Jack Rooke’s Good Grief
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Jack Rooke’s Good Grief

16th September 2026
City Varieties Music Hall

Jack Rooke’s Good Grief: a decade retrospective of capitalising on my dead dad to varied levels of failure and success.

BAFTA-winning writer and recovering spoken-word artist Jack Rooke (Creator of Hulu/Channel 4’s Big Boys) brings back his debut comedy-theatre show Good Grief, a decade on from it launching his career.

Featuring the original show (co-written with his 80-year-old nan Sicely) and some present day musings, this retrospective further explores grief, ambition, being a class traitor, milking having a dead dad for personal/professional gain, the innocence of writing just for oneself before the interference of ‘telly w*nkers’, and the palpable regret of his own decline into becoming said ‘telly w*nker’.

Content warning: this show may contain potentially triggering stories around grief, suicide and Geri leaving the Spice Girls in May 1998.

Directed by Gabriel Bisset-Smith (now also a ‘telly w*nker’).

‘Good Grief 2.0 [is] a delightful and still affecting watch’
Guardian

‘Engaging, frank and humorous’
New York Times

★★★★
‘A delight… cheerily but sensitively tackling the most painful of subjects and finding hope in them’
Scotsman