Comedy
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Colin Mars: A Life Full of Lemons
20 Aug 2012
Over-egged and unoriginal fare
Life may have given Mars his fair share of lemons, but instead of making lemonade, a yawnworthy theme he continually comes back to, he's squeezed the metaphorical citrus dry leaving nothing but a sour pulp. Nervous and sweaty, the three-strong audience…
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…
Sam Simmons - About the Weather
19 Aug 2012
Noisy ‘play’ fails to do Aussie comic justice
Imagine a shouty hybrid of the horror movie Videodrome and that creepy old record ‘Sparky’s Magic Piano’ and you have a fairly accurate idea of Sam Simmons’ play-within-a-Fringe-comedy, About the Weather. ‘It’s going to be weird for an hour,’ roars the…
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…
Sam Fletcher - Good on Paper
19 Aug 2012
Weird and wacky mix of magic and music
There has been a surge in self-deprecating geeky comics over the last few years, reflecting a kind of postmodern twist of fate. Being a nerd has become cool, and Sam Fletcher’s weird and wacky show – a mix of crude magic, flipchart proposals and ‘dad…
Chris Ramsey
19 Aug 2012
Warm tales from a hugely charismatic performer
Quite why Chris Ramsey is so surprised by his popularity, it’s hard to tell. A nominee of last year’s Edinburgh Comedy Award, he cannot believe his luck and claims to be having the time of his life. This concept of good fortune forms the basis of his…
Alexis Dubus: Cars & Girls
19 Aug 2012
Too much of a good thing
This exuberant English comedian is too clever for his own good. Alexis Dubus’ new show draws upon some seriously crazy travel adventures he’s undertaken, including a trip to – and at – the psychedelic Burning Man Festival in the American desert. What…
James Acaster
19 Aug 2012
Brings joy to surreal and eccentric comedy
A criticism levelled at James Acaster over the last couple of years is that his material has been somewhat puerile. He’s been tipped as a young comedian with real potential but still in need of much improvement, something far from the truth in this…
Going Green the Wong Way
17 Aug 2012
Joyous but ultimately pointless one-woman eco-show
Joyous but ultimately pointless one-woman eco-show Displaced San Franciscan Katrina Wong is a dedicated environmentalist: her school-age performance poetry about the rape of Mother Earth gave way to her first job canvassing for conservationist…
Man 1 Bank 0
17 Aug 2012
Patrick Combs takes on the money men
Half the challenge of putting on a great show at the Fringe is about finding a great story, and Patrick Combs certainly has that. Better still, it’s true. A young man, with a sea of credit card debt, deposits a $95,093.35 junk mail cheque into his local…
Hope Springs
15 Aug 2012
Sterling performances from Streep, Lee-Jones and Carrell in this funny tale of marriage therapy
Omit the Men In Black trilogy, and there aren’t many films that Tommy Lee Jones has been funny in. The stone-faced Texan looks as if he hasn’t laughed out loud since 1953, but that’s not to say he won’t tickle you in this gentle marital comedy from…
Cockneys Vs. Zombies
15 Aug 2012
Mixes zombie gore with sly humour but fails to engage
Films that boast tell-all titles – think Snakes on a Plane, Hot Tub Time Machine – usually struggle to overcome their look-at-me high-concept. Not that the concept behind Matthias Hoene’s genre-comedy could exactly be described as high. Pitching East…
David Whitney – Struggling to Evolve
15 Aug 2012
Ill-conceived, unhappy show featuring cheap gags and little intelligence
Blasting his way onto the expectant stage with a hefty set of bagpipes, you could probably cite this loud start as the highlight of Whitney’s set. The tired-looking comedian immediately conceded (unnecessarily) that the bagpipes were a gimmick – before…
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…
Fred MacAulay
15 Aug 2012
Persistently strong material and natural affability from Fringe institution
Now a firm Fringe institution, Fred MacAulay could coast by on easy charm alone. But that would never do, and even when he tackles well-trodden topics like air travel there's always the safe feeling that he'll have put in the graft for a proper big…
The Three Englishmen: Squares
15 Aug 2012
Gently amusing sketches could do with more pep to fulfil likeable lads' potential
The Three Englishmen – there’s four of them actually – aren’t blazing a new sketch comedy trail in in this show. But it’s a gently amusing hour with some stand out moments of hilarity, thanks primarily to their musical skills. The boys welcome us…
Bruce Hammers' Bananapocalypse
15 Aug 2012
Gloriously chaotic hour that tumbles through fictitious film legend's career
Relative newcomer Mat Ewins 'stars' as Bruce Hammers, 1980's film legend best known for his seminal work the 1982 film Bananapocalypse. That's about as much as you get that's sensical about this show, it's a gloriously chaotic hour that tumbles through…
Funk Rocket 5000
15 Aug 2012
Rachel Lancaster is brilliant in this off-kilter mental health comedy
The lights in the venue have blown – again – and the stage is cast in the sickly green glow of the emergency back-up. It couldn’t be better for this brilliantly bleak, bone-dry mental health comedy, which suggests the boundaries between patient and…
Unhappy Birthday
15 Aug 2012
Less a show than a mad Dadaist happening
‘It’s a party-slash-show-slash party!’ Such is Amy Lamé’s breathless refrain, which she repeats manically, with the excitement of an eight-year-old hopped up on Party Ring e-numbers. In fact, Unhappy Birthday is less a show than a mad Dadaist happening…
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…
I Am, I Am
15 Aug 2012
Highly entertaining slapstick minstrelry from promising troubadour comedy duo
For ones so young it's obscene how much confidence these duelling acoustic troubadours from Cambridge have. With their genre shifting ditties and punning rhymes I Am, I Am are most obviously comparable to The Flight of the Conchords but their very…
Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2012: Comedy highlights so far
14 Aug 2012
Dr Brown, Shit-Faced Shakespeare, Alfie Brown, Jim Jefferies and more
Dr Brown Mr Phil Burgers gets stuck into some quality hushed clowning work for his adult crowd with surprisingly tender results. See review at list.co.uk/festival. Underbelly, Cowgate, 0844 545 8252, until 26 Aug (not 20), 9.05pm, £10.50--£11.50…
