Stage: Send in the clowns

London Clown Festival 2025
hosts Dan Lees and Neil Frost, aka The Establishment
with Sarah Woolfenden, Tom Penn, Julie Nesher, Josh Glanc, Lil Wenker, Rob Duncan, Paulina Lenoir, Patricia Langa
Soho Theatre, Jackson's Lane and other venues • 16.Jun-4.Jul.25 ★★★

This year's London Clown Festival, an annual event that previews shows that will be playing the Edinburgh Fringe, kicked off with a rather uneven two-hour cabaret that unfolded in typically riotous style at Soho Theatre's Upstairs space. The evening was hosted by the Establishment (Dan Lees and Neil Frost), adept goofballs who continually ask the audience if we think the show has started yet. Their rolling improv is properly nutty, as they decide on songs to sing, impersonations to perform, news headlines to read, games to play and audience members to play with.

The first act is Sarah Woolfenden, painted and dressed in white as she surreally wanders around the stage urging the audience to embrace the clown within. She then takes her place in the house band, alongside Lees, Tom Penn and Julie Nesher. Their music has a wonderfully bouncy rhythm to it, and Sarah provides all manner of noises, whistles and horns. They accompany most of the acts that follow, including Josh Glanc, who charges through his hilariously awkward material, singing a series of very similar songs while taking on audience members who challenge him. This makes his set feel somewhat tense, as if it is spiralling out of control, but his scrappy charm keeps us on his side.

Up next is the baddest man in Texas (Lil Wenker), a strutting Wild West drag king with a Groucho moustache and cigar, plus spoons on their ankles. With a flirtatious and very silly attitude, he uses his growly voice to get audience members to repeat key phrases that then play out in an epic story. It's utterly ridiculous, and very funny. And now it's Rob Duncan, who triumphantly introduces himself as having been crowned Printer of the Year, then launches into an absurd demonstration of performance printing. This involves two portable printers that spew out pages that feed into his punchlines, just like magic! Indeed, he even prints a rabbit from his hat.

Emerging on his own, the band's bassist Penn takes the stage dressed as a chef wearing a set of red curtains (complete with the rod), singing and dancing, before his manager-wife Nesher emerges perched on his back to take over the show. Their goofy act is packed with riotous sight gags as they dive into one random joke after another. 

And finally we have Conchita and Lola, or Conchola, freaky flamenco-style black widows played by Paulina Lenoir and Patricia Langa. They speak in eerie unison, perhaps the least improvisational act of the night, as they recount the epic saga of their witchy lives and deaths. Their hyper-dramatic performance is hugely amusing, as they stare down the audience and perform their nutty choreography.

All of these acts and many more are performing in the festival. For info, see LONDON CLOWN FESTIVAL >

See also: notes from the 2024 CABARET > 

Soho Theatre, 16.Jun.25

Stage: Just clowning around

London Clown Festival
host Riss Obolensky
with Piotr Sikora, Paula Valluerca, Nancy Trotter Landry, Neil Frost, Frankie Thompson
band Sarah Woolfenden, Dan Lees, Tom Penn, Julie Nesher
Soho Theatre, Jackson's Lane and other venues
8-25.Jul.24 ★★★★

London Clown Festival brings three weeks of riotous physical comedy to venues across the capital ahead of the Edinburgh Fringe, and it kicked off with a lively two-hour cabaret featuring a number of notable acts playfully interacting with the audience in the upstairs studio space at Soho Theatre. The results were a bit uneven, as these kinds of programmes usually are, but the general atmosphere was hilarious, especially as the performers unapologetically went for it. And being press night, this included some pointed interactions with critics in attendance.

Obolensky

The energetic host for the evening is Michael (Obolensky), an Aussie drag king who proudly notes that his stand-up comes from 1989 and wears a tie emblazoned with the word "creep". He introduces the excellent four-piece live band for the show, then launches into a bit involving an HR complaint line, helping the audience sort out their workplace gripes through improvised song in various genres. It's very, very silly, and continues in between the acts throughout the night. The first performer is the band's trumpeter Sarah Woolfenden, who does amusingly absurd new age-style beat poetry to set the mood: "We know not what will happen".

Furiozo

Then it's the fabulous tough guy Furiozo (Sikora), who wordlessly mimes a riotous crime caper with the help of a few audience members. This includes a robbery, elaborate chase and jailhouse escape, all of which play out in very funny ways thanks to Furiozo's warm-hearted undercurrents. (Furiozo performed a variation of this routine in January at Stamptown.) He's followed by another of my favourites of the night, Madame Señorita (Valluerca), who strides out with diva-like confidence and Celine Dione-style delusion to sing a sultry song in Spanish that's punctuated by conversations with audience members she thinks she recognises. The deadpan delivery, visual sight gags and soapy side stories she creates are hilarious.

Woolfenden, Suki Tawdry, Frost

The next two acts are downright surreal, more slapstick performance art than comedy. Suki Tawdry (Trotter Landry) shyly takes the spotlight and enters into all-out war with the microphone stand while the band fills in the gaps. Then she struggles with a stack of papers before mumbling a poem and fleeing the stage. Neil Frost bounds out to perform a Shakespeare tribute, battling a wig and cape that simply won't stay on as he prances and poses around the stage to the music, pausing to shout "Shakespeare!" and taking audience requests, with similarly messy results.

Madame Señorita, Thompson

And finally there's the hugely talented Frankie Thompson, who performs a fiendishly witty CCTV camera romance to Every Breath You Take, then launches into an uncanny verbatim performance to spoken word recordings of people saying "horrible things". This includes recounting a meeting with Margaret Thatcher, baking the perfect scone and more vile Thatcher musings. Strikingly physical and unnervingly in synch, she ends the show on a very strong note indeed.

For details, LONDON CLOWN FESTIVAL >

Soho Theatre, 8.Jul.24