Reviews & features: Issue 637
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- Issue 637
Jonny Sweet
18 Aug 2009
A hilarious PowerPoint portrayal of a dead brother
You could say that Jonny Sweet is probably quite a lucky geezer. Born with a face (agile) and voice (rich) that could only have led him onto one possible career path, he is utilising those assets to maximum effect in this, his debut solo Fringe show.
Zeitgeist
18 Aug 2009
Breathtaking Butoh bento box
This is the first time Australian company, Zen Zen Zo has come to the Fringe, but they’re no blushing debutants. Zeitgeist is a retrospective of their shorter works inspired by the untamed Japanese art form of Butoh. But it’s also a pulse check, a look…
Rough Cut Nation
18 Aug 2009
Graffiti warriors v neo-Gothic architecture
‘No one notices your pointless actions’, read the letters cut out of the floor. That’s not entirely true nowadays. Graffiti culture has entered the mainstream art world. Largely due to Banksy, art that was once firmly associated with lawless…
Kevin Bridges
18 Aug 2009
Scotland’s rising star strikes on his Fringe debut
Clydebank’s finest (unless you’re a fan of Duncan Bannatyne or Wet Wet Wet) makes his Fringe debut here with An Hour to Sing for Your Soul. Extra dates were ratcheted onto his schedule after his appearance on that Michael McIntyre vehicle led to a flood…
Jamie Kilstein
18 Aug 2009
US political comic veers away from obvious targets
Word has it that Jamie Kilstein got a rough time of things after one of his Fringe shows last year from some army types unhappy at his anti-war material. The only person who might be waiting outside this show to have a word might be Jamie Kilstein’s…
Lighter Than Air
18 Aug 2009
Balloon antics provoke belly laughs
It’s amazing the fun that can be generated from a few simple props. When clown Danny Schlesinger plods on stage wearing a too-tight suit and a deadpan expression, his arms weighed down with three enormous yellow balloons, you wonder whether he will be…
Edward Aczel
18 Aug 2009
The dry meanderings of a new kind of comic
The anti-comedy of Edward Aczel has certainly garnered itself a strong following. And while there is plenty hearty laughter at the goings-on within his show which, it promises, Explains All the World’s Problems … And Then Solves Them, the bulk of it is…
David O'Doherty
18 Aug 2009
Last year’s if.comedy winner consolidates
One of David O’Doherty’s fellow Irish comics recently mused that it would be quite a sight to see the Dubliner shocking his fans by performing a full-on political show. This is clearly not the moment for such wild reinvention, for DO’D has a firm…
Rhod Gilbert
18 Aug 2009
A breakneck litany of hilarious disasters
Rhod Gilbert’s star is most definitely in the ascendancy. Over the last year, he has been nominated for the if.comedy award, and performed on Live at the Apollo and the Royal Variety show. He is also (which he seems most proud of) the face of the Welsh…
Twine
18 Aug 2009
Moving tale of twine-made being brewed in a teapot
Riddles Court off the Royal Mile makes a suitably atmospheric location for the first Fringe show from Edinburgh-based children’s theatre company, Tortoise in a Nutshell. Their tale – in which a group of tea and cupcake-loving storytellers inadvertently…
Holly Burn
18 Aug 2009
A memorably awkward experience
Oh, where to begin? At Home With Holly certainly has a quirkily curious appeal, staged in a lovely New Town flat where the audience gets to watch Holly Burn ‘live her life’. So far, so intriguing. But even before stepping over the threshold, it’s clear…
The Brothers Lionheart
18 Aug 2009
Heavy tale of death and doom
Jonathan and his little brother, Rusky set off an adventure that changes their lives forever. It’s a tale of dragons and monsters, and the mighty Tengil who has the villagers of Nangilaya living in fear. The boys must man-up and fight back against…
Baxterbear's Tales: Storytelling for all
18 Aug 2009
Globe-trotting bear with a tale to tell
