Comedy Lockjaw Thanks To Gina Yashere!

My jaw aches today but for good reason – last night I laughed so hard my jaw went into spasm!

I went to see Gina Yashere perform in Nottingham and it really was a rip roaring gig. The venue was the Lakeside at the University which I’ve never visited before and was very impressed by. They have built a beautiful complex and the theatre last night had a capacity crowd of 250. Intimate and very well laid out, it was a really comfortable place.

Gina was at immediate ease with the crowd and literally straight among them, eyeing out her ‘victims’ for the night! She got amazing value out of ‘Professor Richard’ who was like a (well educated) rabbit caught in the headlights!

The show lasted just over two hours with an interval halfway, and I was agog with admiration as she never missed a beat. The crowd, which was made up of every age group, really were in her hand and I think the intimacy of the theatre really concentrated that atmosphere. All through there was no sense that we were the audience and she was the act, it felt more like a get together and that is incredibly hard to engineer.

Gina's very graphic description of a recent trip for colonic irrigation conjured up some scary images – talk about ‘don’t try this at home’! She has chav impressions down to a fine art but what really tickled me was a very sweet older couple in front of me. When Gina mentioned chavs the gentleman, easily in his sixties, looked a bit perplexed and his wife leaned in and said ‘chavs are rather uncouth members of the working class, dear’!!

I’m not going to tell you about the act because my top tip is go see her yourself, but prepare for belly laughs leading to wee leakage! Her style is really comfortable and she hits on some really serious social issues but never with that fear of ‘oh no the comedian’s got us here under false pretences and know they are going to go serious on us’. It’s laughs all the way thanks to some beautifully prepared observational comedy and enviable ad lib ability.

She’s added some dates to her tour, check our her website for details and catch her if you can.

Is Gina funny? I do think so!

Gina+Yashere, comedy, stand+up

Comments

[Marjory]

And she posts to YouTube! I have subscribed!

Thank you for the tip. I thought I'd check her out and I very nearly wet myself. Can always do with more of that.

[Sharon J]

Just checked her site and she isn't playing anywhere near us. Oh well... maybe another time. Glad you had a great time.

[lara Silverstone]

This reminds me of one of Ricky Gervais's comments in the guise of Andy (what's his name) in one of the new episodes of Extras. The character Andy is forced to try and defend a racist isssue by coming up with the names of good black TV comics: He comes up with Richard Prior and Eddie Murphy but they are dismissed on the basis that they are American-with his back to the wall you can see him scanning his memory for good black British comics, nothing comes to his mind-then the camera scanns to a picture of Lenny Henry-the silence speaks for itself. It was a good joke and a common belief on the British circuit that there are no really good black british comics-but of course what about the good black British women? I know some would say that the women don't count but they are mainly people that haven't seen the likes of Gena Yashare live anywhere. She is brilliant, I remember one gig I saw of her's, years ago at Hackney. She was joking about dieting and how obsessive she got with the scales, she would wiegh herself all the time, once a week, then once a day, after every meal.....after every shit. I can still see her face when she deliverd the line, such joy.

I also saw her in a musical about the black immigration in the '50's and 60's and she stole the show in that and that was a really good show. I can't remember the name of it.