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Twelfth Night
Even in comedies, jokes are often treated as decoration rather than substance – meant to entertain while pointing to deeper themes. But the RSC’s new production of Twelfth Night, directed by Prasanna Puwanarajah, doesn’t shy away from a focus on fun. Devoting more time to clowning and the comedic subplot – in which Olivia’s uncle Sir Toby Belch and Sir Andrew Aguecheek trick the uptight Malvolio into believing Olivia loves him – Puwanarajah creates a unique production that draws attention to different types of fools, how they operate, and highlights the tragedy that exists as an equal and opposite force to comedy.
Michael Grady-Hall’s Feste is the likeable, highly trained clown: ridiculous in a polished way, funny through skill and control rather than earnest clumsiness. He sings, juggles, and commands a crowd, performing choreographed routines that are genuinely beautiful. A rope dropped from the ceiling is pulled to black out the stage; in the interval, he throws balls into the audience; and at the end of ‘The Rain It Raineth Every Day’, when he blows out the spotlight, we see the delicate side of the professional fool.
Edward Gorey-inspired design by James Cotterill gives the clowning heightened intricacy. The minimal greyscale lighting opens up the stage, revealing the back curtain, which emphasises the fragility of his body within the huge Barbican Theatre. In mid-air, Grady-Hall skilfully walks the tightrope between safety and disaster.
Samuel West’s incredibly funny Malvolio is the real fool however, and the character who makes us laugh most. His foolishness is raw and untrained, with clumsy physicality and famous yellow stockings. Feste’s ruffled yellow-and-black outfit, complete with banana codpiece, almost looks good compared to Malvolio’s disastrous ensemble. When he appears above the stage, gazing down at Olivia (Freema Agyeman) with wildly misplaced confidence, the audience begins to laugh hard. West’s nasal voice is a perfect comic instrument: his off-beat command of his sounds shines when he studies the forged letter and insists he sees Olivia’s handwriting, her “c’s, her u’s, and her t’s!”.
Music plays a massive part in how we are pulled through the production. An original score by Matt Maltese oscillates between melancholy, soulful tunes and vaudeville-like playful numbers. A vast organ made of oversized pipes looms centrestage, around which the characters whirl like clockwork figures inside a music box, executing slapstick ensemble scenes with orchestral precision.
Joplin Sibtain as Sir Toby Belch and Demetri Goritsas as Sir Andrew Aguecheek form the dynamic duo at the centre of the carousel of foolish side characters. They generate plenty of laughter, but their dominance within the group deepens the audience’s sympathy for Malvolio. Puwanarajah claims that Twelfth Night contains some of Shakespeare’s funniest and saddest moments and here there’s an equally tragic payoff to Malvolio’s hilarious fate: when he is socially ostracised, the moment lands with force, and we feel almost complicit for laughing along.
By focusing strongly on clowning and comedy, the production slightly downplays romantic threads, particularly between Orsino (Daniel Monks) and Viola as Cesario (Gwyneth Keyworth). This shifts emphasis away from jokes where the punchline is subversion of gender roles, which could feel less titillating in our contemporary society where the idea of the feminine encroaching on the masculine is less exhilarating.
Weighting Twelfth Night as Puwanarajah does is a daring move, one that risks making the production appear somewhat superficial. The significance of plot and subplots are almost reversed, yet this choice reveals just how rich the comedic subplot is when given focus. It is not only an entertaining and visually impactful spectacle, but also a worthwhile investigation into where and how fun arises within one of Shakespeare’s most comically charged plays.
Directed by Prasanna Puwanarajah
Set and Costume Design by James Cotterill
Lighting design by Zoe Spurr and Bethany Gupwell
Composed by Matt Maltese
Sound Design by George Dennis
Produced by Holly ReissPublished with Everything Theatre
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Josh Jones: I Haven’t Won The Lottery So Here’s Another Tour Show
Josh Jones returns with a new show, I Haven’t Won The Lottery So Here’s Another Tour Show, that plays like a round-the-houses tour of his life, told through a series of joke-embellished stories about his family, dyslexia, Dancing On Ice, his relationship, his hometown and “bumming,” among other things.
The opening is clever: a bit about reading hate comments—not his own, which he says he doesn’t really look at, but those of a comedian he personally can’t stand. It’s a subtle acknowledgement that everyone in the room will have their own opinions about the show, while quietly reassuring us he doesn’t plan to take any of them too seriously, and that he enjoys judging as much as we do. It perfectly matches the slightly unbothered and mischievous attitude that runs through the rest of the hour.
