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Rose Theatre, Kingston Before live comedy disappears once more, Kane delivers a terrific, barnstorming set sending up the pandemic – and the government’s laughable response to it
On Wednesday, the Rose Theatre, Kingston, finally reopened after seven months. On Saturday, the government said it had to close again. Such is the grim reality of UK theatre life in 2020. “We weren’t expecting this to be our last night out for a while,” says host Angela Barnes at this first edition of standup night Live at the Rose. And so the evening takes on an elegiac air, a bittersweet last laugh before the hatches of gloom are battened down once more.
Not that there’s anything elegiac about headliner Russell Kane’s turn, a barnstorming 40 minutes entirely about Covid. You spend your days reeling at what we’ve lost to the pandemic, and at the magnitude of the government’s incompetence in the face of it – and Kane’s is the first comic response to honour the extremity of that on stage. Continue reading...