Another new year, and a new pool of utterly spectacular comic talent took to our stage in an unofficial new format trial to keep our stage fresh and give newer comedians (or at least newer acts to us) a lovely, inclusive, comedy savvy, friendly audience.
And it was a lot of fun, and definitely something I’ll wanna do again soon and, if I can manage to wrangle a line-up of comics even half as good as this one, I’ll be happy.
Opening the show we had Amit Mistry, with an innate charm and warm and confident delivery style, he’s one of those acts that wins you over within seconds of talking and the kind of act you’d love to hang out with after the show.
Amit’s quick wit is fully on display here with tightly written jokes and a well-constructed set the envy of acts with twice his experience. No word is wasted, everything is sold to perfection, and if this is his baseline now, I can’t wait to see where he is in the next few years.
Next up we had Kathy Rivett, who I think gave everyone in the room an existential crisis upon revealing she’s only 18. Being a young starter comedian myself when I was 16, I relate to that experience immensely, only to realize that was 12 years ago and I’m basically a grandma in comedy years now.
My own sense of mortality aside though, Kathy blew the roof off the audience, with a cool, confident and dynamic set that I’m not sure I’d be capable of now let alone 10 years ago when I was her age.
Kathy already has such a confident and well-defined voice on stage, and uses that exceptionally to deliver great punchlines, unique comic takes, and creative set pieces sprinkled throughout the set to keep an audience engaged for far longer than the 10 minutes she was allocated tonight.
On a personal level, I’m low-key angry at how good Kathy is. But on a professional and objective industry level, so excited at what creative energy her generation of comics are going to bring to the scene. I wouldn’t be surprised if Kathy was one of the forerunners in this space. Kathy is the Gen-Z Daniel Sloss, and I can’t wait to see her career trajectory from here, as it will be spectacular.
Closing the first section we had Eva Carroll – another young and unique voice in comedy, being a Scouse, socialist Cambridge graduate, she has such an insight into two very different worlds that have only been growing further and further apart in recent years, which makes for a goldmine of great comic potential that she does not waste.
Eva’s life experiences contrast so delightfully with themselves that even listening to her story without jokes is fascinating. But we’re spoiled rotten as she intertwines some absolutely incredible jokes expertly in her narrative, with punchlines often coming out of nowhere to catch you off guard, only for another one to hit you from another angle before you’ve even recovered.
Eva’s set is so tightly constructed, her insights are so gripping, and her comedic timing and delivery is on point, I wouldn’t trust any audience that didn’t find themselves on the verge crying laughing during her performance, as we certainly all were.
Next Matthew Williams brought us into the second section, with an incredibly accessible yet fresh set. Instantly likable on stage, he built a great rapport with the audience, and is an all-round great comic. There are only so many ways to say how good a comedian is, and none of them quite do him justice. Just check out his work honestly, you won’t regret it.
Mixing things up, we had the magical comedy stylings of Harris Fellman. A peek into my history as a performer is that one of the acts who actually got me into doing stand-up comedy and not just fantasizing about it whilst being too scared to try was a brilliant comic magician in his own right. I have seen many of these come and go over the years to varying degrees of success. What separates the S tier comedy magic acts from the rest however is a seamless blend of scalable magic tricks, integrated jokes built on those premises, and a genuine joy and sense of fun with what they do.
Harris nails all three of these, with tricks suitable for the size of the room, clever and concise jokes that were embedded into the tricks, not just there as a way to kill time to get to the big reveal itself, and an irreplaceable playful fun with the delivery of both jokes and tricks that made it clear he was enjoying himself as much as everyone else was.
From a mind reading camel puppet, gripping use of transformative props, and a delightful pullback and reveal at the end that I won’t spoil, Harris Fellman is one of few comedy magicians I have ever seen who straddles those three pillars of the genre this well. If you’re into comedy, he’s a great three dimensional, dynamic joke writer. If you like magic, his tricks are engaging, uniquely presented and well performed. If you like both – then you’re absolutely going to love this performer, no question.
Closing the second section we have former academic turned comic Rachel Robbins. Rachel has a wonderfully erratic stage presence full of wit and charm. Whether she’s talking about the parallels of 1980s politics and today, the traumatic experience of childbirth, or musing on the lack of people named “Alan” in the 2020s, whatever topic she tackles, she always has a great angle on it and delivers the content with a bubbly energy that leaves you with a smile on your face even before she hits you with those killer punchlines to have you howling (in a good way).
Phenomenal writer, engaging performer, 10/10 great comic.
And to close the show we have had an act who I’ve been wanting to book for some time now in the shape of Sian Davies. Sian is an absolute asset to the North West comic scene, both in her tireless work to create safe spaces for queer comics to perform and grow, her industry leading “Best in Class” scheme, providing the money and opportunity for working class comics to go up to the Edinburgh Fringe and begin to make professional names for themselves in ways that simply aren’t available to you if you don’t have the money to risk doing the fringe (one of the many reasons why comedy is so disgustingly middle class at higher levels), and also in her own earnest and brilliant comic voice.
Sian is both an excellent anecdote teller, and a sharp social commentator. Through her lens as a working-class lesbian, Sian has an astute and insightful deconstruction of social issues both that affect her directly, and those which don’t, and has a real good grasp of intersectionality in her work.
But don’t let my description make this sound like a TEDx talk; Sian is one of the best comedic storytellers working today, and through all the ideas she explores and introspects on there are multiple side splittingly funny stories and punchlines, and Sian has such a way with words, painting a rich visual tapestry with her language, jumping between decrying the media as state tools of propaganda, to pondering the gender identity of In the Night Garden characters.
And she does all this in such an unpretentiously earnest way, tackling complicated social concepts in a way that is so bluntly accessible and honest, boiling down the issues into easily digestible and unambiguous chunks that I think would be genuinely educational in a room not already full of genderqueer socialist extremists (affectionate).
Sian is simply a delight to watch. Her life is full of insightful and engaging experiences that make brilliantly unique yet relatable comic stories, and she tells them with such unquestionable joy that the audience are hooked and onboard from the moment she starts speaking. A brilliant act whatever way you look at it, and one who makes the entire circuit and industry better simply by existing in it.
What a brilliant first show back in 2024. We have a bonus show for you on January 22nd featuring Broadcast Avalanche favourites Laura Monmoth and Ian Lane, as well as our February show on the 12th with Anna Thomas – tickets are available via our Outsavvy now: https://www.outsavvy.com/organiser/blizzard-comedy
And if you missed this show you can watch and edited down version of it on Twitch.tv/blizzardcomedy on Monday 15th January at 7:00pm – available to watch for 14 days after.
