Kieran Hodgson: Voice of America review – meek Brit meets his star-spangled States

Soho theatre, LondonThe comic’s tale of his lifelong love affair with the US – and a doomed bid to make it big in Hollywood – is a great platform for his vocal and mimicry talent‘I love America!,” says Kieran Hodgson, which is quite the opening gambit in a week when the country has risked kickstarting the third world war. But that is the Yorkshireman’s point: there is a better US, now occluded by He Who Shall Barely Be Named, but still worth believing in. Voice of America traces Hodgson’s lifelong love affair with the States, in the teeth of his Europhile parents’ distaste, the disillusion of the Bush years and a recent doomed bid for Hollywood success.It joins as big-hitting a body of work as any in comedy, a suite of autobiographical shows itemising the nerdy obsessions (cycling; Mahler; European politics) of child and adult Kieran. Voice of America hits less big, for my money, partly because its subject is less lovably niche, and also because the binary thinking (America good? America bad?) is simplistic before Hodgson arrives at his predictably more nuanced conclusion.At Soho theatre, London, until 28 June. Then at Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh, 30 July-24 August. Continue reading...

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Classic comedy branded ‘most blasphemous ever’ is available to stream

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