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As their name suggests, comedy trio The Penny Dreadfuls built their reputation with hammy Victoriana pastiches, culminating in 2008′s brilliant comic playlet Aeneas Faversham Forever. New show The Never Man saw them ditch the fog and foppery with admirable intentions but disappointing results, as they drew loosely on everything from Bond and Hitchcock to Charlie And The Chocolate Factory and Jurassic Park with a super-villain plot set in a theme park named Beef Island. A couple of wild asides and a bomb made from four coke bottles and an iPod showed they’re still capable of being hilariously inventive, but we missed the sharp writing and water-tight aesthetic of their previous works. Still, this was the only comedy show we’ve seen to feature a corpse corpsing, and you can’t help giggling along with that.
Pavilion Theatre, 9 October
3/5
Bella Todd

Hans Teeuwen, the Nick Cave of comedy, took us on a whirlwind tour of his absurdist, surreal and often pretty offensive, mind. It is like nothing else on the circuit and, once I had adjusted my head from stand-up mode to dark European Cabaret, I sat back and enjoyed the ride. Teeuwen certainly divides his audience, in a Marmite kind of way. Clearly a gifted actor and exquisite clown, Teeuwen’s unique physicality alone was enchanting, not to mention his musical talents. I feel I need to see him again, and soon.Not one to take Grandma to, but a joyful and exhilerating experience. Just leave your preconceptions at home for this one.
Pavillion Theatre, 9 October
4/5
Angela Barnes

Southend stand-up Russell Kane, three -times nominated for the Edinburgh Festival Award, tells us what to expect when he brings his new show to Brighton this week..
“It’s a show made by doing a microscopic and sociological analysis of the different human behaviours – psychological, physical, metaphysical, philosophical, political – and the different dances we do. The different displays we do to each other and how those displays, if we fake them, change who we become in reality. How who we are in reality changes the displays that we do, and how we grow in and grow out of them with age; how we are born into them. And that’s it, basically. A bit of light reading.
“I love playing Brighton. I love playing in the Komedia, I love the Pavilion Theatre – I’m pretty sure I played a couple of other venues down there. It’s always a great gig. It’s that right blend of normal working class people with a ridiculously cosmopolitan Soho-type atmosphere cut through it. It’s this perfect mix of energies. I describe it like someone’s taken Southend-on-Sea and buffed it with a sponge. Brighton is like Southend cleaned up. Not that I would ever move from Southend, but there’s obviously an affinity there for coastal towns. People are just a bit cooler that live on the coast. They can’t help it.”

Russell Kane: Human Dressage, Saturday 10 October, Pavilion Theatre, Brighton Dome, 9.15pm, £12/11.

A Rich Man

You don’t have to come into the city to get to one of the best shows of the week, as American comic, character and television panelist Rich Hall takes in Bexhill-On-Sea as part of his UK tour.
The Perrier Award-winner offers a show of two halves. He’ll be his usual, deadpan, grumpy belly-laugh inducing self in the first section, and his country singer alter-ego Otis Lee Crenshaw – redneck jailbird from Tennessee, married seven times, each time to a woman called Brenda – in the second.
You may have caught him recently on his acclaimed BBC4 documentary How the West Was Lost, on QI, or even Live At The Apollo – pushing boundaries and being funny.
Politicised without being preachy; a strong critic of his American homeland – yet not afraid to tell them so on home soil; Rich won an Emmy for his writing and appearances on The David Letterman Show. Having him in town this month is a true treat.
Rich Hall, Thursday 1 October, De La Warr Pavilion, 8pm, £15. Also, catch Rich performing in the Magners Brighton Comedy Festival, Thursday 15 October at the Corn Exchange, 9.30pm, £15/13.