Comedy Slices #40

Recovered from Glastonbury or from Glasto envy (for those of us who didn’t attend)? Good. Then let’s get on with this week’s juicy comedy slice. 

Monday 8th – Paul F Tompkins – Crying and Driving  – Soho Theatre – 15

Paul F Tompkins may have a name like some creature from Narnia but he bears a  striking resemblance to Ron Burgundy – a combination that tickles me before I have even heard a word. Tompkins’s UK debut is an hour of tales of haunting ones’s own house, fatherhood, marriage and carrying a learner’s permit to kill. Sounds like an epic show, and with Rolling Stone listing his podcast has number One in their list of ‘The 10 Best Comedy Podcasts of the Moment’ 2011 I’m sold. 

Wednesday 10th – Caroline Hardie: Does My Face Look Big in This?  – Leicester Square Theatre – 6

Caroline Hardie is a character comedian previewing her solo show for her second trip to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Filled with a cast of literal unknowns for show packed with a variety of characters that is all about people -and you. (This better not be a show where I am plucked from the audience forced to describe my job and try unsuccessfully to convince the comedian that the gent next to my right is not in fact anything to do with me…) Anyway, Hardie has previously been hotly tipped and as this show is directed by the award-winning comedian Thom Tuck, it looks to be a cracking show.

Thursday 11th – Boy with Tape on His Face – Underbelly – 15.50 

I have always been intrigued and a little spectical about  by the Boy with Tape on His Face. How can an act that involves stand-up with no talking and mime with noise possible be funny? Let alone be ‘ delightful, wry…and hilarious’ as his website claims? And yet ‘More Tape’ is an award-winning show that has had a packed out critically acclaimed West End run. And so I am beginning to come round to the idea that maybe, just maybe I should believe the hype and get down to see this wordless act before he leaves London….

Holly Hyde-Smith