Brendon Burns has credits on The 11 O’ Clock Show, performed across the world, and in 2007 won the prestigious if.comedy award for his show at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Now, the Australian comic is touring all across the UK, performing anywhere but comedy clubs in an attempt to live ‘Outside the Box‘. Louise Jones talks to him about podcasts, angering Scousers, and fake edge.

What exactly led you to doing the Outside the Box tour?

I did the Free Fringe this year, and my venue wasn’t quite where it was listed in the Fringe guide, so people had to work to find me. It was just die-hard fans, and in that environment I didn’t have to deal with anyone with folded arms, and anyone going “I f**king hate this guy, and it isn’t for me.”

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This year’s VAULT Festival is well and truly underway, entertaining audiences from all walks of life with exciting pieces of theatre, topical discussions and lively club nights. Brightening up the gloomy, victorian subterranean landscape located in the very heart of London’s Waterloo, the festival aims to showcase an array of new voices and ideas. We’re taught from the outset never to lie, that being truthful is moral… however… I’m sure that at one point or another, we’ve all told a white lie or two… Yve Blake’s new show, Lie Collector explores this idea of the lie, taking its inspiration from lies shared on Yve’s website, whowerewe.com. Lie Collector is now showing at The Vault Festival, and we were lucky enough to speak to the playwright and performer about her inspirations for the show, her thoughts on interactivity in theatre and her must see shows at this year’s festival.

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We all tell lies and occasionally those lies take on a life of their own, either as hilarious stories or horrific mistakes. Yve Blake has effectively crowd sourced the material for her latest show Lie Collector, and has come up with an hours worth of comedy based on lies shared with her by the internet. From simply reading aloud the lies shared to writing elaborate song/dance/video pieces her energetic performance will keep you captivated from beginning to end.

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The Landor is a wonderfully intimate venue and is currently showing a sparkling rendition of the musical-comedy She Loves Me. Last put on in the West-End in 1994 to critical acclaim, the fifty year old musical has found a new home in the Landor and will delight all fans of Rom-Coms and of the musical.

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Initially performed at last year’s Edinburgh Fringe Festival, True Brits has added to the pertinent debate of what it means to be British in the 21st century. Written by the talented Vinay Patel, who will shortly be writing a short film for BBC iPlayer and working on a pilot on the prestigious C4 screenwriting programme, True Brits will make its return to the theatre scene at this year’s VAULT Festival. With VAULT Festival’s theme of ‘inequality in politics’ being the driving force for this year, True Brits is a piece of theatre that could not be anymore timely or on the mark! Ahead of this year’s festival, Theatrefullstop were able to talk to Vinay about his motivations for writing the play, what he’d like to achieve with his play and why London is so welcoming!

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Emile Zola’s novel Thèrese Raquin, adapted into a play, is playing at the Courtyard Theatre as part of the New Writing Festival. There is not much that is new about it though. Being that the story is familiar, one would think that the genre of writing or the staging would be fairly modern and fresh, but it fails to bring the element of surprise onto the stage.

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The Mountain Bluebird is ragingly current, yet disconnected. It is a seemingly complicated play that, when you break it down, becomes a simple one. It is the debut of playwright Jamie Eastlake and posesses that charming thing first plays often have, over-ambition.

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The atmosphere in the Courtyard bar before Brendon Burns’ gig feels similar to waiting in the queue for a roller coaster: there’s a distinct feel of people who are excited for what they know is about to happen, and people who’ve never seen Burns and are bloody terrified. The location is certainly different: a student union bar as the venue for an award-winning international comedian. It’s all part of Burns’ latest tour, Outside the Box. Following in the footsteps of Doug Stanhope and Neil Hamburger, the tour deliberately avoids large arenas and opts for secluded or intimate venues, off the beaten track of the comedy circuit. What follows is a unique night of comedy unlike any other I’ve seen in York.

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Adapted from the 1998 Oscar winner, Shakespeare in Love is the latest screen to stage production to hit the West End. The story imagines William Shakespeare writing Romeo and Juliet. In auditions for his new play he meets and falls in love with Viola, who disguises herself as a boy so that she can fulfil her dream of acting. It is a warm romantic comedy of errors come drama. The merits of the film version make it clear to see why it would make an excellent transfer to stage.

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With the 100th anniversary of the start of World War One last year, it seemed a natural choice by the Theatre Royal Stratford East to revive the dark musical that re-examines the established view of ‘The Great War’. Following this revival last year, the same production started on its six month national tour last month where I saw it, on its first leg.

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