Why did the Taxi and Saturday Night Live star travel across America paying women $1,000 to wrestle him? Could transcendental meditation have had anything to do with it?By the time he died in 1984 of lung cancer aged only 35, Andy Kaufman had wrestled m…
Continue ReadingThe festival will celebrate 40th anniversary in 2023 with London shows featuring the actor talking to Rob Delaney, plus host of standup actsJust for Laughs, the comedy festival that began in Canada in 1983, will celebrate its 40th anniversary next year…
Continue ReadingGilded Balloon Patter Hoose, EdinburghThe US comic plays a fast-talking agent, a straight-talking sex therapist and a six-year-old divorcee in this high-energy hourLinda Hollywood is an old-school actor turned agent and she is going to deliver a master…
Continue ReadingScary movies can exorcise the audience’s own demons but silliness can also help you process rage, says the comedian“Stop being hysterical!” “You are over-reacting!” “Put that watermelon down!” If I had a pound for every time I’d heard one of these rebu…
Continue ReadingRio Cinema, LondonLucia Keskin’s sense of fun and breakout potential radiates from these sketches shown at the Blue Tick festivalThere are leaps required of artists in this week’s Blue Tick festival, showcasing internet comedy on the big screen. It’s a…
Continue ReadingRio Cinema, LondonLucia Keskin’s sense of fun and breakout potential radiates from these sketches shown at the Blue Tick festivalThere are leaps required of artists in this week’s Blue Tick festival, showcasing internet comedy on the big screen. It’s a…
Continue ReadingCreated to provide paid work and connect people of colour with audiences during Covid, a new online arts festival aims to be around for the long-term‘You can’t just keep pulling up chairs,” says a character in Joshua Harmon’s play Admissions. “There is…
Continue ReadingWith venues locked down, entertainment-starved audiences are getting in gear for a season of opera, comedy shows and movies experienced from your own car seat – but is it an artistic cul de sac? Britain has never been good at drive-ins. Historically ou…
Continue ReadingSuperstar standups, daring dance, Brexit cabaret and a Bon Jovi musical … Dive into our guide to some of the shows at the world’s biggest arts festival
Continue ReadingPeake is hypnotically belligerent as an ambitious club performer trampling over prejudice and sticky carpets on the 1970s comedy circuit
Maxine Peake dominates the screen as producer and star of this painful, angry film written by Tony Pitts and directed by Adrian Shergold, about a fictional female club comedian fighting her way to the top, or at least the middle, in 1970s Britain.
Maybe without Peake this would have looked merely strident or chaotic; and to be frank, even with Peake, it does flirt with some age-old cliches. Comedians are traditionally given centre stage in a drama on condition that they reveal themselves to be unhappy or empty inside. But Peake gives it a fierce, blazing energy and holds everything together through the magnetic force of her performance. Jim Moir, John Bishop, Kevin Eldon and Diane Morgan provide cameos (perhaps to underline the project’s comedy credentials) and the excellent Christine Bottomley is perhaps a bit underused as Peake’s mum.
Related: Maxine Peake: ‘I’m a Corbyn supporter. We need a coup’
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