Edinburgh Fringe
Veronica Lee
Bridget Christie, The Stand ★★★★Bridget Christie, the comic credited with bringing feminism to the fore with her 2013 Edinburgh Comedy Awards-winning show, broadens her target for withering political analysis and to great effect.In A Book For Her (also the title of her recently published book) Christie guys herself in her opening line, telling us that 11am is the perfect time for comedy about gender-based violence - "or at misogynists' funerals, widows love it" - and that she's not really a feminist, as that was done for marketing purposes to sell the book.There's a masterful take-down of Read more ...
Veronica Lee
There are many forms of comedy – stand-up, sketch and improv among them – and now Alex Horne has introduced a new genre as he constructs his set during the hour he spends on stage. It's a kind of Heath Robinson or Rube Goldberg device (that is, a machine that performs a simple task in an unnecessarily complicated way), and the anticipation builds as we see it coming together, and finally learn its purpose.This show was a huge critical and audience hit at last year's Edinburgh Fringe, and the audience are Horne's willing helpers by peeling potatoes, helping him display his archery skills, Read more ...
Veronica Lee
The audience for this show could probably be divided into to two camps: those who fondly remember watching Morecambe & Wise on ITV or the BBC, and those who weren't even born when Eric Morecambe died in 1984. The latter group may know the double act from repeats, of course (which remind us of how great they were and how many of their successors pale by comparison), but if they are new to Eric Morecambe and Ernie Wise, then Jonty Stephens and Ian Ashpitel's show is a good entry point. It helps to explain why in their heyday M&W were the most successful pairing in comedy, why stars Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Awards are strange things; they can recognise real achievement while at the same time overlook the really talented. Annoyingly, Luisa Omielan fell into the second category with her first two full shows - What Would Beyoncé Do? and its equally joyous follow-up, Am I Right Ladies?! - both of which should have been recognised in the Edinburgh Comedy Awards (in 2012 and this year respectively) but weren't.Am I Right Ladies?! is a sort of companion piece to WWBD? but you don't have to have seen Omielan's debut show in order to enjoy or understand what's going on here. It follows in the same vein Read more ...
Hanna Weibye
Once, the Edinburgh Festival Fringe was all about penniless students presenting avant-garde plays to audiences of three in church halls. These people still come, but now they compete for attention with professional production companies who, it’s to be supposed, make a decent whack of money from their three weeks in Scotland’s tourist-jammed capital.Australian contemporary circus outfit Circa are in the latter camp, spending this year’s Fringe with a prime 7pm spot in the McEwan Hall, the largest venue used by successful Fringe promoters Underbelly. At £16.50 for an hour-long performance, Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Steen Raskopoulos has hit the ground running with his debut show; it was nominated for a Foster's Edinburgh Comedy Award (best newcomer) at the Fringe earlier this month, after he won Sydney Comedy Festival 2013 and Melbourne International Comedy Festival 2014’s best newcomer gongs.I’m Wearing Two Suits Because I Mean Business is a very fine hour of sketch and character comedy. Steen ("short for Steeeeeeeeen") Raskopoulos does indeed come on stage wearing two jackets and then strips off from the waist up. He persuades members of the audience to slather him in sunscreen lotion – which they do Read more ...
Hanna Weibye
MurleyDance is something of an oddity in the world of small independent dance companies, in that it proudly wears pointe shoes. Yes, this is – according to its own publicity - the only professional classical ballet company attending the Fringe, and Artistic Director David Murley is playing that uniqueness for all he’s worth, issuing a press release calling for more ballet companies to attend Edinburgh’s annual arts circus.Now, I like ballet. I more than like it. I watch videos of the Rose Adagio the way some people listen to Eye of the Tiger. But it’s got to be the right art form for the job Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Andrew Maxwell (****) tells the Scots in the audience that he’s going to “rip the shit out of everything they hold dear” in Hubble Bubble, his take on the independence referendum. He doesn’t quite do that but it’s a witty and thoughtful take on the issues surrounding the vote.Maxwell points out that the people of the British Islands are about 90 per cent genetically the same – “the rest is just flavourings” – and the show’s title suggests the Irishman finds nationalism a heady, dangerous brew. He says that Northern Ireland may be less than happy to wake up on 19 September to find Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Comics rarely start a show by referencing the ending of a previous one, but Sarah Kendall has first to do a bit of housekeeping to explain the genesis of Touchdown. The payoff for her last show was her dropping the c-bomb on her high-school gym teacher, Coach Harris, but when her mother attended a gig she said to her daughter: “It didn’t quite happen like that, though, did it?”Indeed it didn’t; the punchline was a fabrication for the sake of a good gag, and here Kendall, a London-based Australian, gives the back story in an intricately woven tale about her teenage years. She was a gawky, Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Young Irish actress and comic Aisling Bea made a tremendous debut with C'est la Bea at last year's Edinburgh Fringe, where she was deservedly nominated for best newcomer in the Foster's Edinburgh Comedy Awards. Now she is performing a short run at the Soho Theatre and, on second view, it's still a joyously funny show.You may know Bea from various acting roles (The Town, Dead Boss) but you will surely be seeing her on your screens a lot more from now on, as she's an accomplished actress (a Rada graduate), here using a range of accents and even throwing in an impersonation of Sir David Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Massachusetts-born Bo Burnham first performed in the UK at the 2010 Edinburgh Fringe. The then teenage prodigy, who had come to fame as a YouTube sensation, took the festival by storm and was given the Edinburgh Comedy Awards' panel prize. He hasn't performed here again until this year's Fringe, when his second stage show, What, sold out in a matter of minutes and was again garlanded with rave reviews.He's now doing a short tour of What, and it starts with one of the most astonishingly accomplished opening segments I have ever seen, a combination of rap, dance, magic and physical comedy Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Tig Notaro, Gilded Balloon ****“I've been busy. I've been growing my hair out.” Not the the most animated start to an hour of comedy, but that's how American Tig Notaro begins Boyish-Girl Interrupted, one of the most original 60 minutes I've seen at the Fringe, and certainly the most laidback.Those who are familiar with her personal story – she underwent a double mastectomy last year, spoke about it at the Largo comedy club in Los Angeles and it went viral after Louis C.K. tweeted about it – might have expected the growing-her-hair-out thing to be chemotherapy-related. But no, she's just Read more ...