Bristol is an essential stop-off in the UK comedy circuit. The Comedy Box is probably the city’s most prolific stand up promoter, regular shows bring crowds to The Hen and Chicken, The Tobacco Factory and Colston Hall’s ‘The Lantern’. In summer The Comedy Garden in Queens Square brings a who’s who in British comedy with past guests including Stewart Lee, Marcus Brigstocke, Mark Watson and Shappi Khorsandi. The Loco Club (beneath Temple Meads train station) is home to occasional stand up nights promoted by Bristol Underground Comedy. In the city centre alongside the headliners found at Colston Hall and Bristol Hippodrome, Riproar Comedy host stand-up every Friday and Saturday evening.
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Our recent comedy recommendations
Gleefully chaotic and camp queer excellence for a very pertinent cause! Two of Bristol’s performance powerhouses join forces to bring a stacked evening of cabaret, drag, spoken word, comedy, circus prowess and much more from a whole host of local stars - all raising funds for NOT A PHASE’s vital work uplifting trans+ lives.
SCRiTCH Cabaret and EDOLL Events team up to bring you a fundraiser for NOT A PHASE!
Sell out warning! With six stages, beautiful sound systems, unrivalled musical variety and an on-site pub – AnExperience is all about the authentic love shared between pals. Let genres and borders melt away in a hedonistic mush of carnival samba, your Dad’s old ska records and amens running riot on the Sinai system at 4am.
6 stages, a boozer & lots n lots of nooks and crannies
Sell out warning! An Edinburgh Fringe sensation, Macbeth: The Musical reimagines Shakespeare’s Scottish tragedy as a fevered jukebox opera. Six gleeful actors wield pop classics like poisoned daggers - ABBA, Queen, B*Witched, all marinated in absurdity and lurid stagecraft. What’s at stake? Everything, if you ask the witches.
"Is this a real knife? Is this just fantasy?" Enjoy Shakespeare's spooky tragedy like never before with wittily rewritten pop classics!
Bristol’s glitterati, this is your summer solstice sermon! Comedy don Jeff Innocent and antihero of anarchic verse Attila the Stockbroker top a riotous cabaret lineup of satire, reggae, absurdism and sleight-of-hand. A stacked bill of chaos, charisma and counterculture with a dancefloor basted in enough dub to summon the ghost of DJ Derek.
RIOT ACT proudly presents the very best in Comedy, Poetry, Music and everything inbetween from the South West and beyond
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What our editors say
“Pretty good. Also, how funny is it that one of my quotes is from a website called Web Wombat? And I have to keep putting that name in show descriptions because the quote is good. I have to be like, see, I'm good at comedy, Web Wombat said so.”
From: Peter Jones Performs Stand Up Comedy
“Lewis Spears, the irreverent maestro of comedy, commands the stage with a wit as sharp as his style. Born and raised in Melbourne, Australia, Lewis Spears has carved out a niche as one of the most fearless voices in stand-up comedy. With his unapologetic approach to tackling taboo subjects and his razor-sharp observational humor, Spears fearlessly navigates through the absurdities of modern life.”
From: Lewis Spears: Serial Pest
“Tales From The Wasteland is an improvised post-apocalyptic adventure comedy. This twisted and talented cast of wastelanders will take a single suggestion from you and craft an entire narrative show with no pre-prepared characters, story or dialogue.”
From: Tales From The Wasteland: Post-Apocalyptic Improv
“Stevie Martin has been doing online comedy for a while (45 million views worldwide) but is now returning to live comedy with her latest show, which sold out at the Edinburgh Fringe and at Soho Theatre this year.”
From: Stevie Martin: Clout