Reviews & features: Comedy
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Sammy J & Randy - The Inheritance
19 Aug 2012
Triumph of style over substance
Yes, it’s funny that a purple puppet might swear and drink and smoke. And it’s probably amusing that he would hang out with a socially inadequate skinny nerd. But once you get used to those facts, and have nodded in admiration at the production values…
Taylor Glenn - Reverse Psycomedy
19 Aug 2012
Playing mind games with her crowd
There can’t be too many Fringe comedy shows (ie zero) that casually drop in phrases such as ‘cognitive behaviour’, ‘Gestalt theory’ or ‘psychodynamic therapy’. But then, not many Fringe comedians will have worked for eight years as a professional…
Gareth Morinan
19 Aug 2012
Slim pickings amid a frenzy of facts
Quite a busy boy is Gareth Morinan given that he has seven different shows at the Fringe including political debates, a bit of improv and spoken word events in which he speaks out about his opinions on David Cameron and Ricky Gervais (he’s not a fan of…
The Not Quite Quartet
19 Aug 2012
High fives and top tunes
If you have yet to make your way through The Wire or somehow haven’t yet seen Fight Club or The Sixth Sense or Citizen Kane, best take some earplugs with you to The Not Quite Quartet. ‘The Spoiler Song’ does exactly what it says in the title but it…
Sam Fletcher - Good on Paper
19 Aug 2012
Weird and wacky mix of magic and music
There has been a surge in self-deprecating geeky comics over the last few years, reflecting a kind of postmodern twist of fate. Being a nerd has become cool, and Sam Fletcher’s weird and wacky show – a mix of crude magic, flipchart proposals and ‘dad…
Chris Ramsey
19 Aug 2012
Warm tales from a hugely charismatic performer
Quite why Chris Ramsey is so surprised by his popularity, it’s hard to tell. A nominee of last year’s Edinburgh Comedy Award, he cannot believe his luck and claims to be having the time of his life. This concept of good fortune forms the basis of his…
Alexis Dubus: Cars & Girls
19 Aug 2012
Too much of a good thing
This exuberant English comedian is too clever for his own good. Alexis Dubus’ new show draws upon some seriously crazy travel adventures he’s undertaken, including a trip to – and at – the psychedelic Burning Man Festival in the American desert. What…
James Acaster
19 Aug 2012
Brings joy to surreal and eccentric comedy
A criticism levelled at James Acaster over the last couple of years is that his material has been somewhat puerile. He’s been tipped as a young comedian with real potential but still in need of much improvement, something far from the truth in this…
Going Green the Wong Way
17 Aug 2012
Joyous but ultimately pointless one-woman eco-show
Joyous but ultimately pointless one-woman eco-show Displaced San Franciscan Katrina Wong is a dedicated environmentalist: her school-age performance poetry about the rape of Mother Earth gave way to her first job canvassing for conservationist…
Man 1 Bank 0
17 Aug 2012
Patrick Combs takes on the money men
Half the challenge of putting on a great show at the Fringe is about finding a great story, and Patrick Combs certainly has that. Better still, it’s true. A young man, with a sea of credit card debt, deposits a $95,093.35 junk mail cheque into his local…
David Whitney – Struggling to Evolve
15 Aug 2012
Ill-conceived, unhappy show featuring cheap gags and little intelligence
Blasting his way onto the expectant stage with a hefty set of bagpipes, you could probably cite this loud start as the highlight of Whitney’s set. The tired-looking comedian immediately conceded (unnecessarily) that the bagpipes were a gimmick – before…
FNT Live presents … The Jingling Lane Family Singers
15 Aug 2012
Funny bits few and far between in ill-executed sketch comedy
At the start of this doomed sketch affair, there are more people on stage than in the crowd. Given that FNT Live features ten members, that’s not as cringeworthy as it might sound. The opening features an American family of fundamentalist Christian…
Fred MacAulay
15 Aug 2012
Persistently strong material and natural affability from Fringe institution
Now a firm Fringe institution, Fred MacAulay could coast by on easy charm alone. But that would never do, and even when he tackles well-trodden topics like air travel there's always the safe feeling that he'll have put in the graft for a proper big…
