26
TIME:
Voodoo Rooms 9:30pm – 10:30pm 6–28 Aug
TICKETS:
FREE
VENUE:
It’s tough getting a ticket for Kieran Hodgson, with some people queuing over an hour to see last year’s Comedy Award nominee in the small back room bar at the Voodoo Rooms. The limited capacity makes sense from the start, as Hodgson shushes us for a wavering, acoustic violin solo: he’s after intimacy. Maestro is ostensibly the story of his hilariously precocious childhood ambition to write a symphony. Inspired by his love of Gustav Mahler, he’s been
Lazy Susan Crazy Sexy Fool HHHH VENUE: TIME:
TICKETS:
Pleasance Courtyard 7:15pm – 8:15pm 3–29 Aug, not 15 £7 – £10
A good barometer for sketch comedy acts is whether or not they can nail the seemingly obligatory ‘film-noir parody skit’ (you know, the ones where they do monologues in 1940s voices. Every damn time). Just on this evidence alone, Lazy Susan have an excellent show on their hands. The reason their version works is why Crazy Sexy Fool is so good in general; it’s underpinned by both subtext and substance. Comedy duo Celeste Dring and Freya Parker present an hour that’s well-act-
beneath this—the characters, the elitism, the occasional showoff moment on the violin—are moments of direct honesty that provide a creeping emotional intensity. Intelligent, at times riotously funny, genuinely educational and finally emotionally engaging, it’s not hard to see why some people are willing to queue for so long – Maestro is worth the wait. ✏︎ Will Young
ed, astutely written, and makes some of their peers look positively uninspired. It’s a genre that has its obvious limits, in form and style, yet Dring and Parker still manage to take it to new, interesting places; it’s not quite game-changing but it’s certainly a breath of fresh comic air. They’re efficient in their use of costume, with sometimes as little as a hairband being enough to set the pace for a new character. Some of the personas are crudely drawn, but they find the joy at the heart of even the least sympathetic ones. They’re not out to make victims of anyone, they’re just particularly adept at bringing out the humanity in people. There’s a recurrent narrative thread that glues it all together and helps it rise above loose, disjointed sketch shows. The payoff is incremental, and it all builds to a satisfying finale.
Subtle and OTT by turn, there’s scarcely a note in the sketch comedy scale they don’t hit. It’s clear within the first five minutes that the investment in ticket price will pay dividends in laughs. ✏︎ Matthew Sharpe
Comedy
Maestro HHHH
working on the opus ever since, recently even recording it with an amateur orchestra. Divided into four movements—which provide the narrative structure—each is inspired by a seminal romantic relationship from his past. Along the way, we meet the cast of his life, from friends and lovers to a sexually suggestive Classic FM host and Mahler himself—as played variously by Christoph Waltz, Andrew Scott and David Tennant. A character comedian by trade, this is Hodgson’s forte – he’s able to trigger laughter with the slightest gesture. He’s not a naturally warm performer, and the show is unashamedly snobbish. There are references to Proust, Shakespeare, transport design and medieval monarchs. Many are exquisitely funny, though it would be nigh on impossible to catch them all. But
Credit Bobby Goulding
Kieran Hodgson