Reviews & features: Comedy, Brian Donaldson
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Justin Moorhouse
23 Aug 2010
A likeable show that marries invention with nostalgia
If you want to know exactly where you are positioned on the class ladder, Moorhouse has a game to test your status. A likeable show that marries invention with nostalgia, the northern comic takes us back to an age where his family’s summer holidays were…
Idiots of Ants
23 Aug 2010
A patchy affair that works beautifully in places
At least the second show this Fringe to feature a drummer being fired via the medium of his band’s songwriting, this latest über-hi-tech offering from the IoA is a patchy affair that works beautifully in places (the sound effects sketch; the…
Daddy Ate All My Easter Eggs and Never Replaced Them
23 Aug 2010
One decent pun about Lidl
Now, I realise they’re young and that, but someone really should have taken this lot aside and advised them that their horrible skit about the Professors of Scottishness isn’t really the kind of thing to help to ingratiate yourselves upon a welcoming…
Mark Watson
23 Aug 2010
Playing on his own inadequacies
The elevation of this frenetic Fringe staple from sweaty huts to the ‘super-league’ of vast halls mercifully hasn’t stilted his ability to captivate a crowd while playing on his own inadequacies. This year’s tale is of celeb status (whether real or…
Pete Jonas
23 Aug 2010
Just about straddles the right side of offensiveness
He may have been awarded a no-star review by an eminent online comedy site, but this has perhaps even added extra edge to Aussie Jonas’ already bitter set about the women who have dumped him down the years. The material just about straddles the right…
Clarkson and Crouch
23 Aug 2010
More clever than funny
Two jolly men perform a piece about Albion Avenue, the ‘most broken street in broken Britain’. With ‘Ghost Town’ playing during each post-scene blackout, serious points might be being made here but they’re lost in sketches in which Byron and Shelley…
Baby Wants Candy
23 Aug 2010
Unappealing coldness between performers and audience
Compared to the Showstopper! crew there’s an unappealing coldness between performers and audience here: with no pre-amble whatsoever, this US troupe get a suggestion and create an improvised musical (today’s topic: cheese and fish). A couple of…
Ginger and Black
23 Aug 2010
Wit and verve
The knockabout tale of life inside a woman’s prison and the incidents that led some inmates to get there is produced with wit and verve by Eri Jackson (she’s ginger) and Daniel Taylor (he’s black). Happily, the celeb reference count is limited to an…
Mike Newall
23 Aug 2010
Effortlessly likeable
Being effortlessly likeable is fine if you want to stay at the lower end of the comedy division, but given that this show is entitled Mr Famous (the nickname given to northerner Newall by his mates), an edge needs to be brought to this Stockport wag’s…
A Perhaps-Too-Intimate Evening of Music and Hilarity
23 Aug 2010
Music (certainly) and hilarity (hardly)
The Young Dads gurn and mumble their way through an evening of music (certainly) and hilarity (hardly) in a venue where all but the strategically-seated few will be able to see the on-screen jokes and wordy accompaniments to their silly songs and…
Nathan Cassidy
23 Aug 2010
An over-egged, utterly boring hour
A disaster from Friztl-based start to ‘Royal Variety’ finish, The Frog that Says Sausages is a miserable affair by a man who should probably stick to the work he’s been getting as a Marc Almond impersonator. He might promise the ‘most offensive joke…
Alex Zane
22 Aug 2010
Best leave it to the professionals, fella
In looks, manner and content, Alex Zane gives the impression of someone who entertained a passing thought that it might be a wheeze to come up and ‘do’ Edinburgh for a month like all those proper comics. Yet after this insipid hour of all-holds barred…
Charlie Talbot
22 Aug 2010
Gag-free life of a decent man
Charlie Talbot insists that when he’s out doing his comedy on the circuit, his act is nothing but knob gag after toilet joke after rude quip. He promises something much different here, essentially the lie-free story of his life, a tale of semi-failure…
John-Luke Roberts
22 Aug 2010
A decadent and deathly hour of brilliance
It’s common and understandable knowledge that many a comedian harbours homicidal feelings towards their critics whether they happen to be plying their negative trade quietly in print or loudly from the back row. But should a comic really be attempting…
John Moloney
22 Aug 2010
Stand-up crooner is a little out of tune
There’s a down-to-earth honesty and genuine sincerity about John Moloney that is warmly appealing. It’s not the first night of his long-awaited Edinburgh return, but he looks properly touched and consequently has nothing amusing to say about the fact…
Taking Liberties
22 Aug 2010
A witty and warped look at freedom
Leaping on stage in surely the reddest trousers at the Fringe, semi-Scot Sanderson Jones has the demeanour of a kids entertainer running down the last few months of his contract, or the science teacher you love to bits in the classroom but know you…
Alun Cochrane
22 Aug 2010
Making the world a cheerier place
Alun Cochrane has come to the Fringe this year with a different goal. He’s here to simply deliver a bucketful of jokes. And he does in fact walk on stage armed with a bucket full of jokes from which he’ll pluck out some one or two-liners for the…
David Quirk
18 Aug 2010
A worldview containing beauty and beastliness
We’re accustomed to our Aussie Fringe comics being a bit larger than life and ranting aloud their darker thoughts. David Quirk, then, is somewhat atypical. He’s certainly not afraid to delve around in the murkier regions of existence though…
The Penny Dreadfuls
17 Aug 2010
Hard to see exactly what the mad fuss is about
It’s hard to see exactly what the mad fuss is about when it comes to this threesome. Now a staple Fringe act, the trio have laddered up the ranks from a cave in the Underbelly to the cheek-mic glory of Pleasance One in a short space of years. But the…
Eirlys Bellin
16 Aug 2010
Clichés abound and laughs fail
In the same cosy room in 2008, Isabel Fay presented a claustrophobic set of oddball characters who appeared with a bang before fizzling out all too quickly. The same is true of Eirlys Bellin’s show, Unaccustomed As I Am, in which a quartet of irritants…
Daniel Rigby
16 Aug 2010
A ragbag of facial gymnastics and titbits about ghosts
The life of a born-again Christian who lapsed back into the world of reason sounds like the stuff that Fringe epics are made from. But after a solid beginning, Rigby’s Afterbirth dips badly, with not even the little baby Jesus capable of resurrecting…
The Three Englishmen
16 Aug 2010
This might be as good as it gets
First off, there’s actually four of them, though they do all appear to be all of an Anglo bent. Kicking off with a deftly wordless piece about four Brazilians watching the World Cup, the quartet rattle through scenes about accidental infant-theft and an…
Monster of the Deep 3D
16 Aug 2010
An amiable and tight performance
Claudia O’Doherty is a quirky little fish. Her show brings to mind the type of bonkers shenanigans which Bridget Christie gets up to, where a world is created almost out of scratch, infiltrated by rigorous detail and manically explored to highlight the…
Carl Donnelly
16 Aug 2010
Getting his stand-up craft down to a fine art
Being famous is not on Carl Donnelly’s wishlist. Besides, the press now have some pictures of him looking a bit daft filed in their archive, ready to be plucked out at the moment when he attains true celebrityhood and does something shameful. For now…
Barry & Stuart
16 Aug 2010
A hell of a compelling show
Whether you believe The Sandman exists or not – and having him call my name through the medium of a lady plucked ‘randomly’ from the crowd hasn’t made me sleep especially easy these last few nights – the Aberdeenshire boys still put on a hell of a…
