Komedia Comedy Club Review: Erika Ehler, Funmbi Omotayo and Gbemi Oladipo
The opening night of the Brighton Dome Comedy Festival “in cahoots with Komedia” was a packed one! The nearly ten-day festival kicked off with lots on offer, and we chose to check out Komedia’s Comedy Club, its flagship stand-up show.
Even if you’ve never been, you’ll probably know that Komedia is a renowned Brighton institution smack in the middle of the Lanes, hiding in plain sight. What most passers-by might miss is that it somehow manages to fit two floors of comedy and an entire cinema into its TARDIS-like building.
On Friday night, however, there was nothing secret about the completely sold-out Comedy Club. And for good reason!
It’s held in Komedia’s basement: think the Top Secret Comedy Club on Drury Lane meets a German beer hall, but with burgers. The room was buzzing with a couple of hundred punters, who were only half ready for the anti-woke sets about to hit them. With an interval between each comedian, there was time for momentum to build, and for some audience members to drink away their initial disdain.
The compère was Jimmy McGhie, a self-proclaimed middle-aged man who spent too many years trying to “find himself” in Cambodia while his peers back in the UK were busy talking about Help to Buy schemes. He was the perfect host for this line-up of Erika Ehler, Funmbi Omotayo and Gbemi Oladipo, all of whom are at (and sometimes over) the cutting edge of culture-centred comedy.
Both Funmbi and Erika delivered intelligent comedy that almost certainly went over the heads of the stag dos in the room. But they were exactly the right talent to bring the room up to par, just in time for Gbemi Oladipo’s headline set.
Perhaps best known as one half of the energetic duo We Saw That, Gbemi kept the cultural commentary that he and Andrew Mensah are known for at the forefront of his set, with a few satisfying Easter eggs for those of us who were already WST fans. In his fast-paced, face-melting set, Gbemi managed to pop every last balloon of awkward silence or cultural sensitivity left floating in the room, and closed the evening with a bang.
Unafraid to use any and all expletives, and even some room-dividing derogatory terms in between, this line-up did not hold back. From our perspective, the evening was a breath of fresh air, and we hope to see Jimmy, Funmbi, Erika and Gbemi back at Komedia Comedy Club soon.
With such a packed schedule, we’d be remiss not to encourage you to check out at least one of the many other shows the Brighton Dome Comedy Festival (16th - 25th October) has on offer before it disappears! You can see our guide for ideas.
You can also catch incredible talent every Friday and Saturday night throughout the year at the Komedia Comedy Club.
Written by Lizzie Ridout
Disclaimer: Tickets were gifted in exchange for a review.