Reviews & features: Comedy
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Broad Comedy
23 Aug 2010
Horribly laboured songs about abstinence, tampons and penis size
'We got a crazy show for you,’ hails the leader of this all-female American sketch group. If your idea of ‘crazy’ features horribly laboured songs about abstinence, tampons and penis size, then this will have your head spinning. One routine saves the…
Arthur Smith - 'No reviewers in unless they can juggle kippers'
22 Aug 2010
We send comic and expert juggler Stuart Goldsmith to take him up on the offer
Arthur Smith is the funniest and most honest comic of his generation, and has no need for reviews or critics. He nobly decided to ban them from his performances in the Pleasance Courtyard but, in the spirit of charity and goodwill, let there be a single…
Nina Conti
22 Aug 2010
A vast talent for voices and timing
‘First rule of performing: make it look easy; second rule: don’t fuck the elephants.’ Since there are no elephants in this show, Nina Conti succeeds in following monkey’s advice impeccably in prising apart the elderly art of ventriloquism in another…
Israeli-Palestinian Conflict - A Romantic Comedy!
18 Aug 2010
Israel and Palestine get it on
MTV meets Middle East politics in this bouncy if disjointed musical offering from Nerdcore Rising director Negin Farsad and Mike Mosallam, where diplomacy is a euphemism for “boning”, rap becomes a weapon of war and Kurt Cobain emerges as a love rival…
Josie Long
18 Aug 2010
A joyous kickback against disillusionment
Josie Long claims that losing weight has meant sacrificing her joie de vivre. It’s true that she gets more than usually angry, bitter and disillusioned in this, her first Edinburgh appearance in two years, but could a comedian bereft of joie de vivre…
Sophie Black
18 Aug 2010
A character show with little in the way of actual characters
Stumbling onstage in the guise of an overly ambitious street sketch artist/ex-con, Sophie Black’s solo character-based show never quite finds its feet. The cartoonist offers the inevitable poor drawings and grandiose ideas of her own ‘art’, but the more…
Max and Iván
18 Aug 2010
High energy, fast-paced sketches
This youthful double act presents a near-universal gung-ho set of high energy, fast-paced sketches, raucously covering everything from re-imaginings of blockbusters to advert appeals for a charity for models with eating disorders (where the only…
Jason Byrne
16 Aug 2010
Shouty, sweary, hyperactive man-child
Jason Byrne is a Fringe institution, a literal poster-child for the festival. Every year, his face is plastered over a hundred walls, perhaps with some bizarre, almost rhyming title (see ‘Sheep for Feet and Rams for Hands’ or ‘Cats Under Mats, Having…
Seann Walsh
16 Aug 2010
Making the humdrum hilarious
If you were to sit down and read a full synopsis of Seann Walsh’s debut hour, it might come across as the dullest thing ever. The subjects he takes as his inspiration for comedy would make Michael McIntyre seem like the merged resurrection of Bill Hicks…
Dag Sørås
16 Aug 2010
Sørås makes hilarious hay
At the end of Magnus Betnér’s Stand show, the Swede implores his audience to hang around for his best friend and ‘the better comedian’, Norway’s Dag Sørås. The pair certainly share some common themes (suicide, religion, the right wing) while both are…
Loretta Maine
16 Aug 2010
All a bit one-note
The joke here is that Loretta Maine is a drunkard with emotional problems. And that’s it. Every song starts with simpering, sweet Loretta and morphs into raging bunny-boiler Loretta. An improvised ode to an audience member and a bit of light…
The Wau Wau Sisters
16 Aug 2010
Chaotic, messy, Benny Hill-style slap and tickle comedy
This is chaotic, messy, Benny Hill-style slap and tickle comedy, from those dirty tramps, The Wau Wau Sisters. Acrobatic striptease, red wine showers and Catholic schoolgirl burlesque skits keep the tone strictly low-brow, with song and dance numbers…
Colin Hoult
16 Aug 2010
Creepy, disgusting and unsettling
