The Definitive Guide to Comedy
⭐⭐⭐⭐ NYC-based stand-up Ashley Gavin warns us early on that she knows she looks ridiculous when she cries as well as just how she dresses like a teenage boy onstage. But her show already forewarned us that not only does Gavin have a therapist, but that she probably has a …
⭐⭐⭐½ Actress Anna Akana has more than 2.8 million YouTube subscribers (and an additional 1.5 million combined followers on TikTok and Instagram), and her first big wave of fans found her in 2013 when she posted a viral video titled, “please don’t kill yourself.” That’s when Akana first told the …
⭐⭐⭐⭐ “If it’s not content, then why did it happen?” That’s a pithy way for someone who has grown up in the social media age to describe their terrible case of TMI. But McCafferty’s own show description for the Fringe calls her hour a dark comedy “about death, dating and …
⭐⭐⭐⭐ There’s something extra ominous about being led through a bar into a dark, damp cave as the clock approaches midnight, receiving a wooden percussive instrument, and having your psychic energies measured by a healer who also happens to be a clown. That this healer clown, this Medicine Woman, is …
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Who wouldn’t want to see “the first ever comedy show at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe performed entirely by a horse.” Then you encounter Emily-Anne “Elf” Lyons, most certainly a clown human standing before you, and wonder, just whom does this filly think she’s fooling? And yet, Lyons ain’t lying. …
Janine Harouni is a Staten Island native who began her stand-up comedy career in earnest only after moving to London, England, in 2012. Harouni experienced her first viral success as one-third of a sketch group called Muriel whose YouTube fame prompted deals with both the BBC and Quibi, and she’s …
Zach Zucker is a clown-based comedian and actor who splits his time between Los Angeles and London, where he has become known as the ringmaster for Stamptown, a variety show and production company he created that has helped develop and bring other shows from the United States, the U.K. and …
**** (out of 5) Olivier Martin-Salvan and Pierre Guillois would’ve been movie stars in the silent era a century ago. They evoke more than a bit of Laurel and Hardy, but with even starker contrasts. In this contemporary duo, this Ollie (Martin-Salvan) does most all of the talking while sitting …
**** (out of 5) It’s safe for me to tell you that Max & Ivan’s previous show, Commitment, is now available on YouTube. As for everything else, well, which quadrant would I like to follow? Max claims he’s active safe, while Ivan is passive risk. These opposites made for a …
*** 1/2 (out of 5) At 25, Philipp Kostelecky still looks like the villain in a high-school basketball movie. That might be the Austrian in him. Kostelecky is a mix of Austrain, American and Slovenian. His dad left when Philipp was only 9. Now, his deadbeat dad is merely dead. …
