Stewart Francis: Pun Gent, On tour
It must be tough being a one-liner specialist these days. You suffer the risk of having all your best gags ripped off or misattributed on the internet. And with the advent of Twitter, you now find yourself competing with every @Tom, @Dick and @Harry who are rattling off jokes in their spare time. But while this might make it harder for an out-and-out one-liner merchant to break through, there are still masters of the genre out there, such as Canadian Stewart Francis. What marks him out is his remarkable consistency: there are very few misfires and even fewer groaners in his armoury of wonderfully lateral quips. Francis has a notably drier style than fellow practitioners Tim Vine or Milton Jones; he’s got more in common with the twisted worldview of Steven Wright (the US punster, not the one on Radio 2). And the flatly sardonic manner with which which he reels off his inspired lines certainly seems a winner with audiences.
The Anvil, Basingstoke, Sat; Theatre Royal, Norwich, Tue; The Cresset, Peterborough, Wed; Loughborough Town Hall, Thu; Wulfrun Hall, Wolverhampton, Fri; touring to 12 Dec
Liam Williams: Capitalism, On tour
One of the most influential tastemakers on the London comedy scene is Simon Pearce, proprietor of the Invisible Dot club in King’s Cross. He’s worked with a huge number of critically acclaimed acts at pivotal stages in their careers, including Joe Wilkinson, Tim Key, Simon Bird and Joe Thomas. If Pearce thinks they’re going places, they almost definitely are. And these days, the Invisible Dot spends its time showcasing the antics of a loose grouping of performers spearheaded by Liam Williams. An extremely bright, phenomenally deadpan stand-up, Williams’s solo work has an ambition few of his peers can match, spinning laughter out of impossible topics and subjecting himself to brutal self-analysis that always stops just short of navel-gazing. If he can convert the adulation of a cult north London audience into a more widespread acceptance, who knows what he might achieve.
Norwich Arts Centre, Mon; Harrogate Theatre, Wed; The MAC, Belfast, Fri; touring to 14 May
Josh Howie: Aids – A Survivor’s Story, London
Given that Josh Howie has past form as the kind of comic who delights in offending public sensibilities, it would be easy to get the wrong idea about his latest show. But this isn’t blackhearted gallows humour, a flipping of the bird at victims of a disease that kills more than a million people a year, but instead a thoughtful piece that explores his experience of growing up in 80s Britain. For him, as for so many of his generation, Aids was a half-understood behemoth looming over his sexual development, making the prospect of swapping bodily fluids for the first time seem even more terrifying. This isn’t a nostalgic show – how could you look back at a period of moral hysteria with rose-tinted glasses? – but more the comedy equivalent of hauntological music. As artists such as Burial and Ariel Pink mine half-remembered sounds from childhood, so Howie is mining half-remembered fears and turning them into the building blocks of an excellent show.
Upstairs, Soho Theatre, W1, Tue to 25 Apr
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