Brighton Dome Live at Christmas served up an impressive seasonal offering featuring two staggeringly funny sets from wildly differing comics, backed by some impressive support.
The popular comedy night continues to attract the heaviest of heavy hitters from the UK circuit and once again packed the beautiful old venue to the rafters on Saturday evening (December 20).
Hosted this time around by the increasingly familiar face of Masie Adams, now a Brighton resident and in addition to a seemingly ever-expanding roster of TV and radio work, a voice on the Asda ads – nice work if you can get it.
She talked about the challenges of the above voiceover, but it must have seemed like a walk in Preston Park compared to her travails with the audience who didn’t exactly provide rich comedy pickings despite her determined efforts at crowd work.
Fortunately the ever-saucy Lou Sanders' more 'flirty' approach brightened things up, screening for potential suitors from the first few row ('how often do you changing your bedding? etc).
Fun and engaging, with successful avoidance of 'adult misery' through an ace combo of light and dark material and a brilliant but unrepeatable gag about chickens.
Funny Woman Stage Award Finalist Sharon Wanjohi was a "late Gen Z" outlier in proceedings with a short, punchy set that bristled, although her "hate towards the home owners" didn't exactly induce mass waves of empathy from a crowd that were perhaps a little light on the younger folk's "rizz". Or perhaps not.
Aussie comic Sam Campbell is definitely not short on any definition of charisma.
The dizzyingly original winner of TV's Taskmaster rocketed the pace of the evening with an arresting performance and awesome material.
A frenetic gag-packed set was accompanied by sharp on-screen visuals.
There were also extra points for littering the set with local references (including the i360, the Brighton Zip Wire, and the wind turbines).
His rapid-fire delivery and 'flights of fancy that' would probably have been called madcap once upon a time, and a breathless half an hour or so ended with - a surprising number of - audience members on stage operating a massive slingshot flinging filled marigold gloves, into the crowd.
Marvellous, marvellous stuff.
In terms of dynamics and pacing, Campbell would have been a sensible choice to close the evening, but to misquote Dirty Dancing: no one puts Simon Amstell second on the bill.
Anyone who's seen the adorable Amstell in recent years will know that he's in beautiful emotional shape.
Blissfully happy in a relationship and in fine mental fettle thanks to natural drug therapies, Amstell exudes happiness and expounds the joy of his unconventional self discovery.
As he admits it "may not be stand up any more" but it's very very funny.
There's still plenty of evidence of his rampaging ego but it's counter-balanced by his colossal charm - "If I had been shy I could have been like you - a simple crowd person"
His set is largely taken up talking about attending one of Leonardo Di Caprio's parties in LA - "Gucci are going to lend you a suit - This is relatable yes?"
But amid the unabashed celeb namedropping (Baz Luhrmann, Charli XCX and Viola Davis) there's almost unfettered honesty and brilliant observations on love, life and fame.
Wonderful, spiritual and always self-deprecating. A stellar headliner for another superb night at the Dome.
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