Once the show gets going, the structure is loose—sometimes too loose—and the transitions between stories can feel abrupt. There are genuinely brilliant sections, but they’re interspersed with weaker moments where the energy dips. Jones mainly cycles through three recurring strands: his Manchester upbringing in what he affectionately calls “a scummy family,” his now-comfortable life with his doctor boyfriend, and the odd opportunities that come with being a successful comedian, including a brief stint on Dancing On Ice, where he twisted his ankle in week one but still got a full cheque. These threads are fun individually, but they could be woven into a clearer overall narrative. Doing so would help sustain the show’s momentum and make the hour feel tighter and more satisfying.
There’s even a brief detour into the slave trade, which feels as crazy to describe here as it did when he introduced it onstage. The material is fine, but it only highlights that his strongest work lives in the stories about the people around him. Those scenes are vivid, rowdy, and warm; you can practically see the sitcom version already.
His bit about his mum going to the local travel agent to book a holiday, but instead buying the woman’s dog—meaning she then can’t go on the holiday because she has to look after it—is exactly the kind of chaotic domestic comedy he excels at. Likewise, his grandad insisting he won’t die until he sees Jones marry his boyfriend, followed by Jones imagining the family accusing him of “killing grandad with your gay love!” Jones’s writing is genuinely sharp, full of subtle jokes tucked into the wording—like the idea of “killing” someone with “love”—that elevate the comedy without the audience having to do any extra headwork.
Another standout is his story about desperately wanting a McKenzie coat, only for everyone around him to tell him it was a “gay coat.” The coat takes on a life of its own, transforming from a coat that looks gay into a coat that makes you gay. Much of Jones’s humour comes from that instinctive, ridiculous shouting-match energy of childhood—life throws something absurd at you, so you throw something equally absurd back.
Jones tells us that he doesn’t want to create anything too serious or high-concept—he just wants to tell jokes, but he has some seriously good writing and a clear talent for crafting little comic worlds that could easily be linked together. As of now, he knows how to put on a fun night.
Written by: Josh Jones
Published with The Reviews Hub
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Carl Donnelly: Another Round
With his cap on and two earrings firmly in place, Carl Donnelly takes to the stage with Another Round, his latest hour of laid-back, anecdotal comedy. Last year, he tempted fate with a show about feeling good about going into middle age — and life promptly reminded him of its brutality. This time, he unpacks the fallout with his signature casual charm.
The first section of the show is a flurry of fast-paced, crowd-pleasing material on generational divides, ageing, Instagram vanity, and caveman diets, amongst other things. Its original material delivered in a familiar stylex, and the laughs come thick and fast. Once the audience is nicely warmed up, Donnelly slows the pace and takes us through some longer stories. He shares tales from his travels in India, searching for somewhere to drink, infiltrating a speakeasy in a local man’s house, and managing to bond with the initially suspicious locals over shared admiration for international sports stars — not to mention the joys of his alcoholic advent calendar. In some ways, it’s every man’s dream.
The second half takes a more personal turn, delving into his recent illness — a bout of internal bleeding exacerbated by an evening of taming a raucous cruise ship crowd by downing a queue of pints. Even this grim material is handled with wit and charisma, culminating in a surprisingly funny and heartfelt reflection on his daughter’s brush with bacterial meningitis. He admits that he thought about trying to take these subjects on to produce a heavier, more introspective show about processing this trauma, but fears this could lead to disaster if done wrong. He prefers to treat these subjects as he would any other, showing how lightness and humour can be a remedy for anything, from the frustration of having to endure influencers on Instagram to near death experiences.
The opening section draws in new audience members with broad, accessible observations, but by the end it’s the scatological and the deeply personal that have his core fans roaring. He paints wild, hilarious scenarios, and you believe every word. His go-with-the-flow nature explains how he gets into so much trouble; he’s the sort of man who could probably squeeze in a quick gig after taking his pre-op laxative — if it kicks in on time, that is. No dodgy decision goes unrewarded with a hilarious dose of disaster.
Many stand-up shows hinge on one central theme or concept, but Another Round doesn’t seem to need one. Patterns emerge naturally through Donnelly’s stories, and combined with his relaxed confidence on stage, it feels as though you’ve known him all your life by the end. The title captures the spirit of the evening perfectly: Donnelly’s long-time fans feel like old friends, and newcomers are quickly made to feel part of the gang. It’s as if everyone’s gathered for a few pints and a catch-up, and you leave with the sense that another round, and another hour of stories, isn’t far away.
