Adam Riches Is Coach Coach, London
Given that 2011 Edinburgh comedy award-winner Adam Riches is best known for creating moments of big, broad and sometimes grotesque physical humour, it might seem strange to talk about the more subtle psychological themes that underpin his work. This is, after all, a man who in the course of his various shows has asked audience members to dribble food into his mouth, interrupted proceedings to play incredibly violent games of “extreme swingball” and consumed a nauseating amount of Yakult. But there is more to Riches’s work than colourful stunts: there’s also a lot of well-observed humour aimed directly at the cult of masculinity. The characters he plays are nearly always grotesquely macho uber-blokes who see the world through a haze of testosterone. That’s certainly true of his latest creation, veteran high-school sports teacher Coach Coach, who’s aiming to catapult a bunch of kids to the Volfsball (Google it) cup final via a mix of motivation and intimidation. It’s essentially a sports-movie spoof, with Riches revelling in the opportunity to take the place of Kevin Costner.
Richard Gadd: Waiting For Gaddot, Edinburgh & Glasgow
Quite rightly, comedians often complain when journalists quote their jokes in reviews, because it means that future audiences will know the punchlines before they’re delivered. We don’t want to spoil anyone’s enjoyment, but Richard Gadd’s latest solo show presents a problem: so much of it is concerned with surprises, unexpected coups de théâtre and unguessable left turns, that it’s almost impossible to describe without being accused of leaking spoilers. What we can say is that it’s a fusion of sketches, stand-up and multimedia elements; that the allusion to Beckett in the title is a big clue about what’s going on; and finally that this a show that spectacularly delivers on its considerable creative ambition, providing a huge level of entertainment. After his Glasgow gig, Gadd co-stars in Adam Riches Is Coach Coach (see above) at Soho Theatre for the remainder of the month.
The Stand, Edinburgh, Sat; The Stand, Glasgow, Sun
Gein’s Family Giftshop, On tour
It’s hard to pull off sick humour as a stand-up. Unless you’re preternaturally gifted – a Frankie Boyle say, or a Doug Stanhope – the danger is that you’ll offend one too many members of the audience, and then a herd mentality will set in and see you booed off the stage. It’s a lesson that aspiring provocateurs learn on the UK open-mic circuit night after night. Sketch group Gein’s Family Giftshop have the advantage of safety in numbers: the fact you’ve got three people committing so gleefully to such dark and disturbing material instantly makes it harder for the audience to object. As you’d expect from an outfit named after a sexually deviant serial killer, the focus here is firmly on the macabre, and theirs is a world of all manner of perverse behaviour. At the same time, there’s a particular kind of grotty Englishness about their material, like Mike Leigh but with a more consistent laugh rate.
