Reviews & features: Edinburgh Festival Fringe

Shirley and Shirley Unleashed

A sassy and inventive tour de force from the sketch comedy twosome

The opening skit of the latest Shirley adventure features two Edinburgh ladies hunched under an umbrella pondering whether to see the show having heard it's all 'cock' 'fanny' and arsehole' with lots of 'bad accents.' It's true that almost every sketch…

Miriam Margolyes - Dickens' Women

Appealing biographical show in the company of a true pro

Yelling with that unmistakeable voice and accompanied by the oh-so-refined tinkly piano of Benjamin Lee, Miriam Margolyes staggers onto the stage in the person of sozzled layer-out of the dead Mrs Gamp, from Martin Chuzzlewit. It’s a charming, gentle…

Phil Nichol Rants!

Mercurial Canadian comedian rages, blusters, fumes and seethes

The hard-working, hyperactive Fringe veteran, who’s also appearing in his Comedians Theatre Company production of the play The Intervention, can hardly contain everything he wants to say within this single hour of stand-up. And he doesn’t. Before the…

Fork - Electro Vocal Circus

PVC-clad a capella group covering pop classics

The four-piece a cappella group from Finland return. Fork’s look and repertoire is much more glam rock than Glee, with one member being labelled as the ‘Legolas from hell’. They have an ever so slightly intimidating presence, but this only adds to their…

Sound & Fury's Doc Faustus

Comedy troupe deliver a low-quality western pastiche of the famous morality tale

When you first read, or saw an adaptation of, Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus, was your first thought: ‘it’s okay but what it really needs is more cowboys’? If you did Sound and Fury have answered your prayers with a country and western take on the…

Bob Downe . . . Smokin'

Style over substance

From the minute he pirouettes onto stage all 70s gear, mega-watt grin and fake blonde hair, it’s clear Aussie’s ‘clown prince of polyester’ is having a ball, as he knocks out one karaoke hit after another and embarks on some name-that-tune competitions.

Born to be Mild

Likeable cynic's references fall flat

Lawyer turned comedian and general Mr nice guy Andrew Watts accepts that much of the material in his past shows has surrounded himself and his life as a single man. Recently though, Watts has managed to become romantically involved and despite a deep…

Rhys Darby, Sean Hughes and more share their fest highlights

Some final Fringe recommendations from performers including Billy the Mime and Chris Ramsey

Rhys Darby Find of the festival for me was Two Cornish Rappers and a Casiotone from Hedluv and Passman. It is the perfect Fringe show: lo-fi technology mixed with hi-fi dancing. If Murray Hewitt was here he would certainly be approaching them about…

Comedian Simon Evans lets us in on a couple of his favorite Fringe things

I have two favourite things about the Fringe. 1) Serendipity I did my first Set List, where comedians are required to improvise material straight off the bat, based on random phrases. I had to speak about ‘Eulogy Headliner’, and said that this was…

Horse & Louis - The Curse of ...

Musical comedy duo who aim for Conchordian heights but crash and burn

It seems the way of things now that any musical duo will compare themselves, if only fleetingly, with Flight of the Conchords. To their credit, Horse & Louis can make this link with more justification than most, given that they both bear a striking…

David Trent - Spontaneous Comedian

Unoriginal, uncontroversial, unfunny

This schoolteacher has come to the Fringe with plenty of hype behind him but his multimedia Spontaneous Comedian is a befuddling affair. You know someone is in trouble when they constantly refer to jokes that usually get bigger laughs (slap on wrist…

Andrew Maxwell

That’s the Spirit is a safe and sound set

A couple of local punters perhaps expressed it best at the end of their 2 for 1 visit to Andrew Maxwell’s 2012 show. ‘He wasn’t as good as last year.’ ‘Aye it was a bit childish.’ Certainly, there is always a fair bit of playground mocking in a Maxwell…

