Reviews & features: Comedy, Brian Donaldson
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Max and Ivan are Holmes and Watson
23 Aug 2011
Slick but over-the-top, confusing and largely gag-free tale
There may be a slickness to Max and Ivan’s take on Holmes and Watson, but this is an over-the-top, confusing and largely gag-free tale. It may simply be that their story is too busy for a double act to carry off, unless their name happened to be the…
Croft and Pearce - Funnier Than It Sounds
23 Aug 2011
Flashes of brilliance lost in a melee of mundanity
Flashes of brilliance are unfortunately lost in a melee of mundanity as this double act trot out predictable stuff about the Middletons, a horrendous job interview and domineering Italian mothers. But the Brownies gang warfare sketch and creative…
Chris Ramsey: Offermation
23 Aug 2011
Enthusiastic natural wit is impossible to resist
With Offermation, this lively comic discusses the cult of delivering unwanted information without prior consent, centring around some letters sent to his family. The central theme is somewhat undermined by an uplifting finale, but Ramsey’s enthusiastic…
Tim Key
22 Aug 2011
A sublime and spirited Slut sequel
Following up an award-winning success is never the easiest of operations. Perhaps this is why Tim Key has taken two years out to get his sequel into shape, having used this same Pleasance Dome space last year as a testing ground with a short run of the…
Todd Barry
22 Aug 2011
Every trivial matter is prey to the laconic American
In a short pre-show filmed interview, Todd Barry notes that his first few dates in Edinburgh are likely to be detrimentally effected by jetlag. Given that the default setting for his delivery is among the most downbeat in stand-up history, it’s hard to…
Neil Hamburger
22 Aug 2011
Anti-comedic filth, hate and fury
Almost 20 years ago, Gregg Turkington released an album of prank phone calls in which he first unleashed the now fully-formed and twisted character of Neil Hamburger. God only knows the current state of mind of those individuals on the receiving end. An…
Tiffany Stevenson
22 Aug 2011
Cuddly musings on Cockneys and kids
When she took her Scottish boyfriend along to a good old-fashioned Cockney party in her own backyard, Tiffany Stevenson couldn’t get out of there quick enough. A horrible vision of her possible future has presented itself as she moved around the room…
The Unexpected Items
22 Aug 2011
A largely threadbare and shallow show
This quintet has garnered a zillion YouTube hits for their amusingly satirical ‘Gap-Yah’ sketches and there’s a murmur of recognition as Matt Lacey wanders on to deliver a new atrocity from the plummy, chundering Orlando. In a curious twist of Pub…
Phill Jupitus: Stand Down
18 Aug 2011
An excitement-sapping hour of chat
The first thing that you can’t help but notice about Phill Jupitus is not his substantial weight-loss, impressive though that is. It’s how much he closely resembles the silvery-pirate modern look of Eddie Izzard, even down to the eyeliner and…
Iain Stirling and Sean McLoughlin
18 Aug 2011
The star signing lets down the team
No offence to the jaunty Iain Stirling, but it’s intriguing to wonder what a solo hour with Sean McLoughlin would have turned out like. CBBC’s Scottish presenter Stirling seems billed as the main event here given his status as compere and closing act…
Piff the Magic Dragon
17 Aug 2011
A laconic but jaw-dropping set
It’s not enough these days for a magician to simply get up there on stage and do some jaw-dropping trick. A gimmick is always an added extra and in John van der Put’s case, he’s chosen to dress like a dragon, give himself a suitably puntacular name and…
Holly Walsh - The Hollycopter
17 Aug 2011
A brave and bittersweet recollection
When her fellow comics were padding about the Fringe in August 2010, Holly Walsh was clowning around on Worthing Pier. Unfortunately, her charity leap into the West Sussex sea resulted in a shocking injury that led to national media coverage for the…
Music Box
16 Aug 2011
Mash-up improv troupe never hit a true stride