A great opening gag involving unintelligible sounds and an unwanted baby sets the tone for the next hour. Hoult plays characters from the fringes, who are by turns, creepy, disgusting and unsettling. There’s the movie lover from Nottingham and his…
Jennifer Coolidge
15 Aug 2010
A CV full of amusing titbits
Tottering on stage in a tight blue dress and heels that are usually only seen on the Fringe at burlesque cabarets or ladyboys gigs, Jennifer Coolidge is here to tell us that she is sick of LA. Hell, she might even decamp to the UK. Implausible as that…
Emo Philips
13 Aug 2010
Over-familiar but still funny
EMO PHILIPS Over-familiar but still funny Possibly the finest purveyor of paraprosdokians since Groucho Marx uttered his last quip returns to the Fringe for the first time since 2001. For those of you familiar with Philips, the face has aged and the…
Jim Jefferies - Alcoholocaust
13 Aug 2010
Vitriolic rants from the bottom of his LA-based heart
Jim Jefferies is now a full-on comedy superstar, living in LA, with the HBO seal of approval. He’s even been asked to write a sitcom (although if the letter he reads out from one channel’s legal standards department about the issues they have with the…
Daniel Rigby draws us up a biblical board
13 Aug 2010
Board Meeting: Daniel Rigby
Daniel is telling the tale of life as a lapsed born-again Christian and so has, quite rightly, drawn a cross on his board. He has also adopted a beautifully holy expression, which was nice to see. However, the show is not guaranteed to be a fast track…
Stuart Goldsmith
11 Aug 2010
On the road to proper glory
Goldsmith insists he’s a Reasonable Man and his blokish bonhomie certainly doesn’t appear to mask a ghastly individual. Standing out from the crowd is his chief concern here as he recalls being a failed goth in white trainers, a street performer who…
Jack Whitehall
11 Aug 2010
Lacking real substance
Having Robert Pattinson as a classmate has left Jack Whitehall with a chip on his shoulder, though you don’t feel the 22-year-old comic has real enthusiasm for bashing the Twilight star. Similarly, with jokes on swimming lessons and the vagaries of…
Unshakeable
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11 Aug 2010
Paul Betney jokingly describes his life with Parkinson's
Paul Betney lived with undiagnosed Parkinson’s disease for 18 years before finally finding medication that helps suppress his uncontrollable shaking. With the aid of video clips, slide shows and jokes, he talks about his life pre- and post-medication.
Geraldine Quinn
10 Aug 2010
Flash your flesh, your cash and your camel toe
In an era of ‘pop with no pants’, Geraldine Quinn explains how to be a singing sensation, even if you can’t sing: flash your flesh, your cash and your camel toe. Vivacious and confident, Quinn mercifully can hit a note, and her lyrics are wry and…
Henning Wehn
10 Aug 2010
German humour remains a joke in itself
As long as German humour remains a joke in itself, Wehn’s enormously referential style is unlikely to change. It’s lucky he can still do it with the originality and talent it requires, with his outsider take on British culture spawning some…
Adam Riches
10 Aug 2010
Riches’ latest show is supremely daft
Even by this crazy character comic’s standards, Riches’ latest show is supremely daft. A theme park inspired by Pierce Brosnan’s turn as a centaur in Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief is the lame excuse for a bolt through several silly…
Tom Craine
10 Aug 2010
Achingly upper middle-class meanderings
A small audience is always hard, but the achingly upper middle-class meanderings on offer here were never really going to lift the room. However, you have to admire the confidence of a man in his material when he repeatedly builds in spaces for audience…
Storm Large - Crazy Enough
9 Aug 2010
A musical memoir with bawdy tales
Storm Large is absolutely gorgeous, what with her mile-long legs, blonde locks and cherubic face. But I think she expects us to be shocked with all her talk about fisting. The American rock chick will learn that Fringe audiences have a high capacity for…
