N20 Comedy Festival

Want some comedy but fed up of sitting in a stale-smelling room attempting to laugh at a ‘comedian’ who’s just far too insecure to be up there under the spotlight, laying bare his whole soul and producing non-amusing, cringeworthy moments of hesitant laughter from the crowd, most of whom wished they’d gone for a curry instead?  Or perhaps you’ve had the experience of the bully comedian who has no real material and no imagination to speak of and so spends the entirety of his stage time picking on members of the audience, ridiculing their job/face/girlfriend/outfit until they come across the nutter at the back who’ll simply throw a bottle at them.  Whilst a good comedy routine contains snatches of these in small measures, having to sit and listen to them for an hour gives the art of comedy a bad name.

Which is why I would wholeheartedly recommend that if you are in any way interested in comedy and stand up, you give the N20 comedy festival at the Battersea Arts Centre a go.  The festival is an annual event that gets stronger each year and this year runs until 27th February.  It tends to be a fairly friendly, local, low-key affair, small on pretensions and big on laughs.  There are faces you will recognise, including Dobby from Peep Show (Isy Suttie) performing her one-woman show “a comedy musical love story” set in a Midlands supermarket.  There’s also Perrier Award Winner Laura Solon, who will be performing her multi-character narrative show Rabbit Faced Story Soup, featuring hard-nosed American agent Marcie Blitzer, a pretentious Frenchman called Didier Auberge and a dead rabbit called Ian.  And if that wasn’t enough there’s also punk storyteller and Perrier award-winner Wil Hodgson, who will return to regale the crowds with more tales of life in Chippenham and his rebellious youth (www.bac.org.uk/whats-on/keyword/Comedy).

Battersea Arts Centre
Lavender Hill, Battersea
London, SW11 5TN

020 7223 2223