Reviews & features: Brian Donaldson
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Comedian Dies in the Middle of Joke
22 Aug 2012
Unusual Fringe play in which the comedian keeps on dying
It’s November 1983 and Britain is in turmoil. Ruled over by the Tories, the country is still reeling from participation in a war that no one can properly justify and the charts are full of bland drivel. Sound familiar? In a dingy London comedy club, the…
Gravity Boots
22 Aug 2012
Crashing down to earth with a massive bump
Making surreal humour work is probably the hardest trick to pull off in the comedy arena. Nail it and you will go a very long way; mess up and you just make a complete tit of yourself. Adelaide absurdists Gravity Boots do their best to be as weird as…
Horse & Louis - The Curse of ...
21 Aug 2012
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
21 Aug 2012
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
21 Aug 2012
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…
Tony Law
21 Aug 2012
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
21 Aug 2012
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…
Leads & Stern
21 Aug 2012
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…
Matthew Crosby
20 Aug 2012
Slightly stilted affair from an otherwise very funny man
Given the majesty of this year’s main Pappy’s show, we can surely forgive Matthew Crosby (the small, bespectacled, beardy one of the trio) if he’s not firing on the same number of cylinders that powered his 2011 solo debut. Even so, he is able to…
John Conway - The New Conway Dimension
20 Aug 2012
Small and daft is the order of the day in Conway's semi-anarchic routines
If you find yourself tiring of the slick, professional, often identikit comedians in town, you should cop a load of Australia’s John Conway. With laptop-wielding sidekick Michael Burke trying his utmost to keep proceedings reasonably on track, Conway…
Pappy's: Last Show Ever!
19 Aug 2012
An hour of undiluted joy
First rule of comedy reviewing: never sit in the front row with a big notepad on your knee, scribbling away without a care in the world. Sometimes it’s not easy to get a spot where you can remain in the shadows and utterly anonymous but in a venue as…
Sammy J & Randy - The Inheritance
19 Aug 2012
Triumph of style over substance
Yes, it’s funny that a purple puppet might swear and drink and smoke. And it’s probably amusing that he would hang out with a socially inadequate skinny nerd. But once you get used to those facts, and have nodded in admiration at the production values…
Taylor Glenn - Reverse Psycomedy
19 Aug 2012
Playing mind games with her crowd
There can’t be too many Fringe comedy shows (ie zero) that casually drop in phrases such as ‘cognitive behaviour’, ‘Gestalt theory’ or ‘psychodynamic therapy’. But then, not many Fringe comedians will have worked for eight years as a professional…
Gareth Morinan
19 Aug 2012
Slim pickings amid a frenzy of facts
Quite a busy boy is Gareth Morinan given that he has seven different shows at the Fringe including political debates, a bit of improv and spoken word events in which he speaks out about his opinions on David Cameron and Ricky Gervais (he’s not a fan of…
The Not Quite Quartet
19 Aug 2012
High fives and top tunes
If you have yet to make your way through The Wire or somehow haven’t yet seen Fight Club or The Sixth Sense or Citizen Kane, best take some earplugs with you to The Not Quite Quartet. ‘The Spoiler Song’ does exactly what it says in the title but it…
FNT Live presents … The Jingling Lane Family Singers
15 Aug 2012
Funny bits few and far between in ill-executed sketch comedy
At the start of this doomed sketch affair, there are more people on stage than in the crowd. Given that FNT Live features ten members, that’s not as cringeworthy as it might sound. The opening features an American family of fundamentalist Christian…
Tania Edwards - Killer Instinct
15 Aug 2012
Funny Women finalist in career regression
Straight off the bat, the eminently likeable Tania Edwards insists that this is going to be her year. It’s ‘break or breakdown’ time. Unfortunately, several things could be conspiring against her as she moves ahead with her grand plans (which may have…
Trevor Noah: The Racist
13 Aug 2012
Identity crisis makes for hilarious comedy
It takes a particular kind of individual to get up on stage and open their soul to a room of strangers in order to achieve ratification for their existence. Part of that drive might come from the oft-cited routes about having learned to use humour to…
Through the Looking Screen
13 Aug 2012
A black tale of loneliness and log-ins
The experience of turning The Office into an operatic extravaganza for Comic Relief in 2009 clearly gave Anne Chmelewsky a taste for the comedic possibilities of a musical form normally associated with grim tragedy. But the ‘high heels and high Cs…
Nish Kumar - Who Is Nish Kumar?
13 Aug 2012
An astute and positive debut from a comic with an infectious love of words
Nish Kumar has been kicking around the Fringe for a few years on various projects (most notably alongside Tom Neenan in Gentlemen of Leisure), but this superb hour marks an astute solo debut. Biding time before launching himself as an Edinburgh stand-up…
Casual Violence: A Kick in the Teeth
11 Aug 2012
Dark sketch material with an absurdist, surreal tone
It’s rare that a comedy show is very nearly spoiled by an audience member being too nice. But here, at every single moment of vague pathos, mild jeopardy and thwarted ambition, a very audible ‘aaaw’ erupted across the auditorium as though what we were…
Magnus Betnér Live
11 Aug 2012
One of Sweden's finest comic exports prefers to look on the bleak side of life
In one shaven-headed, tattooed man appears to be encapsulated the downbeat, morose nature of the Scandic peoples. Letting us know that everything he says on stage is absolutely true, who couldn’t feel worried about his suicidal thoughts? But it’s ok, he…
Kristine Levine: Fat Whore
11 Aug 2012
Tales of filth don’t quite transfer to stand-up
Kristine Levine has spoken previously of writing a book about her life and given the many tales she has at her disposal, it’s unlikely that writers block would be a problem. Whether she has chosen the correct route in stand-up to reveal the details of a…
Daniel Simonsen: Champions
11 Aug 2012
Warm comedic chat about dentistry and weather
He may claim to have learned English from Ali G, but Daniel Simonsen’s grasp on his new language and its comedic possibilities are solid. The young Norwegian kicks off this warm, serviceable show behind the curtain, building up a low-fi sense of…
Beard
11 Aug 2012
Promising debut from ‘young upstarts’ Rosa Robson and Matilda Wnek
Cambridge just keeps on churning the comedy talent out. Rosa Robson is a Pembroke Player (former participants include messrs Idle, Oddie and Cook) while Matilda Wnek is a Footlights ‘general member’. Together they are Beard, a fuzzy, comforting…
