Edinburgh Fringe 2024 reviews: Eric Rushton / Mark Thomas

Eric Rushton, Monkey Barrel @ The Hive ★★★★

Eric Rushton tells us he has enough cash on him to return the price of one person’s ticket if they don’t like what’s about to follow. No one takes up the offer, although I suspect a few in the audience may have taken a few minutes to tune into his individual style of comedy.

Essentially Real One is a shaggy dog story that uses a surreal hook – a vivid dream the comic had about the actress Margot Robbie – to examine regrets, embarrassment and a life that’s yet to take off.

Rushton intersperses his account of that dream – in which he managed to seduce Robbie while wearing SpongeBob SquarePants pyjamas – with stories from his real life, or at least a version of it, all delivered deadpan.

As detail upon detail is added, we hear about Rushton’s childhood and his early entrepreneurial instincts when he sold confectionery in the playground, that he’s a fan of AI, his addiction to coffee, and how he ended up back at his old school as a maths tutor, a role from which he was sacked.

There are some nicely crafted lines. Describing the sports jacket he’s wearing, a purchase from a charity shop that he imagines was gifted after the previous owner died, Rushton says he probably has “a gap-year kayaking accident to thank for it”.

There are audacious flights of fancy here but Rushton knows how to construct a surreal story with enough internal logic to carry it through. I suspect the money-back offer won’t be needed.

• Until 25 August

Mark Thomas, The Stand ★★★★

Mark Thomas has been waiting 14 years to say: “That Labour government – what a bunch of wankers.” As opening salvos go, it’s worth an award in its own right, but the left-wing comic has more – much more – to say on the government that has just left Downing Street.

Maybe you have to have an equally visceral dislike for Tories to fully enjoy Thomas’s comedy, but the man in full, passionate flow is something to behold. And whatever your politics, his commitment to the material in writing and presentation must be admired.

After stating his opening position, Thomas then throws it forward, suggesting how Sinn Fein might cosy up to new MP Nigel Farage (pronounced Farridge by the south London stand-up), how Chancellor Rachel Reeves might make up the £20 billion black hole left by the Tories, and a novel application of assisted dying.

He talks about his sweary and violent father who, conversely, was a Wesleyan preacher – and there is something of the preacher about Thomas. He even uses the Bible – or one tiny part of it – to suggest that God is pro-choice. As any fule kno, the Bible can be used to support pretty much any argument, but it’s an entertaining take nonetheless.

Once he has vented his anger at Tories, though, Gaffa Tapes loses some momentum, as Thomas addresses racism, supporting a rubbish football team, the situation in Gaza and even the state of his post-divorce love life with less aplomb. This isn't vintage Mark Thomas but the Tory-bashing produces some big laughs.

• Until 26 August
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