Written by Carl Donnelly
Published with Everything Theatre
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Michael Rosen: Getting Through It
Michael Rosen’s Getting Through It is a two-part show formed of two stories: The Death of Eddie and Many Kinds of Love. In the first of these, he takes us through the day his son Eddie died in 1999, the moments that followed, the funeral, life after the funeral, and the ongoing present. The second is an account of his 40 days spent in intensive care when he contracted Covid-19 in the early pandemic, a collage of his own descriptions and ‘diary entries’ by hospital staff covering periods of time he is unable to remember.
The show is a masterclass in storytelling — written and performed with such precision and care that the audience hangs on every word. You instantly feel as though you are in the hands of a professional: an experienced writer and an experienced griever. Approaching such immense topics, Rosen is at ease — assured, composed, completely in control. He walks onto the vast stage of the Old Vic, sits at a small chair and table placed at its centre, and holds our attention there for the entire duration of the performance. He needs nothing more than his voice and his words.
In the first story, death seems to happen in a flash. One moment, Eddie is a vibrant young man; the next, we hear the zip of the body bag, and his life is over — or rather, his death happens. Rosen draws a clear distinction that runs through the piece: “Death is biology. Grief is mind.” Together, those two ideas define the experience of loss — the first a medical process, the second a state of being.
He opens with unflinching, clinical detail: the red stripes beneath his son’s armpit where the skin has started to deteriorate, the thin red liquid that seeps from his mouth. The description is matter-of-fact, almost detached, reflecting the numbness of a parent trying to take in the impossible. From there, the mental process of grief unfolds as something continuous, elusive, and ever-shifting. Watching a woman who also lost her child cry at her daughter’s grave, Rosen realises we only ever witness grief in fragments, not in the long, quiet years that follow.
For all its darkness, The Death of Edie is not a heavy story. Rosen brings warmth and humour to the stage; there are moments of laughter and joy throughout. He speaks of Eddie as full of life — a great hockey player, funny, kind, surrounded by people who loved him. He emphasises his physical strength and impressive size, resurrecting his son’s energy and making the audience feel joyful and relaxed, perhaps as Eddie once made him feel.
He connects Eddie to the present wherever possible, recalling that his son once worked in a theatre like this one, ushering audiences just as young staff do tonight. We all passed by that moment on the way in as unremarkable, but now it is charged. The connection between performer, place, and memory becomes palpable — the theatre feels momentarily inhabited by Eddie’s spirit.
The second story, Many Kinds of Love, shifts focus from loss to survival. It explores and magnifies the moment that seemed to pass so quickly and quietly in The Death of Eddie: the dying. In the ‘liminal space’ of the hospital, Rosen confronts the same biological battle with microbes that claimed his son’s life. Once again, we hear startling medical detail — his blood oxygen levels dropping to a life-threatening 58. Yet when recounting his own illness, Rosen is more animated; this time, he is the fighter. His wit becomes a weapon, humour wielded against the pull of death, bolstered by acts of kindness and dedication from medical staff. The optimism that underpins this story reveals a different kind of getting through it — one rooted in endurance, connection, and gratitude. Rosen recognises that recovery, like loss, is more than physical. It depends on levity, on care, on the steady presence of others who hold you up when your own strength falters.
Leaving a show about death, one might expect to feel heavy and sorrowful. Instead, you feel something gentler — a kind of clarity. Rosen transforms personal grief and near-death experience into shared reflection on how life and death intersect and co-exist. Getting Through It is not about moving on, but moving with.
Written by Micheal Rosen
Published with The Reviews Hub
Reposted by Micheal Rosen on X
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Tom Rosenthal: Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I Am
What separates Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I Am from an average stand-up show is everything that has come before it. Tom Rosenthal’s career as a comic actor hangs over the performance. He knows we know him — but not necessarily for his own stand-up. We arrive with preconceptions: we think something of him before the show, during the show, and, most terrifyingly, after the show.
That sense of caution runs through every moment as Rosenthal tells us about himself — exploring his recent autism diagnosis, his Jewish heritage, his career, his relationship with his famous father, and his status as a so-called “nepo baby.” Threaded through it all is a comparison to Arctic Monkeys’ Alex Turner, who made two great albums he could never quite follow. Rosenthal approaches all of this with a hyper-awareness of the audience’s gaze, as if every confession and every joke is filtered through the question: what do they think of me now?
Many of the jokes come from the tension between wanting to be liked and pretending not to care. Every time he makes a sincere point about creating something beautiful regardless of what people think, he immediately undercuts it with a plea for reassurance — that we like him, that we think he’s funny. Rosenthal anticipates everything we might say about him — the post-show chat, the criticisms — and takes that second-guessing to absurd extremes. At one point, he even invents fake audience members who complain about the show upon leaving the theatre. The bit brilliantly captures how mad you can make yourself by trying to imagine what everyone else thinks of you.