With so many Fringe shows taking place in small, dark quarters, it’s refreshing (and not a little exciting) to attend one in the rather more grand surroundings of the Caledonian Hotel. Having been greeted by a giant-sized Baxterbear in the foyer, we’re…
Zoe Lyons
18 Aug 2009
Sharp act with a cuddly side
Despite the misleadingly butch show title of Miss Machismo, Zoe Lyons thankfully goes easy on the cocky swagger in this show about women with an exaggeratedly massive masculine side. Instead, ‘the 81st most influential gay woman in Britain’ (so says The…
Still Breathing
18 Aug 2009
Impressive but joyless contemporary dance
There’s plenty to admire in this new show by all-male company 2FaCeD DaNcE, not least the virtuosity of UK breakdancing champion, Robby Graham. Plus some incredibly tight ensemble routines, which fuse street dance with contemporary to explore the…
Jack Whitehall
18 Aug 2009
A pedestrian set delivered with presence
Given the many competition finals he reached early on in his career and his rapid rise to TV work, the 21-year-old Whitehall’s debut solo show at the Fringe was always going to be weighted with expectation. Watching him perform, it’s easy to see why…
Wind in the Willows
18 Aug 2009
Beastly adaptation uses its loaf
You never quite know what you’re going to get from a student production at the Fringe, but this group of actors (and I use the word in the truest sense) from Cambridge University is a cut above the rest. Each character is clearly defined – the…
A Betrayal of Penguins
18 Aug 2009
Penguin-based humour has never seemed such fun
If you’ve been searching for the next big thing of Irish comedy, then this pair of social misfits might well do the trick. John Gallagher (‘renegade historian’) and Matthew Smyth (‘economist with nothing to lose’), take us on a breakneck adventure…
Vladimir McTavish - Top 50 Greatest Scots Ever, Part Two
18 Aug 2009
Familiar stereotype-based observations
Vladimir returns with the follow up to 2008's Part One, a sideways look at great Scots old and new. Dishing out some familiar stereotype-based observations of the good and the not-so-good of modern day Scotland, McTavish manages to skit in praise of one…
Alex Maple
18 Aug 2009
The exit doors become an ever appealing prospect
It’s hard to invest hope in a stand-up when he seems to have very little faith in himself. Maple’s skit of having an Irish jig played each time he tells a terrible joke not only gets wearing very quickly, but tells its own rather miserable story. There…
Rachel Rose Reid: And They Lived
18 Aug 2009
Charismatic and engaging
Once upon a time – that is at 10.45pm in a modest attic room at The Pleasance … animated storyteller Rachel Rose Reid delights her grown up audience with traditional tales from around the globe. Charismatic and engaging she will have you stamping…
Comedy Bitch
18 Aug 2009
Don’t lift the bar high enough
The innocent strangers lost at night venturing into the company of a possibly psychotic local may not be the worst beginning to a Fringe sketch show in living memory, but it can’t be far off. Predictable later skits of an offensive wedding speech…
Wrecked (A Guardian Reader’s Quest to Save Africa)
18 Aug 2009
Memories and musings at sea
Shipwrecked between continents, a lone woman bobs along in her suitcase considering her childhood abroad and the liberal views she inherited from her mother. This energetic one-woman play would work better as a series of sketches: the characters are…
Mike Wozniak
18 Aug 2009
Strained face-pulling and intentionally bad impersonations
Having provided one of the sleeper hits of last year’s Fringe, the Portsmouth Pole upsettingly fails to live up to that promise. Given that erudite subtlety was his watchword in 2008, he makes the odd mistake of going mic-less with the audience losing…
Max and Iván
18 Aug 2009
Great energy and slick audiovisuals
Like a YouTube-era update of Charlie Brooker’s spoof listings site TVGoHome, this two-man sketch show satirises and subverts telly staples. With great energy and slick audiovisuals, the camera-friendly performers spend exactly the right amount of time…
