears that Max is a fan of the 69 position and Abby, whose experience of kissing has been limited to the back of her hand, seeks assistance. It arrives in the form of Santa Monica (Saturday ...

Culture

7 d. ago Summer of 69 review – charming, if overfamiliar, teen sex comedy

Awkward teenager strikes deal with stripper played by SNL’s Chloe Fineman in moderately entertaining throwbackIn Summer of 69, a comedy that premiered at SXSW in March, poor Bryan Adams doesn’t even get a mention. Rather than coasting on the nostalgia summoned by his 1985 hit, the title is instead a reference to the top-and-tail sex position (Adams has claimed, much to the annoyance of his co-writer, that the song was also referring to the same thing).It’s the unusual focus of awkward teen gamer Abby (relative newcomer Sam Morelos) who has a long-running obsession with her classmate Max (Disney star Matt Cornett). The best she’s been able to manage throughout their time at school is small talk, but when he breaks up with his longtime girlfriend, she sees an opportunity. Through the grapevine she hears that Max is a fan of the 69 position and Abby, whose experience of kissing has been limited to the back of her hand, seeks assistance. It arrives in the form of Santa Monica (Saturday ...

Politics

1 week ago Weer by Natalie Palamides at Soho Theatre Walthamstow review: spectacular show to open a spectacular location

A silly, seductive, slapstick joy is the perfect show to open London’s newest theatrical venue

Society

1 week ago The Pretender by Jo Harkin review – a bold and brilliant comedy of royal intrigue

This fantasia on the life of Lambert Simnel, who finds himself a claimant to the English throne, is a romp through late-medieval identity and historical uncertaintyOne day in 1484, strange men arrive at the Oxfordshire farm where 10-year-old John Collan lives. They’ve come to carry him away to a new life, for he is not, after all, the farmer’s son; in fact, he’s Edward Plantagenet, Earl of Warwick, spirited away in infancy to keep him safe ahead of the day he might return to claim the throne of England. That day is now in sight. He can’t call himself John any more, but he can’t yet be announced as Edward, Earl of Warwick. In the meantime he’ll be given a third name: Lambert Simnel.Over the course of this fantastically accomplished novel, the many-named boy will travel from Oxford to Burgundy then Ireland, and at last into the paranoid and double-crossing heart of Henry VII’s court. The tail end of the Wars of the Roses – with Richard III’s crown snatched from the...

Politics

1 week ago The Four Seasons review – Tina Fey’s midlife comedy is properly funny and heartbreaking

Like The White Lotus without deaths, this brilliant tale of old college friends holidaying together is Fey’s finest work in years. Steve Carell and Colman Domingo are revelatoryIn my next life I am definitely coming back as an affluent American. Whatever the risk of being murdered in a White Lotus hotel complex or a beachfront property by Nicole Kidman, the benefits far outweigh it.The Four Seasons follows a year’s worth of the can-we-really-call-them-travails of three well off, beautifully clad couples in their 50s. They have been friends since their college days and now go for weekends away together four times a year, as we all would if we had the money, time and wardrobes. The eight-episode series is a remake and update of the 1981 Alan Alda film of the same name, by Tina Fey, Tracey Wigfield and Lang Fisher. It’s a creative triumvirate that promises much and – to the delight of Fey fans, who may feel it’s been a long wait since anything approaching the joy and genius of her Unbr...

Culture

2 w. ago PATRICK MARMION reviews Krapp's Last Tape at York's Theatre Royal: Gary Oldman's return to the stage after 37 years makes perfect sense

The Hollywood star has chosen to make his stage comeback - after 37 years - in Samuel Beckett's 50-minute monologue about a rueful old git, surveying the paltry wreckage of his life.

