Its cool blue neon lights, front-of-house café and occasional late-night shows may blend it into the Soho landscape, but since taking up residence on Dean Street in 2000 Soho Theatre has made quite a name for itself.
Across three studio spaces, it puts on an eclectic line-up of work from some of the biggest names in comedy, spoken word, and cabaret, and hosts at least six different shows a night. If ever there were a place in London to get a year-round taste of the Edinburgh Fringe it's here, with its eclectic programming, late shows and ever-buzzing bar. Just don't expect to find deep-fried haggis on the menu - teas, coffees, and wine are the order of the day at Soho Theatre's chic cafe/bar, which is reliably packed out after 6pm.
It has to be said that Soho excels in almost every area apart from the production of good in-house theatre shows, something it's consistently struggled with (though it has many fine co-productions). But this barely impacts on anybody's good time, and it's hard to hold it against the most fun theatre in central London.
The sharp-as-nails ‘Taskmaster’ champion returns to standup duties with this new show. Sophie Duker’s not telling us much about ‘But Daddy I Love You’, but it has a cute poster image and she describes it as ‘delusional’. Whatever the case, expect entertainment and provocation in roughly equal measures.
This review is from the 2024 Edinburgh Fringe. ‘So much to catch up on!’ gasps Ania Magliano at the start of her latest set and yes, that’s very much how it feels. ‘Forgive Me Father’ is the young rising star’s third Edinburgh show in three years and her great gift is that where so many comedy sets can feel thematically laboured, Magliano really does come across as a pal getting us up to speed on whatever’s been going on in her life. Last year’s ‘I Can’t Believe You’ve Done This’ was about a catastrophic haircut she got. ‘Father Forgive Me’ is kind of about moving in with her boyfriend, finding it weird, and concluding she needs her coil removed to sort her mood out. (Her father is touched on, though one suspects the show evolved after she came up with the title). As with ‘I Can’t Believe You’ve Done This’, Magliano excels at making herself both the hero and the villain of her own superficially simple but in fact exquisitely crafted stories. Teething problems when moving in with someone new are understandable. But she manages to to be both essentially relatable and to steadfastly painting herself as kind of a dick: from an opening section in which she stews over the fact her boyfriend dared to go out with somebody else for eight years, to her unreasonably snapping at him for trying to be nice to her, to say nothing of her unilateral, medically unsupported decision that her coil is the issue, she is relatable but not necessarily in a way we’re entirely proud of. Not toxic or
In no sense is Emma Sidi actually Sue Gray. She doesn’t look like Sue Gray. She doesn’t sound like Sue Gray. She is completely the wrong age to be the ex-civil servant now Downing Street chief of staff, something she doubles down on by providing nonsensical biographical details like the fact that landfill indie also rans The Wombats played at her freshers’ week. And yet… Emma Sidi is Sue Gray. The Woking-raised comic absolutely 100 percent commits to the bit here: bar a couple of batshit Spanish interludes (when she is technically still being Sue Gray) then this whole show is performed entirely in one character. Her Gray is a lairy, boozy Essex Girl type who nonetheless spends the entire show regaling us with a life story that does by and large correspond to Gray’s. Or at least it does when it comes to the bigger picture stuff. She worked with Rishi Sunak, an incorrigible office prankster who Gray was both irritated by and had a crush on. She had a frosty relationship with Cressida Dick, who didn’t lend her a tampon one time. She was blown away by Keir Starmer, who she describes as ‘dripping with rizz’. Also she is occasionally menaced by an elf who wants to destroy her electronic devices, something she finds so traumatic she can only discuss it in Spanish. It isn’t really satire: part of the point is that we don’t really know very much about Sue Gray, therefore Sidi isn’t really sending her up. A few tart asides apart, it’s not even particularly political, with thornier stu
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