What’s it like to break into television in your 50s? The award-winning standup talks about her new series The Change, her late-blooming career and her issues with TupperwareThere is a photograph of Bridget Christie and her siblings, she says, taken in …
Continue ReadingMarina Hyde confesses how couldn’t tear her eyes away from the Gwyneth Paltrow trial (1m32s); from Camden council care worker to trailblazing icon, we revisit an interview with Paul O’Grady from 2017 (9m34s); and Zoe Williams laments the revival of the…
Continue ReadingKomedia, BrightonThe comic’s swaggering take on religion is ebullient before a handbrake-turn brings emotional candour tooLuisa Omielan’s last show, Politics for Bitches, ostensibly about public affairs, devolved into a personal tale of her mother’s de…
Continue ReadingThe comic has come blazing out of lockdown fearless and on full throttle, buying a motorbike for her 50th birthday and turning the menopause – along with an incident in a park – into comedy gold‘I must tell you how old I’m going to be when I die,” says…
Continue ReadingCarmen Ali and Siân Docksey are among the comedians who riff on their experiences as strippers. The pandemic has revealed both industries to be precarious – but they’re looking out for each otherWhat do standup comedy and stripping have in common? “I s…
Continue ReadingWhen her trainer called muscly women ‘unfeminine’, the standup turned her outrage into a hilarious show full of sweat, barbells, chalk and childbirthJessica Fostekew felt nervous yesterday, very nervous. So she went to lift some weights. “I was at peak…
Continue ReadingIs the fringe ready for the brash standup who used to get paid in nachos and chicken wings? We meet one half of 2 Dope Queens as she fills her shoes with sweatWhat does Phoebe Robinson want to see when she arrives at the Edinburgh fringe? “Just tons of…
Continue ReadingSoho theatre, LondonKemsley packs in high-calibre jokes in a tour through the gendered politics of promiscuityIn Nanette, Hannah Gadsby refused to pretend her personal pain was funny – and threw down a gauntlet to the comedy world. But there’s life yet…
Continue ReadingThe actor and comedian explains how her debut play, 3Women, captures the age divide within feminism – and the defiance of the #MeToo era
I recently gave a talk at a girls’ high school. I mention this not only because I am a virtue-signalling monster but also because one of the young women asked something that brought me up short: “How should we react, as young feminists, to older women who don’t seem to support us?”
I sat there and goldfished for a moment, keenly aware that these freshly minted teenage minds sat among their esteemed “older women” teachers. But this is one of the issues I have been grappling with in my debut play, 3Women, which is about three generations of the same family, aged 18, 40, and 65. They come together in an increasingly claustrophobic hotel suite the night before a wedding, ostensibly to enjoy some family bonding time. As more wine is ordered and drunk, the gloves come off, and there are old scores to settle.
Continue ReadingThe actor and comedian explains how her debut play, 3Women, captures the age divide within feminism – and the defiance of the #MeToo era
I recently gave a talk at a girls’ high school. I mention this not only because I am a virtue-signalling monster but also because one of the young women asked something that brought me up short: “How should we react, as young feminists, to older women who don’t seem to support us?”
I sat there and goldfished for a moment, keenly aware that these freshly minted teenage minds sat among their esteemed “older women” teachers. But this is one of the issues I have been grappling with in my debut play, 3Women, which is about three generations of the same family, aged 18, 40, and 65. They come together in an increasingly claustrophobic hotel suite the night before a wedding, ostensibly to enjoy some family bonding time. As more wine is ordered and drunk, the gloves come off, and there are old scores to settle.
Continue Reading