The Times 20170910 Culture.pdf

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September 10, 2017
MUSIC
RINGO STARR AT 77:
EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW
ART
COSMO LANDESMAN ON
MIRANDA JULY’S ‘SHOP’
TELEVISION
WHY BERTIE CARVEL LOVES
DR FOSTER’S HUSBAND
IT’S NO
JOKE
KATHERINE
RYAN ON WHY
BRITAIN IS
THE BEST FOR
FEMALE COMICS
HEADLINE
HEAD IN
IN HERE
TO
SUBLINE WORDS
HERE
SUBLINE WORDS
COME IN THIS SPACE
TO COME IN THIS
HERE WORDS TO COME
SPACE HERE
IN HERE
WORDS TO COME
IN HERE
CONTENTS
10.09.2017
ARTS
4
Cover story
The comedian Katherine Ryan
tells Stephen Armstrong this
is a great country for female
stand-ups; plus, our guide to
the new women of comedy
Pop
Ringo Starr, tap dancer? The
drummer is full of surprises,
not to mention peace and
love, for Tom Shone
BOOKS
12
14
18
MICHAEL LECKIE
Television
Cold Feet’s Robert Bathurst
reveals how he almost didn’t
get to play devious David
36
38
Lead review
John le Carré’s new novel is
a brilliant summation of his
career, says Andrew Marr
GETTY IMAGES
8
‘He does not have
the defence of
ignorance. He is
simply perverse.’
Steve Jones takes
AN Wilson to task
over his Darwin
biography
Books, page 40
40
The Sunday Times
Bestsellers
DIGITAL EXTRAS
Bulletins
For the arts week ahead, and
recent highlights, sign up for
our
Culture Bulletin.
For a
weekly digest of literary news,
reviews and opinion, there’s
the
Books Bulletin.
Both can
be found at thesundaytimes.
co.uk/bulletins
Film
Wind River has more words
than is good for it, while It is
oddly unscary
Art
Cosmo Landesman visits
Miranda July’s ‘charity shop’
and hankers after the real thing
Bertie Carvel, back
as creepy Simon in
Doctor Foster, talks
to Bryan Appleyard
about his love of
playing villains
Interview, page 10
20
24
Critical list
Our pick of the arts this week
History
God’s knights: Roger Crowley
on the fearsome Templars,
defending the Holy Land to
the point of death
On record
The latest essential releases
42
47
22
TV & RADIO
Memoir
Claire Tomalin’s own life:
how the leading biographer
accounts for herself
Opera
Antonio Pappano tells Hugh
Canning his future plans, but
not who will succeed him
49
Instagram
Follow us for the best visuals
from the world of the arts —
@sundaytimesculture
Cover
Photograph of
Katherine Ryan by Pal Hansen/
Contour by Getty Images
TV & Radio
The best guide to the week’s
programmes
Fiction
Roddy Doyle returns to his
Dublin home ground
‘EVEN MALE
COMICS HERE
ARE FEMINISTS’
Britain is enjoying a revolution, led by a new wave of female stand-ups
who are mining comedy from real pain. Is this the end for rape jokes,
Stephen Armstrong
asks the leading comic Katherine Ryan
Photograph by
Carla Guler
COVER STORY
I
n April, the comedian Katherine
Ryan went home to Canada to see
her sister’s new baby, and popped
out to a local comedy club. “It was
25 white men, one after another,
doing four or five minutes of jokes
about rape or shagging some girl —
really violent, sexually aggressive
material.” She shakes her head at the
memory. “Everybody was laughing
because it was unanimously under-
stood that this was what comedy was.
And I remembered, wow, this is what it
was like when I first came to the UK.
“Even the male comics I work with
here now are feminists, so I forget how
different it was. This is what it’s like
when you’ve had the privilege of being
able to see the most amazing comedy
in the world… I’m not sure you all
realise what sort of a scene you have
going on here.”
Ryan believes the Edinburgh Fringe
has a big part to play in the continuing
revolution driving British comedy —
and this year’s festival pretty much
proved her point. Women picked up
two of the three Edinburgh Comedy
Awards (formerly known as the
4
10 September 2017
Perriers, now sponsored by Lastminute.
com) and the top two spots in the
newcomers competition So You Think
You’re Funny? Even cocky young male
comics prefaced riffs on dating with
a quick nod to “intersectionality” (a
gender politics buzzword referring to
the degrees of persecution any one
person might experience based on
their gender, sexuality and race).
Ryan’s 2011 Fringe debut, on the
other hand, came soon after Jimmy
Carr quipped “What do nine out of
10 people enjoy? Gang rape”, and the
Australian Jim Jefferies ended one gag
with the punchline: “So I raped her.”
“It’s been a big six years,” she nods.
The foot soldiers of this revolution
have been a determined bunch of
strong female stand-ups, a group of
which Ryan is very much a member.
From Bridget Christie and Sara Pascoe
to this year’s Edinburgh award-winner
Hannah Gadsby, these are funny
women who neatly avoid apeing male
stand-ups’ techniques and concerns
as deftly as they sidestep “just us
girls” comedy, the kind that’s been
crudely labelled “too tampony”. (See
overleaf for a guide to the newer faces
in this group.)
Were the women as funny as the
men at the Fringe this year? It’s a
question that was made redundant by
many of the female acts on show. It’s
not helpful to over-generalise, but the
women have a knack of giving emo-
tional ballast to their big belly laughs.
They tell stories about their often hard-
scrabble lives, and make serious points
about the way of the world, without
losing their audiences. Quite the oppo-
site: audiences of both genders seemed
equally in thrall to this kind of content.
And the male comic who shared the
main comedy award with Gadsby this
year, John Robins, was also venturing
into what’s usually a no man’s land:
baring his unhappy soul over his recent
break-up. Tears were shed on stage.
For Ryan, who has spent six years
building her profile through the male
preserve of television panel shows, as
well as becoming only the second UK-
based comic to have a Netflix stand-up
special, the changes have been gradual.
“If you walk into a hospital and only
see female nurses, you are not a bad
person if you think all nurses are
women,” she nods cheerfully. “But if
you see one female comic on the bill,
maybe a few more women will go to the
gig... then another woman will give it a
try... and so it grows, until audiences
in the UK no longer flinch when a
woman stand-up comes on. The
women I really admire were the Jo
Brand generation, who’d appear on
a bill with male comics and female
strippers — they’re the women who
really hustled for us. Oh my gosh…”
That “oh my gosh” is a brief flash of
Ryan’s stage persona, a cheeky, wasp-
ish, upbeat and knowing older sister
with all the best gossip and by far the
best take on it. In a 2014 Live at the
Apollo set, she made sly royal quips —
“Prince Harry, or, as I like to call him,
the Duke of I Just Cambridge… right,
ladies?” — and delivered a rich physical
pastiche of Beyoncé’s Super Bowl
reunion with Destiny’s Child that
managed to be silly, edgy, political and
slapstick all at the same time.
In person, of course, she’s nothing
like that. She speaks so softly, I have to
ask her to hold the recorder closer ▶
STYLING: JENNIFER MICHALSKI-BRAY. HAIR AND MAKE-UP: FIONA EUSTACE. DRESS: VINTAGE. EARRINGS: POMELLATO. RINGS: ANNOUSHKA, CAROLINE CREBA, CARAT LONDON, VENYX

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