Protecting your reputation is another anxiety Rosenthal shares. He talks about how maybe Alex Turner should have stopped after two great albums rather than risk making anything worse. But you can’t do that. Rosenthal knows it, and the show becomes a kind of acceptance of having to keep putting yourself out there. Despite all his anxiety, there’s something laid-back about the performance. He takes his time to explain his points without worrying about pelting the audience with punchlines — though there are still plenty across the full hour. At one point, he jokes about how exhausting it would be, for us as much as for him, if he were hilarious 100 per cent of the time.
He has the appearance and performance skill of a well-practised actor, but with his slicked-back hair, white shirt and black trousers — echoing Turner’s look — he presents a cartoonishly over-polished figure: an actor who’s had success and now seems oddly removed from the real world, a world he can no longer return to. In a way, the look itself pre-empts how he thinks we will see him — another way of saying, I know what you’re thinking.
Rosenthal always manages to make us feel like we’re in on the joke. Despite the fact that most audience members will never experience what he has, he knows we understand the same paradoxes and fears of being seen. He constantly reassures us that he likes us, calling us his “favourite audience” because we laugh at his favourite jokes — a gesture that lets us know we’re seeing him in the way he wants to be seen.
For all his worry about being judged, he seems finally at ease, figuring it out in real time — and in the process, delivering an hour packed with great jokes.
Written by: Tom Rosenthal
Published with The Reviews Hub
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Alice Cockayne: Licensed. Professional. Trained. Qualified.
Licensed. Professional. Trained. Qualified. is wild, grotesque, dark, deep and laugh-out-loud hilarious. Alice Cockayne is a powerhouse, embodying six outrageous female alter egos, each with jobs typically associated with women. Through them, she dives headfirst into female fears and desires, pulling the audience into a world that feels both absurdly exaggerated and disturbingly familiar.
The production itself is super slick and imaginative. Costume changes are covered seamlessly with witty interludes: wigs mounted on the back wall spring to life, performing brief telephone-call sketches that keep the momentum rolling. Even Cockayne’s entrance is striking — beginning in the office of the escort service Girls4U, she puppeteers wigs on Styrofoam heads to represent sex workers, camouflaging her own head among them before revealing herself. This segment offers some of the darkest comedy of the evening, particularly when three men from the audience are pulled up to dance with the wig-puppets. It’s strangely joyful while being brutally honest about the objectification at the core of one of the world’s oldest professions.
Across the show, Cockayne explodes familiar archetypes. There’s a “mother” character, Penelope Pendlewitch, with a false belly and an impossible horde of 556 children – a grotesque magnification of the desire to reproduce. Another character embodies the pursuit of beauty: a long-nailed femme fatale who glides in, chanting, “beautiful lady coming through,” with a softness so exaggerated it’s haunting. Cockayne constantly cuts through these surreal figures with fourth-wall breaks, reminding us, “don’t be scared, it’s just a character.” These moments land hilariously while also probing why a “character” can feel unsettling, as a distorted collection of real human traits expanded to freakish proportions.
Some of the strongest laughs come from the cleaner character Jeanie McNelson, “The Woman with a Broken Neck,” who begins by flicking the lights on and off as if testing the logistics of her cleaning job. She then proceeds to “clean” the audience, joking with one man about his dyed hair: “That’s natural, it won’t wash out, will it?” At this point, the show hits its stride, and every line has the room in stitches.
McNelson also feels like the most true-to-life character, where the surrealism is anchored in something recognisable. It’s when Cockayne’s creations have this kind of grounding that the show is at its funniest. The Cook, too, is a highlight — cobbling together a casserole from bizarre props and breezing past the audience with half-hearted attempts at small talk. She hilariously brushes someone off after asking their star sign: “We definitely won’t get on.” It’s a brilliant imitation of conversation with someone who really doesn’t care about what you have to say.
When the observational edge slips, a few moments don’t quite reach the heights of the show’s best. The Madam of the Girls4U escort agency carries thematic weight, but her characterisation feels thinner than the others. Segments like this would benefit from a sharper script to match the brilliance elsewhere. Still, Cockayne’s whirlwind energy more than makes up for it. Each time a character exits, we can’t wait to see who will storm on next. This is the kind of comedy that feels made for the theatre — exhilarating simply because you’re there in the room with her.
Written by: Alice Cockayne
Directed by: Jonathan Oldfeild
Published with The Reviews Hub
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Rosie Wood 