Comedy
Festivals
ShowbizMonkeys.com is sometimes lucky enough to cover major events and festivals in film, music, comedy, and pop culture. Whether a major international spectacle like the Academy Awards or a more regional festival like the Winnipeg Folk Festival, we're on the scene with interviews, photos, video, and special commentary.
How do you even review an improv show? What have I done? I was so happy to get these tickets and now I'm in hell.
Don't get me wrong, the show was great. It was some of my hardest laughs of the festival.
This is one of the best concerts I have ever been to, period. Probably top five.
The description of the show on the website does not do it justice. It sounds like it's going to be a one-woman show about social injustice and being sad.
In 12 years of doing stand-up comedy, seeing this show is a moment that truly sticks out for me. I've never felt like I've seen the inside of another comedian's brain, as much as I did last night. Jerrod Carmichael is already one of the most intimate comedians working today.
There's a lot to love here. In a Canadian comedy festival that mostly hires Americans, it's great to see a show by some of Toronto's best performers.
This is the hardest thing I've ever had to write. I took these tickets with reckless abandon and now here I sit, like a fool caught in a Faustian bargain.
How do you describe a Maria Bamford show? How do you even explain Maria Bamford? For reference, Judd Apatow is currently working on a documentary about her, because even he can't explain it.
Modern improv is a relatively new art form. Birthed from Viola Spolin's Improvisation for the Theatre, it started out as the back bone of performers' acts like Nichols and May, who were part of the Compass Players, an improvisational theatre company including Paul Sils as well as Ted Flicker and Del Close.
Tonight I had the absolute joy of seeing Ava Val and Patti Harrison share a stage, and it was so good the only adjective I have left after leaving the theatre is bananas. It was bananas good. A great big hand o' bananas.
It used to be Ava was a Toronto treat, but in the last couple of years she's been spreading her wings and playing across the country and around the world.
If there is a black belt in comedy, or better yet a Nobel Peace Prize, give it to Chloe Radcliffe.
I know in comedy there's that cliché of "never blame the audience", but wow what a terrible audience. This was especially weird for a festival.
One thing certain about the newly-returned Just for Laughs Toronto is they've branched out into a variety of venues that we would have never seen before, including the Randolph Theatre in the Randolph Centre for the Arts, a Methodist church turned into a community arts space and education centre.
First of all, I want to continue my trend of pointing out under-appreciated Canadian treasures. Nour Hadidi absolutely crushed it as Hari's opener. She was so good that Hari was able to get laughs off of callbacks to her jokes. I've never seen that before.
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