Doug Stanhope is the latest American comic to be dubbed the next Bill Hicks, and there are a lot of parallels. Like Hicks, he delights in thinking the supposedly unthinkable, rails against all social and political convention with furious indignation, and is rather more cherished and respected here than in his homeland, but Stanhope's coming from a much darker place. He's a supreme nihilist who treats the value systems of the left and the right with similar disdain, and glories in booze and drugs as a means of blotting out the world; in his own words, "To win the war on drugs, you should attack the heart of the problem, and that's whoever is making life so dull that I want to escape from it." Expect wrenching honesty with violently offensive crowd-baiting.
• Leicester Square Theatre, WC2, Tue to Fri
