Reviews & features: Phil Nichol

School for Scandal

School for vandals

RB Sheridan’s classic comedy has much to recommend it in our current era of vacuous celebrity tittle-tattle and grotesque self-interest. Yet the normally admirable Cal McCrystal’s production seems to have read the text so radically against what it seems…

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…

The Intervention

Formulaic sitcom that never gains the terminal velocity of real farce

In its very last moment, Dave Florez’s comedy-drama finally finds something truthful. Forty-something alcoholic Zac (Phil Nichol) slumps on the floor and hugs a binful of discarded booze while bawling down the phone to a rehab…

Phil Nichol: The Simple Hour

Dumbed down silliness peppered with droll quips

An hour in Nichol’s company seems to canter by in the wake of the comic’s own upbeat and vociferous performance. However, the material is constantly in danger of descending into vacuity, and although he peppers the silliness with droll quips, the…

Somewhere Beneath It All, A Small Fire Burns Still

Monologue that’s less than straightforward

'This is true.’ Comedian Phil Nichol implores you to believe in his story midway through this experimental monologue, seemingly trying to inject a moment of clarity into a deliberately fractured and confusing play from Royal Court young writer Dave…

Phil Nichol sketches out Welcome to Crazytown

Board Meeting: Phil Nichol

Drawing on the board, chatting, posing and having the photo taken takes Phil Nichol about three minutes. This comedic whirlwind is what whisked his reputation into the public eye, and this year the storm is again channelled into the unnerving world of…

Vive Le Cabaret gives nightly Vaudevillian glamour

Willkommen, bienvenue, and welcome to a new nightly cabaret show, hosted by Des O’Connor. But calm yourselves, game show fans, Mister Take Your Pick Des O’Connor is not coming to the Fringe. ‘No, it’s not the orange faced one of the telly,’ points out…

Phil Nichol gives us a warm welcome to Crazytown

Comic's 2010 Fringe show promises 'dark poetic theatrical jazz silliness'

What five words best describe your show this year? Dark poetic theatrical jazz silliness. Which comic should be more famous by the end of August? Carey Marx is consistently one of the most progressive-thinking, hardest-working and under-rated…

Edinburgh Comedy Award nominations

Who's up for the Fringe's top prize?

The name may be up for debate, but what isn't in doubt is the prestige of the Edinburgh Comedy Awards and the impact it can have on a comic's career. Known in its most memorable form as the Perrier Award from 1981 to 2005, followed by a brief stint…

Phil Nichol

Fringe favourite hits all the right notes

‘Tonight Matthew, I’m going to be Bobby Spade.’ Phil Nichol’s transformation into a white-suited lounge lizard with a sideline in psychopathy, is so complete that all that’s missing is the trademark Stars in Their Eyes dry-ice intro. Accompanied by jazz…

Gagarin Way

Comics successfully revive Fringe hit

At first glance, the decision to revive Gregory Burke’s heavy-hitting play about labour unrest and kidnapping might appear to be an act of folly on the part of the Comedians Theatre Company. Burke’s debut was first staged to great acclaim at the…

Five festival over-achievers

Robin Ince One can only assume that Robin Ince sits in a thick blue funk for that small portion of the day when he isn’t A) hosting a ‘lunchtime celebration of science and the wonderful’, B) being a ‘bleeding-heart liberal’ or C) opposing ‘the moral…

Man for all seasons - Phil Nichol at the Fringe

Mark Fisher finds Phil Nichol mining two rich seams of comedy at this year’s Fringe

One is a Restoration farce typically performed by seasoned rep actors on grand proscenium-arch stages. The other is a scabrous heist comedy in which a middle-management executive is kidnapped in a Fife factory.

Phil Nichol

When a comic stands before his crowd after yet another uninspired anecdote and asks: ‘Don’t you think that was hilarious? I thought that was hilarious,’ you can only conclude that he knows he is in big trouble. With Hiro Worship, last year’s inaugural…

Phil Nichol

We’ve all got our heroes, and perhaps they provide us with life models. Or perhaps not. Phil Nichol’s new show throws into question the nature of our obsession with celebrity, and other forms of worship we see in contemporary society.

Breaker Morant

Edinburgh Festival Fringe

After the success of Talk Radio, the Comedians Theatre Company returns to the Fringe with a hard-hitting courtroom drama. But as the Australian leads tell Steve Cramer, the play is not without its bawdy elements