Virginia Gay - Dirty, Pretty Songs

Husky voiced soap star lacks plot but brings cabaret showtunes instead

As Virginia Gay’s cabaret commences it’s easy to get the jist: she prowls through the audience, belts out a shiny tune and ends up writhing atop her band’s grand piano. The Australian actress recounts a self-deprecating ‘back story’, referencing a…

Ali McGregor’s Alchemy

Opera-trained cabaret diva does trashy 80s hits

Ali McGregor has the world’s most glittery shoes. The Australian chanteuse is keen to point them out, hoisting her leg up to show the sparkle. McGregor’s 2012 Fringe show ‘Alchemy’ holds parallels with her golden choice of footwear, marrying exquisite…

Tony Law

Surrealist banter misses by a hat stand

There’s something very frustrating about Tony Law. At times, he feels like an on-form Canadian Eddie Izzard with magical surrealism sliding almost effortlessly from his mouth; other times he’s awkward and stumbling around as though he has absolutely no…

Chris Stokes

Tremendous tales of a nerdy loser

You can picture the club circuit of the alternative comedy boom-years being filled to the rafters with cardy-wearing anti-machismo vegan stand-ups. But in these post post-ironic times, Chris Stokes feels almost like a novelty act. Lucky for him (and us…

Hannah Gadsby - Hannah Wants A Wife

Aussie comedienne delivers insightful and sharply observed art history/comedy

Gadsby wanders onto stage, already hilarious in her waistcoat and coy pride in her art history slide show. It was a hard sell, she confidentially tells us. But you’re here now, she gleams. Concentrating on the Arnolfini Marriage painting by Jan van…

Planet Lem

Sci-fi spectacle is impressive to watch but lacking in story

Based on the science fiction stories of the Polish writer Stanislaw Lem, Teatr Biuro Podrozy’s new outdoor extravaganza, Planet Lem, presents the tale of a nightmarish dystopia, where machines rule people and people are completely reliant on machines…

Anne Edmonds in My Banjo’s Name is Steven

Aussie musical stand-up built on good audience interaction

The unwaveringly energetic and unfailingly upbeat Aussie comedian clearly feels she’s a bit too full on for her lunchtime time lot. But, actually, her bright demeanour and likeable manner makes her well suited to the daylight hours. For her Fringe…

A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Shakespeare adaptation barely scratches the surface of the play’s comic potential

In detention with Mr Goodfellow, seven secondary-school pupils are forced – as if by magic – to perform A Midsummer Night’s Dream for some misdemeanour. However, the school setting is quickly dropped, forgotten for a bog-standard staging, and it starts…

Andrew Ryan - Ryanopoly

Uneasy, nervous act fails to break the banks

Having worked in a bank, Andrew Ryan knows all the tricks in the book of Getting Your Money, and he knows how to get the humour out of them, too. Many of the funniest moments in this show are borne of his playful sending-up of the rigid application of…

Carl Einar-Hackner: Handluggage

Swede stand-up magic ‘just like that’

Like some sort of bumbling, long-haired, clown-cross between Tommy Cooper and Justin Hawkins from The Darkness, Carl-Einar Häckner wants to wow you with magic. Poured into his white, bejewelled jumpsuit, he’s not quite nailed the tricks yet; so he’d…

Nina Conti - Dolly Mixtures

Pic’n’Mix show leaves audience with too much choice

Pic’n’Mix show leaves audience with too much choice Midway through Dolly Mixtures, Nina Conti’s granny puppet, arguably her most famous, states the obvious: ‘These puppets bring out different parts of your personality,’ swiftly tying together what…

Laurence Clark: Inspired

Stimulating comedy from comedian with cerebral palsy

When a fan tweeted Clark saying his show was ‘inspiring’, the comedian with cerebral palsy found the comment so condescending he was inspired to write a new one about what is truly inspirational and what is bollocks. During the course of the show, Clark…

Leads & Stern

Patchy sketch debut with some lovely touches

Imagine the terror of being in a comedy threesome when one of your party dies just hours before the Fringe kicks off, leaving the surviving duo to either pack it in or somehow soldier on? This is the central made-up dilemma at the heart of the sketch…