Politics

2 w. ago Alice Snedden at Soho Theatre review: a wonderfully witty turn from the versatile Kiwi comic

This is Snedden’s first show in five years - not that you’d know it

Politics

3 w. ago Greg Larsen: Geggy review – a very funny standup on why he’s quitting comedy

Melbourne international comedy festival, then SydneyAssured performer leads a chaotic journey through his career’s highs and lows – and the decisions that led him to a McDonald’s drive thru Greg Larsen is broke. Having his card declined at a McDonald’s drive thru just weeks before this year’s Melbourne international comedy festival was a watershed moment for him. He is 41. He’s been performing comedy for more than a decade. This, he says, is his last festival show. He’s done.Geggy is his swan song, a chaotic journey through his career’s highs and lows and the decisions that led him to that drive thru. For those who have followed Larsen’s career, this show is a treat, offering a hilarious insight into the chaos behind the scenes of the various projects he’s been involved in. It includes a cast of others who rose through the circuit with him, many of whom are doing pretty well for themselves, including Larsen’s early collaborator Sam Campbell.Sign up for the fun stuff with our rundown...

Politics

3 w. ago The Wedding Banquet review – muddled gay comedy remake plays it too straight

Fire Island director Andrew Ahn’s update of Ang Lee’s seminal 1993 film works hard to differentiate itself but it’s awkwardly stuck between serious and sillyMany remakes are utterly pointless, whether they’re disregarding what made a movie good or interesting in the first place, or paying such slavish homage that a second version becomes redundant, rather than a worthy variation. If nothing else, the contemporary reconfiguration of The Wedding Banquet passes the remake test handily. Ang Lee’s original 1993 film is about a bisexual Taiwanese immigrant, living happily with his male partner, who hastily arranges a lavish (and, emotionally speaking, fake) wedding to a woman to please his visiting parents; director/co-writer Andrew Ahn, who shares screenplay credit with original co-writer James Schamus, relocates the story from 1993 Manhattan to 2025 Seattle, and contends with a whole different set of social rules and actual laws in the process.Ahn is so acutely aware of how times have c...

Politics

3 w. ago #1 Happy Family USA review – a truly special comedy that’s packed with 00s nostalgia

Ramy Youssef’s surreal tale of a Muslim family in post-9/11 America is quietly subversive TV that’s full of laughter – and painfully realNot content with co-creating the brilliant (albeit frequently watch-through-your-fingers) dramedies Mo and Ramy, and starring in the latter, Ramy Youssef has turned his attention to a riotous animation for adults. Like the Egyptian-American comic’s previous work, #1 Happy Family USA is all about the modern Muslim experience, feeling adrift from the world, and the extent to which you should change yourself to fit in. And what better way to underscore this often excruciating, existential experience than to make our lead an insecure, hormone-plagued teen, coming of age in the wake of the September 11 attacks.For real Ramy heads, this show will almost certainly call to mind the flashback episode from the first season of his self-titled series, set during 9/11. There, we saw a young Ramy anxiously fight off accusations that he was a terrorist (“Egypt’s ...

Politics

4 w. ago John Shuttleworth at Bloomsbury Theatre review: Graham Fellows' creation is still gloriously enjoyable

Sheffield’s never-ageing songsmith is pushing 60, but he still has plenty of mileage left in him

Politics

4 w. ago The Penguin Lessons review – Steve Coogan seabird comedy drama tries to sell feelgood mood

Coogan does his best, but there’s a tonal mismatch here: the animal-teaches-lonely-human narrative jars with a depiction of lives in totalitarian ArgentinaHere is a well-meaning, awkward tonal jumble of a movie, based on the bestselling memoir by former teacher Tom Michell; it is a quirky true-story heart warmer, in which an adorable penguin is apparently supposed to redeem not merely the human hero’s personal heartbreak but maybe even the agony of Argentina during the 70s junta. It stars Steve Coogan, who has often in the past shown brilliant technique as a straight actor, and in Philomena with Judi Dench proved he is perfectly capable of carrying an un-ironised emotional story. But his performance here is bafflingly underpowered and opaque, as if he is slightly perplexed by the script he’s been given.Coogan plays Tom, who takes a job in Peronist Argentina in 1976, teaching English at a stuffy private school for the sons of wealthy expatriates, and is wary of the overbearing headte...

Events

last month The WeGotTickets Musical Comedy Awards Final at Bloomsbury Theatre review: hit all the right notes

It was a pity only one winner could be crowned: this strong line-up boasted so many potential victors

Events