ELIZABETH AND RALEIGH: LATE BUT LIVE ★★★★ - August 2008 The Herald - By Carmody Wilson - August 22nd, 2008

Historical themes are not always the easiest for a theatre group to capture, what with actual facts always getting in the way. The best and worst of these attempts are here. Warming himself to the audience like a cuddly chat show host, Sir Walter Raleigh, discoverer of worlds, champion of potatoes, begins with his particular…

ELIZABETH AND RALEIGH: LATE BUT LIVE ★★★★ - August 2008 The Scotsman - August 20th, 2008

LOOKING more like Heath Ledger’s Joker than the Virgin Queen, Simon Munnery is, nevertheless, surprisingly, perfectly cast as Elizabeth I in this dementedly enjoyable follow-up to Late But Live with Boswell and Johnson. Once again he’s joined by Miles Jupp, as Sir Walter Raleigh, in a show scripted by Stewart Lee. The result of all…

ELIZABETH AND RALEIGH: LATE BUT LIVE - August 2008 Time Out - By Dan Geary - August 13th, 2008

It’d be hard, and perhaps unfair, to talk about Stewart Lee’s follow-up to 2007’s historical comedy Johnson & Boswell without mentioning ‘the other’ alternative Elizabethan comedy. But for all its defects, one thing is certain – though Simon Munnery’s portrayal of Elizabeth I is quite different from Miranda Richardson’s in Blackadder II, it’s still as…

ELIZABETH AND RALEIGH: LATE BUT LIVE ★★★ - August 2008 Whatsonstage - By Stuart Denison - August 12th, 2008

After last year’s fringe success Johnson and Boswell: Late but Live, Stewart Lee returns to the Scottish capital having penned another historical reanimation, this time turning his comedic eye towards the infamous relationship between England’s supposed ‘Virgin Queen’, and her favoured courtier and probable lover, Sir Walter Raleigh. However, where the former offering was well…

ELIZABETH AND RALEIGH: LATE BUT LIVE ★★ - August 2008 The Metro - By ANDRZEJ LUKOWSKI - August 10th, 2008

If last year’s Stewart Lee-penned historic character comedy Johnson And Boswell was a ramshackle, late-night treat, its successor is sadly rather closer to that inadvisable end of the evening kebab. Miles Jupp and a dragged-up, white-faced Simon Munnery return to play Sir Walter Raleigh and Elizabeth I, but they’re not really afforded the chance to…

ELIZABETH AND RALEIGH: LATE BUT LIVE ★★ - August 2008 The Times - By Dominic Maxwell - August 5th, 2008

Having successfully turned Johnson and Boswell into stand-up comics at the Fringe last year, the writer Stewart Lee has now tried the same trick for Elizabeth I and Walter Raleigh. Simon Munnery goes from Johnson to a queen in whiteface and wig. Miles Jupp becomes the breech-wearing explorer-cum- spy-cum-poet from Budleigh Salterton. The result, sad…