Jack Franklin
Featured, The Pun 2012 Reviews »
No one in the world talks as fast as a North American stand up comic. Their words per minute is like nothing else you will ever hear- imagine a foul-mouth five year old after a face full of sugar. It is a very specific style, guaranteed to deliver the maximum number of jokes in the allotted time.
“Did you see this, did you hear about that? Have you ever noticed that when…” It is a formula sure, but one that works and Byron Bertram knocks joke after joke out of the …
Featured, The Pun 2012 Reviews »
One of the great things about having a huge comedy festival at your doorstep is the vast pool of different styles to choose from. There is your basic stand up with a microphone and a brick wall, variety hours, musicals and then there’s the extremely odd and entertaining comic narrative. This is where Nick Coyle has made his home.
The show, Me Pregnant! is an absurdist monster tale with delusions of God and it is thoroughly engaging. Starting as a narrated fairy tale, Coyle appears as just a floating head, illuminated …
The Pun 2012 Reviews »
The 21-year-old Jack Druce must hate it when people focus on his age, so let’s talk about his looks instead. Bounding on stage, fresh-faced and earnest, he seems like your friend’s younger brother’s girlfriend’s younger brother. He looks young, and it works for him.
From the start, he has the audience on side. “Look at this guy,” I thought. “He is so little. Man, I want him to be funny.” Because it would’ve been too sad if he wasn’t.
And he was very funny. Armed with an accent neither I, nor he, …
The Pun 2012 Reviews »
Excuse the repetition but I want this to sink in – go see this show, Go See This Show, GO SEE THIS SHOW.
In his 2012 MICF show Still Life, Paul Foot artfully deconstructs the comedy show format. A long, drawn-out description here would only do you, and him, a disservice. This show is hilarious, and Foot is an unhinged genius – the Charlie Kaufman of the Comedy Festival.
The show begins, as they all do, with an offstage announcement, and that is where the similarity to other shows ends. In Foot’s capable hands, even …
Featured, The Pun 2012 Reviews »
Stand-up comedy is a strange undertaking. Really, you are selling yourself – and it’s a damn good thing that Celia Pacquola is pitching a perfect product: herself. She is impossible not to love, she holds the spotlight with boundless enthusiasm. You see a lot of comedians and think: sure they are funny, but I couldn’t stand being in a room with them on my own time. Not Celia. I just want, or should I say wish, to be her friend.
Delayed takes the form of a confessional, charting her decision to …
The Pun 2011 Reviews »
Asher Treleaven is an uneasy man to look at. He stares at the spotlight like a guilty, gangly, greasy step-child. His mode of operation is deconstruction: deconstruct the standard comedian who mocks the first few rows of the audience by doing so himself (“Fuck you, You’re ugly, I hate you,” he says to some of us). It is very funny but leaves some of the room on edge. Which is of course where he wants his audience to be: unsure and aware of the uncomfortable moments in life.
Matadoor is a …
The Pun 2011 Reviews »
Lindsay Webb could well have the most thankless timeslot of the festival – 6pm at the Portland Hotel – meaning the after-work crowd are his demographic, but this seems not to phase him. He delivers his material like a steam train: ceaseless joke-telling, earnest confidence and chutzpah. He doesn’t make you want to like him; he makes you want to love him.
The show, Pundamonium, does what is says – puns and plenty of them. It is a groan-inducing form of humour at the best of times, yet Webb has done …
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