Maybe it was a lack of imagination on the audience’s part (a musical called Fish set in a chip shop doesn’t seem to be in keeping with the mash-up improv spirit), but this troupe never hit a true stride, going round in circles when they chance upon a…
Vikki Stone & The Flashbacks: Big Neon Letters
16 Aug 2011
Comedy songs in band format
Effervescent musical comic Stone is desperate to be on TV. She’s been there before on embarrassing adverts and Blue Peter, but she craves the studio lights, if only to get close to her teenage crush Phillip Schofield. In a bruising encounter she emits…
Meryl O’Rourke - Bad Mother
16 Aug 2011
Some funny and moving material on mixed heritage
O’Rourke won’t be the last Fringe comic to reference the street-riots but it was perhaps unwise to let us hear a better joke on the subject from her spouse. It’s an early off-note that she makes up for with some funny and moving material about her…
Fred Cooke
15 Aug 2011
The Irishman's musical talent is overshadowed by his over-stretched observations
Playing the gormless Oirishman to a fault, the Tommy Tiernan-endorsed Cooke has one distinct ability: he’s a human jukebox when it comes to playing requests on his soprano melodica. As a stand-up, though, he opts for physical shenanigans instead of…
Dana Alexander
15 Aug 2011
Great comedic flair but average material from the Canadian
The Canadian comic meanders through a flat set in which she discusses cake, weight, big bums the cosmetics industry and stretch marks, while observing that Chinese people are small and Italian mothers are domineering. She has the style and patter down…
Tom Rosenthal: Child of Privilege
14 Aug 2011
A very funny and innovative debut about privilege
At around the halfway point in Tom Rosenthal’s debut show, he applies the brake and settles into a gorgeous little homage to one of his comedy idols, Stewart Lee. Around him, some of the crowd are not entirely sure what’s going on as he seems trapped in…
The Beta Males
14 Aug 2011
Good scripting and coming timing from the funny foursome
A stonking show this one as a slick quartet channel the Dutch Elm Conservatoire for a rollercoaster of a journey on the sinister train, Olympus. Skulduggery is afoot with a cast including four manic businessmen, Stephen Byers and the Titanic love duo. A…
Andrew Doyle's Crash Course in Depravity
14 Aug 2011
A full-on assault on the borders of taste
Russell Kane has made a habit out of turning negative comments by reviewers into the show title for his subsequent Fringe show. Easy Cliché and Tired Stereotype and Gaping Flaws were both borne from lines penned by critics. Andrew Doyle has not only…
Josh Widdicombe: If This Show Saves One Life
14 Aug 2011
Steering away from the dangers of blanding out
After an impressive opening flurry of gags about trees, scissors and burglars, Josh Widdicombe is suddenly bumped off his stride. Not by hecklers per se, but by the woman on his front row who has, shall we say, a bit of a thing for him. Once the awkward…
Joe Fairbrother: Characters
14 Aug 2011
Gentle audience-teasing character comedy
Whoever was doing the flyering for this show should be awarded some kind of Edinburgh Flyering Award. They absolutely nailed the target audience for the opening salvo of Joe Fairbrother’s fiendishly subtle character show. Welcomed in by a posh…
Chris Martin
14 Aug 2011
Run of the mill show from the man who definitely isn't in Coldplay
Martin certainly has swagger, but his comedy feels not so much natural but ‘learned’ (with honours from the Whitehall/McIntyre College of Advanced Observational Stand-Up). The initial promise of a show about being alone in a hectic world is ditched for…
Andrew Maxwell
12 Aug 2011
Blistering set from the mercurial Dubliner
Anyone who goes to see a barrel-load of comedy this August will no doubt witness stand-up after stand-up making a fleeting reference to the summer riots, if only to prove they have a handle on what’s going on in outside the Edinburgh bubble. Not Andrew…
Gavin Webster: All Young People Are C**ts
12 Aug 2011
Likeably profane and bitter hour
Accoding to Geordie comic Gavin Webster, ‘all young people are cunts’. He believes that so much that he’s been driven to name this year’s Fringe show with the phrase, concluding his amiable hour with a profanity-fuelled sing-along. Admitting to being…
