Tag Archives: Satire

Creator: Tom Walker Reviewer: Simon Topping Bursting onto stage red-faced and raging from the start, Jonathan Pie barely takes a breath as he launches into his first tirade of a short 40-minute set. The creation of Tom Walker, Pie, a fictitious news reporter of no fixed channel, has become a YouTube sensation in the past year or two, gaining millions ...

Reviewer: Lauren Humphreys Political satire may not be dead in Scotland, but it’s demise on the comedy scene has left it in dire need of resuscitation. Producers Karen Townsend and Rikki Brown have applied the defibrillator and delivered News Hacks, a monthly riff on the great, the good and the not so clever making the headlines in Scotland. No political ...

Director: Jeremy Herrin / Jonathan Boyle Playwright: James Graham Reviewer: Helen Tope It is 1974, and the Labour Party have won the General Election. But a win without a majority means the race is on to nudge Labour over the line and into political safety. Enter the Whips – the handlers of Westminster. It is their job to see MP’s ...

Book & Music: Joan Littlewood’s Theatre Workshop, Charles Chilton, Gerry Raffles,  and members of the original cast Director: Kevin Shaw Reviewer: Jo Beggs When Joan Littlewood’s Theatre Workshop conceived what was to become their most lasting piece of theatre, the Second World War was still a vivid memory for most of the cast. Littlewood herself had lived through two, having ...

Director: Will Young Writer: Jonny Donahoe & Paddy Gervers Reviewer: Bethan Highgate-Betts Jonny and the Baptists return to the road straight from their hugely popular Edinburgh Fringe run of Eat the Poor. The musical satire duo have brought a show to The Bike Shed Theatre every year for the past five years. Going from playing in the bar, to one ...

Writer: Joe Sellman-Leava Reviewer:Joan Phillips Labels is an intelligent, touching and often funny, one-man show from Worklight Theatre Company’s Joe Sellman-Leava. With immigration never far from the news in the run-up to the referendum and the US election, Labels is a timely reminder of the personal and human consequences for those trying to assimilate and settle into new cultures. Sellman-Leava ...

Writer: Joe Sellman-Leava Reviewer:Marina Waters   The multi-award winning fringe sensation Labels is a vibrant, original, and sublimely constructed piece of theatre that effortlessly blends humour with hard-hitting issues. The one man show delves into the passive (and active) prejudices that lurk beneath the surface of modern multi-cultural Britain and the words and phrases used to assign meaning to a ...

Writer/performer: Adam Kay Reviewer: Scott Matthewman In the grand tradition of the satirical comedy song, Tom Lehrer stands tall, despite his professional performance career being a comparatively short one in the middle decades of the 20th Century. He officially retired from performing live in his thirties, choosing instead to spend his time teaching his favoured academic subjects – mathematics on ...