comedy reviews
Veronica Lee
Celia Pacquola: she has that most Australian of virtues, acute self-awareness of bullshit
Celia Pacquola made her Fringe debut last year after storming various comedy festivals in her native Australia with a show about her boyfriend’s infidelity and, while it was entertaining enough, it lacked a bit of oomph. But her new show packs a real emotional and comedic punch and displays a noticeable development of her writing and performing talents.
theartsdesk

Daniel Kitson only occasionally performs at comedy venues at the Fringe these days - perhaps a late-night spot here and there, though not a full set - but it has become almost a tradition that he writes a new piece for the Traverse each year. On the cusp of comedy and theatre is, surely, storytelling and Kitson, winner of the Perrier comedy award 2002, has become a storyteller of excellence.

Veronica Lee

Doc Brown comes on stage in the hip-hop uniform of all-black clothing, lots of bling and black-out shades, and starts rapping “It’s all about me” in suitably bombastic tones. But Brown isn’t all he seems, as the rap peters out, the gear comes off and he is no longer a rapper, but a stand-up making his debut at this year’s Fringe. It's a terrific and captivating opening to an hour that speeds by.

theartsdesk
Tiffany Stevenson: her new show is about mums, celebs and bastards - what a combo
After making her Edinburgh debut last year, Tiffany Stevenson returns with another cracking show, Dictators. Ostensibly it’s about Mao, Hitler, Pol Pot, et al, but in reality she cleverly  manages to do a show about the mother-daughter relationship and our obsession with celebrity in the guise of a political theme. Mums, celebs and bastards on the same bill - it's a stroke of genius.
Veronica Lee
'Late Night Gimp Fight!': fast-paced sketches on the sexually deviant side
Going to a late-night comedy show at the Fringe is always taking a risk, not least because every drunken fool in the place, with their oh-so-funny heckles, thinks they’re funnier than the performers. And so it proved at the performance I saw of this deliriously funny sketch comedy, performed by five fit young chaps, in which the payoff to one skit involves one of them going buck naked.
Veronica Lee
Jason Cook: The Geordie comic's show is about his suspected heart attack last year

He may describe himself as “a Geordie chancer”, but in reality Jason Cook is a warm comic whose material is utterly devoid of cynicism. Yet he’s far from being pious - he spices up his act with caustic barbs for deserving targets (quite often himself) and has a raft of sharp putdowns for hecklers who think they’re wittier than he is.

Adam Sweeting
Bob Monkhouse: 'What's the difference between roast beef and pea soup? Anyone can roast beef...'

He wasn't a jack of all trades, said his friend June Whitfield, "he was a master of all trades". The charge of "smarminess" dogged Bob Monkhouse throughout his career, but as this quietly penetrating documentary made clear, he was highly intelligent, multi-talented and had a lot of layers he kept to himself. Actor, scriptwriter, singer, novelist (though they didn't really mention that part), stand-up comic, cartoonist, radio star, gameshow host and posthumous campaigner against the prostate cancer that killed him - the only thing Monkhouse couldn't manage too successfully was his work-life balance.

Adam Sweeting
Ted (Jay Harrington) and Veronica (Portia De Rossi) locked in a power-meeting at Veridian Dynamics

And first the bad news. The ABC network in the States has already declared Better Off Ted dead, after a paltry two seasons. Which is a pity, since acerbic, mildly surreal satires about the workings of corporate America don’t come along very often.

howard.male
The crew of the Starship Deception about to lie as no one has lied before

The fact that we humans are, technically speaking, bad liars proves that we are instinctively moral creatures (rather than getting our morals from our god or our parents) and that lying is therefore, evolutionarily speaking, probably a bad idea. You can get away with saying you were caught in traffic, rather than admitting you were in the pub, but a polygraph will pick up on changes in blood pressure, pulse and respiration - those indicators of anxiety you’d rather not be feeling - and your goose will be cooked. But imagine how much more difficult it would be if the lie you were telling had just been given to you on a card, and you had to elaborate on it, on the spot, in response to quick-fire questioning.

david.cheal
Latitude: Blue skies and a cornucopia of culture

So little time, so much stuff to see: that, in essence, is the story of Latitude. Now in its fifth year, this Suffolk festival offers a bewildering cultural cornucopia: music, theatre, dance, cabaret, comedy, circus, literature, poetry, as well as unexpected oddities such as performers dressed as unicorns wandering the woods at night and teams of ghoulish “medics” defibrillating random victims (I was one of them) during theatre group Duckie’s Saturday night masked ball. It’s a blast (albeit one that is almost entirely white and middle class - a state of affairs that has led to it being dubbed “Lattetude”). And it was made especially lovely this year by the weather gods, who delivered a couple of brief bursts of rain but otherwise blessed the event with clear warm dry days.