Reviews & features: Comedy, Thomas Meek

Hannah Gadsby

Genuine warmth and heartbreak

Inspired by Cliff Young, a legendary Australian who won an ultramarathon at the age of 61, Hannah Gadbsy sets off to walk across England, proving it’s never too late to achieve something. Her story is one of genuine warmth and heartbreak as she battles…

A Surprisingly Tasteful Show About Nudity

Well-intentioned schoolboy charm

With that same well-intentioned schoolboy charm shared by Russell Howard, it’s easy to be drawn in by Alexis Dubus, even if you are of the more prudish nature. Expect nudity, but in a context that goes some way to educate and entertain, taking in Greek…

The Ballad of Backbone Joe

A noirish tale of murder and meat fruit

Combining versatile talents with the easy-going charm that comes so naturally from an antipodean accent, Suitcase Royale’s self-penned, music-driven comedy noir provides effusive, varied entertainment. It’s pre-war Australia and Backbone Joe is a…

Sophie Black

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…

Gareth Richards

Quaint, bumbling stand-up and surreal, amateurish songs

Despite containing three separate anecdotes involving the deaths of relatives, Richards’ mix of quaint, bumbling stand-up and surreal, amateurish songs still lifts the spirits. The pointlessness of life may be the theme on offer, but it’s counteracted…

Maeve Higgins

She could talk all day and keep you smiling

I’d love Maeve Higgins to be my best friend. And it’s not just due to the whimsical stories and wonderful asides, she’d knit you a nice scarf too. On stage though, she can stumble with silences not so much awkward as unnecessary. She could talk all day…

Bridget Christie

Dabbling around the unhinged fringes of stand-up

Bridget Christie openly admits that her act may not be the most commercially viable around. But you can’t help but feel the Fringe would be a bit more interesting if other performers were willing to forsake financial security and the welfare of a…

Smith and Smith

Dry self-deprecation and an irreverent take on immortality

Some flimsy premises provide the platform for two men named Smith to come together. James W Smith talks of life and its problems (mainly children) in dry self-deprecation, though the pathos rarely pays off. Daniel Smith does, however, seem more at ease…

Henning Wehn

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…

Daniel Sloss - My Generation

Teen comic hits home with the personal

It’s not news most in the audience can relate to, but 19-year-old Daniel Sloss is getting on a bit. Or so he thinks he is, in only his second solo show at the Fringe.

Edinburgh Free Fringe round-up

In a festival where Ricky Gervais can charge whatever he wants for a show in the Playhouse and sell out comfortably, as well as expecting to pay £10 for a half-decent comedian nobody's heard of, it's nice to see the free alternatives still going strong.

Lucy Porter

A performance that is assured if a little safe

Though her youthful looks and childlike attitude hide it, Porter has had more experience than most at the Fringe. It all makes for a performance that is assured if a little safe, never in danger of falling flat but equally never challenging any…

Des Bishop

A show of empathy, if not quite originality

Spending his teenage years in Ireland after growing up in New York has not only given Bishop a mongrel accent, but a complex mix of Queens confidence and Blarney charm all wrapped in a self-effacing confusion. It's a confusion that invades the intimate…

Guy Incognito

A muddled execution that feels unfinished

A series of sketches set over one public school term, the former BBC New Talent Pick of the Fringe act has a more interesting conceit than material. Though wonderfully empathetic at times (the English teacher defining 'love' nearly brought tears not…

Late 'n' Live – Gilded Balloon

Ever-changing comedy cabaret

It's hard to say what to expect at this Edinburgh institution. The hours between 1am and 5am are never the most predicatable in August, and less so when 400 drunken revelers are expecting entertainment from four even drunker comedians. That's the…

Chris Cox

One of the Fringe’s more mentally challenging shows

Leaving aside the numerous puns he makes on his surname, this is one of the Fringe’s more mentally challenging shows. Cox has impressive abilities in the Derren Brown school of perception and persuasion, as well as a natural charm and wit. Perhaps he’s…

Two Episodes of MASH

Little substance to turn good ideas into a worthy show

Pleasingly deadpan, and with valiant attempts at mixing life’s mundanity with surrealist fantasy (the thought processes of a worker bee being particularly imaginative), Diane Morgan and Joe Wilkinson are so close to getting it right. The oddball sketch…

Andrew Stanley's Comedy Mish Mash

The warmest welcome you'll get all August

Returning with the same similar joyous mess of biscuits, stand-up and impromptu covers, Andrew Stanley compères another Mish Mash of genuine delight. Buried late into the night at the Gilded Balloon, this is probably the warmest welcome you'll get all…