Reviews & features: Edinburgh Festival Fringe
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Pappy's Fun Club
11 Aug 2009
Sketch favourites achieve cohesion through chaos
Sketch comedy at the Fringe is often accused of a lack of fluidity, in the absence of an over-arching narrative thread to keep its audience engaged. Former if.comedy award nominees Pappy’s Fun Club may have been guilty of this in the past, but somehow…
Wil Anderson
11 Aug 2009
Australian comedy striving to find the good in us all
This sweet, excitable Aussie thirtysomething is driven to find the good in the world, no matter how cynical it gets. He definitely has his moments, but too often you can see the pay-off from miles away, and he deflates some of his sharpest ideas by…
New Art Club
10 Aug 2009
Balletic musings on the meaning of ‘now’
Tom Roden was 13 when the compilation Now That’s What I Call Music was released back in 1983. He and his girlfriend broke the law by taping it on cassette from the vinyl. That year, Tom was a goth. He was also a New Romantic, a breakdancer, a mod, and a…
Cardinal Burns
10 Aug 2009
Turkish delights amid the prop failure
If there’s one thing you can be certain of from sketch duo Cardinal Burns, it’s a clean show. Not that there aren’t moments of splendid filth and degradation, but the opening sequence of an ironing, pampering and spraying duo fills the sweaty air with…
Ashley Hames
10 Aug 2009
The queasy confessions of a sex reporter
At the top of the show, journalist and TV presenter Ashley Hames (possibly best known as the News Bunny on Live TV!) warns that he’s not a stand-up comedian; certainly his command of the script and PowerPoint presentation is endearingly shambling in…
Bourne to be wild - Mark Ravenhill interview
6 Aug 2009
New show based on flamboyant gay theatre icon Bette Bourne
Mark Ravenhill is making a habit of redefining what a Fringe play can be. Two years ago, his Ravenhill for Breakfast offered ever growing crowds a chance to see a daily changing programme of short plays written almost as fast as they could be performed…
Blazin' Fiddles
6 Aug 2009
New face among the fiddles
Blazin’ Fiddles first appeared on the Scottish folk scene for a series of concerts at the old Highland Festival a decade ago. They were supposedly only getting together as a one-off project, but proved such a success that they became a fixture. Duncan…
Man versus machine: Sambor Dudzinski
29 Jul 2009
The Polish musician is gearing up for his Fringe debut. He meets Anna Docherty
‘I sing, but I’m not a singer; I play piano, but I’m not a piano player; I act, but I’m not an actor,’ says Polish conceptual artist, Sambor Dudzinski. By way of alternative explanation he simply says: ‘I am timeless.’ And he’s not being deliberately…
Belt Up bring Tartuffe and Trial to the Fringe
23 Jul 2009
The award-winning physical theatre company provide an inspired spin on some enduring classics
If the Fringe is about anything, it’s about an inexhaustible ability to surprise an audience, whether it be with a crazy venue space, a thrilling new script or a suitably memorable performance. Step forward - Belt Up.
