We’ve come to our penultimate show at Blizzard Comedy, and what a good way to kick off our last month of shows.
Opening the show we had the terrific Jen Zheng – an act who I’ve been trying to get booked for well over a year now. I’m so excited we finally managed to get her on just before our break!
Jen takes the stage and immediately grips the audience with her charm and confidence – demonstrating astute self-awareness with her stage presence and an innate joy in playing with those expectations. Her performance is dynamic, her delivery is electrifying, and her stage presence is just so intensely likable, that within seconds you are falling about with laughter in her company.
Jen is a comedian who you can tell finds the things she is saying funny. I can’t understate how infectious that is when you’re watching a comedian to know they actually find themselves funny and deliver their material in a way that they feel excited to share with you. There are great comics who subvert this expectation and play with deadpan and emotionless delivery to their advantage of course. But Jen has a giddy excitement, and particularly with her filthier material, absolutely relishes in her own comedy in a way that you can’t help but love as an audience.
Jen has a unique perspective and experience, and as a comic voice is unlike anything I’ve ever heard before, and that is very much to our detriment. More like this please. Jen is a shining example of what comedy can be and should be an inspiration for any aspiring comic in 2024.
Next, we had the upsettingly young and talented Willow Millard. Willow is an incredibly inventive joke writer, landing on jokes that sound so obvious once they’ve been told and are yet wholly original and you never would’ve thought of them before. Willow has a phenomenal grasp of language and loves playing with double meanings, and this flows brilliantly into their musical comedy.
It’s hard not to draw the Bo Burnham comparisons, and that is a clear inspiration for them. Yet don’t be fooled, Willow’s voice is unique, their comedic perspective refreshing as a younger queer comic. They use their musical comedic influences to create a whole new tone and perspective on a genre that has been dominated by the same generation for frankly far too long.
Willow is a comic who clearly has a lot of respect and experience with the classics of the genre but takes a new, modern angle in a way that makes them stand-out as a legend in the making. Their stage presence is naturally endearing, they’re an intensely clever wordsmith and joke writer. Their musicianship makes me feel inadequate in my lack of skills I’ve honed in the extra decade I’ve been alive. An all-around entertainer, and definitely one to watch in the coming years on their inevitable journey to stardom.
After the break we had Danielle Frances, a relatively new act to the circuit but one who is making huge strides and developing an incredibly tight and memorable set, aided by a joyful disposition on stage that, like Jen, just makes it impossible to dislike her on stage.
Danielle’s routines are easily digestible, but with enough twists and turns to keep you on your toes, and some punchlines that catch you off guard and leave you howling. Her stories are relatable but distinctly hers, a very accessible act and one who keeps the laughs coming through her entire runtime. I don’t think it’s possible not to laugh along with Danielle’s set. She’s a deceptively clever writer underneath her more straightforward delivery, which means that whether you’re a big ol comedy nerd like me or a more casual enjoyer of comedy, Danielle will absolutely succeed in bringing you along with the ride.
I don’t just want to say she’s naturally funny, as that implies that she hasn’t worked hard to get here, but good lord does she make it look easy with her skilful approach to writing and performing. You get the impression on stage that Danielle is just a consistent laugh in whatever context she is in. A lovely up and coming act, and one who I am sure will just keep getting better and better with the more experience she gets. Another one to keep an eye on for sure!
Closing the second section we had the wonderful Mark Nicholas. Mark is a wonderful comic, and huge advocate for disability and neurodiversity in comedy, running his own lovely night in London showcasing disabled and neurodivergent comic talent. In his own act he has an earnest love for comedy that is supremely evident through his entire routine.
Mark is an act who seems to absolutely adore telling his jokes and stories. His excitement is so infectious, extending to the entire audience to be hooked on every word. He doesn’t waste that attention either. Mark is a supremely polished joke writer and performer, and at Blizzard specifically was intensely relatable with his perspectives and angles in a way that reaffirms the general levels of neurodivergence in a Blizzard Comedy audience. I couldn’t be prouder. Whether it’s jokes about public transport, maths, or the weirdness of neurotypical social dynamics and how they interact with the rest of us, Mark is a perfect comic for our audience and our audience was a great fit for Mark’s set. If anything, it’s just a shame that more of our regulars couldn’t make it!
Mark performs with a glee that demonstrates just how much he loves making jokes that make you laugh, and he absolutely did that a lot. Mark is just a fantastically enjoyable comic presence on stage. He compliments the rest of the line-up perfectly with the feelings of joyful cheekiness and excited and earnest enthusiasm for the art that all acts tonight have clearly had. Not a booking decision I made on purpose, but a very happy coincidence that gave the entire show a wonderful uplifting feeling, and Mark’s set and delivery played a significant part of that uplifted mood.
And closing our final main show we had one of our all-time favourite acts Anna Thomas.
What is there to say about Anna that isn’t self-evident from the first 30 seconds of watching her on stage?
Anna has a delightfully whimsical sense of humour and owns her silliness in a way that is more than just hilarious, it genuinely makes the world seem a little brighter after watching her perform.
Whether she’s telling traditional style jokes in very un-traditional ways, letting you into the way her brain interacts with and experiences day to day life, or getting distracted by the audience and going on a wild tangent – Anna Thomas is funniness incarnate, and will have you all crying laughing by the end of her set.
I can’t explain an Anna Thomas set in any way that does it justice, but there is a reason why I consider her one of our generation’s greatest comic talents. It’s her knack for drawing humour so completely out of the topics she’s talking about and the thoughts she has, and the way she can deliver that in an unforgettable and brilliant way that just really distils down what comedy can be to its very foundations and she is a master of them. An incredible wit, a lovely sense of clownish playfulness, and an affinity with the absurd, delivered in a grounded stand-up package make Anna the archetype of what I believe a comedian should be. No one does it better than her. A true living legend.
And that was our penultimate show! A great, positive and uplifting show to take us into our Pride celebration on August 22nd. This will be our last live show for the foreseeable future, so it’d be great if we could pack it out! Book your free tickets here now.
And you can catch the stream version of this show on Monday 19th August at 7:00pm – and for 14 days after over on Twitch.tv/blizzardcomedy