The Three Englishmen: Squares
15 Aug 2012
Gently amusing sketches could do with more pep to fulfil likeable lads' potential
The Three Englishmen – there’s four of them actually – aren’t blazing a new sketch comedy trail in in this show. But it’s a gently amusing hour with some stand out moments of hilarity, thanks primarily to their musical skills. The boys welcome us…
Bruce Hammers' Bananapocalypse
15 Aug 2012
Gloriously chaotic hour that tumbles through fictitious film legend's career
Relative newcomer Mat Ewins 'stars' as Bruce Hammers, 1980's film legend best known for his seminal work the 1982 film Bananapocalypse. That's about as much as you get that's sensical about this show, it's a gloriously chaotic hour that tumbles through…
Funk Rocket 5000
15 Aug 2012
Rachel Lancaster is brilliant in this off-kilter mental health comedy
The lights in the venue have blown – again – and the stage is cast in the sickly green glow of the emergency back-up. It couldn’t be better for this brilliantly bleak, bone-dry mental health comedy, which suggests the boundaries between patient and…
Unhappy Birthday
15 Aug 2012
Less a show than a mad Dadaist happening
‘It’s a party-slash-show-slash party!’ Such is Amy Lamé’s breathless refrain, which she repeats manically, with the excitement of an eight-year-old hopped up on Party Ring e-numbers. In fact, Unhappy Birthday is less a show than a mad Dadaist happening…
Tania Edwards - Killer Instinct
15 Aug 2012
Funny Women finalist in career regression
Straight off the bat, the eminently likeable Tania Edwards insists that this is going to be her year. It’s ‘break or breakdown’ time. Unfortunately, several things could be conspiring against her as she moves ahead with her grand plans (which may have…
I Am, I Am
15 Aug 2012
Highly entertaining slapstick minstrelry from promising troubadour comedy duo
For ones so young it's obscene how much confidence these duelling acoustic troubadours from Cambridge have. With their genre shifting ditties and punning rhymes I Am, I Am are most obviously comparable to The Flight of the Conchords but their very…
Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2012: Comedy highlights so far
14 Aug 2012
Dr Brown, Shit-Faced Shakespeare, Alfie Brown, Jim Jefferies and more
Dr Brown Mr Phil Burgers gets stuck into some quality hushed clowning work for his adult crowd with surprisingly tender results. See review at list.co.uk/festival. Underbelly, Cowgate, 0844 545 8252, until 26 Aug (not 20), 9.05pm, £10.50--£11.50…
Ford & Akram
14 Aug 2012
Warm, charismatic show from the bumbling comedy duo
Female duo Yasmine Akram and Louise Ford sit side by side in silence. As the former beams a radiant smile, the latter glares glumly in to the front row. Embarking on a voyage to fulfill an elderly relatives last request the show consists of a…
Detention
14 Aug 2012
Mr Bean meets Olympic gymnastics: physical comedy, Hong Kong style
Hong Kong show Detention is a highly accomplished example of a form of physical comedy that is extremely popular in east Asia. If you haven’t encountered this kind of work on the Edinburgh Fringe in the past, think Mr Bean crossed with Olympic…
Mr Braithwaite Has a New Boy
14 Aug 2012
Decent performances can’t redeem predictable Aussie farce
With this new comedy by Steven Dawson (who also directs and designs it), Melbourne’s LGBT-focused theatre company Out Cast Theatre plays lazily to the crowd, favouring lashings of none-too-subtle and none-too-imaginative cheap smut and broadly-drawn…
Discover Ben Target
14 Aug 2012
Prop-heavy, unpredictable riot is a triumph of chaos-masked complexity
Throughout Discover Ben Target the gathered punters are taken on numerous bizarre and wonderful journeys. The first, a figurative express trip from “This is unusual” to “Why-in-shitting-hell-are-we-not-sitting-at-the-back?” to the last; a casual stroll…
Trevor Noah: The Racist
13 Aug 2012
Identity crisis makes for hilarious comedy
It takes a particular kind of individual to get up on stage and open their soul to a room of strangers in order to achieve ratification for their existence. Part of that drive might come from the oft-cited routes about having learned to use humour to…