Comedian Daniel Sloss to debut at the Fringe
13 Jul 2009
Fortune favours this brave teenage comic from Fife
‘My mum says I have LBS. That’s Lucky Bastard Syndrome.’ They reckon you make your own luck in this life, but Lesley Sloss (mother-manager of Daniel, the young Fife comic making his full Fringe debut at the age of 18), knows that fortune can only take a…
Koko the Crocodile
21 Aug 2008
A little touch of Africa
Mara Menzies is fairly new to the storytelling game, but has taken to it like a duck to water. Or rather, like a crocodile to a riverbank – much like the wriggling, paw-waving one that appears in her charming new show. Based on Menzies’ recently…
Shazia Mirza
21 Aug 2008
A stilted set about the big issues
A lot of Shazia Mirza’s material deals with her social awkwardness. Juggling the roles of devout daughter of fundamentalist Muslims and trailblazing female Muslim stand-up, she’s experienced her fair share of cultural dilemmas. But beyond the hype over…
One More Than One
21 Aug 2008
Love comes in different shapes and sizes
The thing about computer dating is that you never quite know what you’re going to get. Or, more to the point, who. Having met online, two characters meet in person to discover that along with all the things they do have in common – there are a few…
Edinburgh Festival If.comedy award shortlist announced
20 Aug 2008If.comedy nominees 2008 announced
The Intelligent Finance Comedy Awards are the UK's premier comedy awards now in its 28th year. It is given for the most outstanding up-and-coming, funny, original comedy show at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. The nominees for the 2008 Intelligent…
Mr Loveday’s Little Outing
20 Aug 2008
This is an adaptation for the stage of Evelyn Waugh’s short story undertaken by the director and performed by a group of young confident actors and actresses bringing their very own show to The Fringe for the first time, and as such is an affirmation of…
Free comedy
14 Aug 2008
A Pandora's Box of PowerPoint and pointlessness
There is a rebellion at the Fringe this year. High venue costs have caused some artists to take matters into their own hands. Doug Stanhope is charging £7349 for a one-off show in someone's living room and the Free Fringe organisations have brought more…
Lucy Porter
14 Aug 2008
A set down to its bare bones
While it may have been slightly dispiriting for Lucy Porter to hop out on stage to a less than packed auditorium, there's little in her jovial demeanour to suggest crushed hopes. To spend an hour in Porter's company is akin to having a litre of Jelly…
Britt Ekland: Britt on Britt
14 Aug 2008
A Swedish sexagenarian’s exploits
‘Who is Britt Ekland?’ So the former Bond girl and one-time wife of Peter Sellers begins her frank and surprisingly funny whistle stop tour of her enchantingly colourful life. Offering glimpses of the young starlet who entranced the likes of Rod Stewart…
Ginger & Black
14 Aug 2008
Dodgy songs and deadly put-downs
Ginger & Black aren't just deadpan. They're the pan that's been buried, left to rot, dug up and smacked about a bit just to make sure. They would grimace at this metaphor, and thereby prove my point. In fact, they would grimace if you composed the most…
The Idiot Colony
7 Aug 2008
Beautiful, shocking indictment of an all-too recent past
The opening scene of this intense, beautifully constructed piece of physical theatre lingers, unsettlingly, for days afterwards. Three girlish figures in pretty white dresses, perfectly in sync with each other, sway to a ragtime number, their faces…
A Drunk Woman Looks at The Thistle
7 Aug 2008
Scotland in a Mina key
If Liz Lochhead had continued the opening speech of Mary Queen of Scots Got Her Head Chopped Off for another hour, it could have sounded a lot like A Drunk Woman Looks at the Thistle. Written by crime novelist Denise Mina as a response to Hugh…
Adventures of Butt Boy and Tigger
7 Aug 2008
Polished insight into the joys of online dating
Anyone who has dipped their toes in the choppy waters of internet dating will find this sparky, well-observed two-hander from Australia's Out Cast Theatre enjoyably close-to-the-knuckle. Butt Boy (Jamie) and Tigger (Matt) meet in a chatroom late one…
Jonny Woo: International Woman of Mr ‘E’
7 Aug 2008
Moving and darkly comic one-(wo)man show
Moving and darkly comic one-(wo)man show. Jonny Woo, drag queen darling of the London alt.queer scene appears onstage beneath sequined butterfly make-up and various costumes. He knows that the act of wearing a mask is designed to reveal rather than…
Tom Wrigglesworth
7 Aug 2008
Robotic set from Kitson soundalike
This nervously smiling beanpole from Sheffield laments that 'sometimes in life there's nothing comedic to report'. Unfortunately a good deal of his material homes right in on those less than hilarious moments: his credit card company mistakenly blocking…
Wendy Wason
7 Aug 2008
Comedy catharsis lacks bite
Inspired by Donald Rumsfeld's infamous 'known unknowns' comments that were beyond parody, Wendy Wason takes the audience along the rocky path of her marriage break-up (from Steve Furst of Lenny Beige and Orange cinema advert fame) and the lessons it has…
