The top London comedy shows to see in May

Chaotic US comic returns with the finished version of this deeply twisted and extremely amusing set of anticomedy, which she debuted as a work in progress at last year’s Edinburgh Fringe. You’ll never look at beloved cartoon mouse Stuart Little the same again.

It’s been a walloping six years since Herring has created one of his pedantic, surreal, invariably high concept offerings – in large part because he’s finally found something like mainsteam success with his Live from Leicester Square Theatre podcast series. Now he returns to frontline service with a show about his 2021 brush with testicular cancer. 

‘Actually, Good’ took home the top award at this year’s Melbourne International Comedy Festival, so the stakes were already high enough for Gillian Cosgriff’s ruthlessly cheery interactive hour. The show is also all about finding happiness in the mundane – which is a hard enough mission at the best of times…

The hugely successful, perennial cool comic follows up his West End run at the start of the year with a couple of dates at the prestigious Southbank Centre for his new live stand-up show in which he attempts to grapple with the fact that he recently concluded that he doesn’t like performing live stand-up shows. In ‘Hecklers Welcome’ Acaster talks through his phobia of performance, and as the title suggests, he promises he’ll give any heckler a fair hearing.

The grumpy everyman moves into the big leagues with a brace of almost sold-out dates at The O2 with his new show ‘Hustle’, which is, in essence, a consideration of whether there’s any point in being good in this life. Early reviews suggest the deal is essentially Ranganathan squaring up to middle-age in relatively predictable fashion, but it is by all accounts and agreeable evening of stand-up.

Hugely influential silent US comic Doctor Brown – real name Phil Burgers, astonishingly – returns with his first proper new show in 12 years, a period that has seen him mentor and nurture the current impressive glut of LA-based US clown comics. ‘Beturns’ (all his shows begin with latter 'b') comes with no real promise beyond being the first Doctor Brown show in a decade – and that should be enough for most of us. 

The Park Theatre’s beloved series of spoof murder mysteries – which put a different, unrehearsed celebrity guest at the centre of the action each night – returns for its third iteration. Slebs taking part will include Benedict Cumberbatch, Beverley Knight, Adrian Lester, Brian Cox and Jodie Whittaker.