Who’s Ready to Laugh? — 08/07/2025

cover of Hippo showing white man shrugging his shoulders, text reading Who's Ready to Laugh?

On the cover

We could all use some laughs. Get six days of comedy at the coast and months more of comedians bringing the laughs to stages all across the greater Manchester/Nashua/Concord area. In this week’s cover, Michael Witthaus looks at the Hampton Beach Comedy Festival and the line up of shows into fall. On the cover and above, it’s comedian Will Noonan who will perform on the first night of the festival (courtesy photo).

Also on the cover Find out how local farms celebrate sunflower season in the story on page 16. Also on page 16, John Fladd serves up information about the new menu of pizza and more at Kettlehead Brewing in Nashua. And Michael talks to comedian Brad Williams ahead of two shows at the Capitol Center for the Arts in Concord on Friday, Aug. 8 (see page 22).

Speaking of comedians, let’s kick off this comedy-heavy issue with a fun story from the local comedy scene: Nick Lavallee of Wicked Joyful (and Manchester as “Chicken Tender Capital of the World” booster fame) designed one of his custom action figures for comedian and New Hampshire native Drew Dunn, who appeared on NBC’s The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon on Tuesday, July 29. You can find Drew’s Tonight Show set on YouTube and you can see Nick’s creation on WIcked Joyful’s Instagram, inspired by Drew’s joke about having eaten so much plastic in his life that he’s “approaching action figure levels of plastic.” See drewdunncomedy.com for more on Drew.

Read the e-edition

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