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Comedy, Reviews, Brian Donaldson

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Eagle Vs Shark

Eagle Vs Shark

(4 stars)17 Jan 2008

COMEDY (15) 84min (Optimum DVD rental/retail) With its sweet soul and crumbly heart, you’d think that Eagle vs Shark would only be fit for shooting out of the sky or being drowned at birth. But in the hands of writer/director Taika Waititi and…

What's Up, Tiger Lily?

(2 stars)4 Jan 2008

COMEDY (PG) 76min (Optimum retail) Despite insisting in the intro to his 1966 directorial debut (of sorts) that Gone With the Wind used the same strategy, this was the first film to remove the dialogue of one movie and dub a completely new stream of…

Bill Bailey

Bill Bailey

1 Nov 2007

STAND-UP SECC, Glasgow, Wed 7–Fri 9 Nov It seems clear that Bill Bailey has never minded looking somewhat foolish in the pursuit of his chosen career path. Back in the early days when he was a mere West Country boy trying to earn a modest showbusiness…

Brendon Burns

Brendon Burns

18 Oct 2007

STAND-UP Maggie May’s, Glasgow, Fri 19 Oct When Brendon Burns was nine years old, he decided that a career in stand-up comedy was the road he wanted to travel down. While in Texas with his family, he was snuck into a comedy club through its kitchen…

The History of the World Backwards

The History of the World Backwards

(2 stars)18 Oct 2007

COMEDY BBC4, Tue 30 Oct, 10pm Of all the survivors of The Mary Whitehouse Experience, Robert Newman has arguably been the one to escape with the largest amount of public goodwill behind him. Punt and Dennis have eased themselves into genteel…

Alex Horne

Alex Horne

(4 stars)23 Aug 2007

Alex Horne revels in trying to find comedy in the most unlikely of corners. It’s one thing to make fun out of ancient languages (the absurdities of Latin was the topic of his last full Fringe run) but he’s now moved on to the inherently unfunny pursuit…

Amsterdam Underground Comedy Collective

(2 stars)23 Aug 2007

If this is Dutch humour at its finest, I’m off to Germany for my laughs. The AUCC may have a cult following back home but there’s little reason to believe that their comedy travels at all well in this lame, tame hour. The supposed heavyweight talents of…

Andrew McClelland

(1 star)23 Aug 2007

In one of the hottest rooms on the Fringe, this madcap Australian sweats buckets trying to get laughs from his show which is about nothing more or less ambitious than his favourite songs. You’ll either adore his mugging immediately or sit open-mouthed…

Austin Low

(3 stars)23 Aug 2007

This jovial Aberdonian admits to gulping a couple of litres of fizzy pop every single day. Which perhaps explains his inability to stand still or focus on his material for any given amount of time. There’s a fine show in the caffeine-happy head of Mr…

Frank Skinner

Frank Skinner

(3 stars)23 Aug 2007

After a decade away from the stand-up circuit, you’d think that quite a fuss would have been made of Frank Skinner’s Edinburgh return, back in the exact same room where it all started for him with his Perrier-winning year of 1991. Yet when the lights go…

Gently Progressive Behemoth

Gently Progressive Behemoth

(4 stars)23 Aug 2007

While the sketch show may have fared rather poorly at this year’s Fringe, the oddball double act might well be having its salad days. Certainly, if the Gently Progressive Behemoth (in the shape of comically theatrical young Cambridge guns Nadia Kamil…

Hamell on Trial

(2 stars)23 Aug 2007

Can there be anything worse than someone banging on about how wild life was in the 60s/early 70s? Possibly not, and in The Terrorism of Everyday Life cult hero Hamell tortures the uninitiated with a string of shouty punkish anthems and marginally…

Harmon Leon

(1 star)23 Aug 2007

This dreadlocked American claims to be The Infiltrator but how he managed to work his way into the comedy section of the Fringe programme is his greatest hoax. He’s on stage for perhaps ten minutes as he plays some largely pointless footage of him…

Ivan Brackenbury

Ivan Brackenbury

(3 stars)23 Aug 2007

There’s something hauntingly familiar about Ivan Brackenbury. It could be the fact that this inappropriately jolly hospital radio DJ is so uncannily accurate a creation. Or it might just be that, with his headphones on, foot firmly lodged down the back…

Marc Maron

Marc Maron & Kirk Fox

(3 stars)23 Aug 2007

Edinburgh debuts from experienced comics should always be a dead cert surefire hit. But often those coming from other comedic backgrounds can be left floundering in front of a Fringe audience, unsure of their material and how to unfurl it before a new…

Murray Lachlan Young

Murray Lachlan Young

(4 stars)23 Aug 2007

When only one person in his audience (a polite reviewer) applauds a less than blazing entrance, Murray Lachlan Young positions himself somewhere between crestfallen and carefree. It’s a decade since he was propelled into mini-celebrity status for just…

Phil Nichol

Phil Nichol

(1 star)23 Aug 2007

When a comic stands before his crowd after yet another uninspired anecdote and asks: ‘Don’t you think that was hilarious? I thought that was hilarious,’ you can only conclude that he knows he is in big trouble. With Hiro Worship, last year’s inaugural…

Runaway Lovers

(2 stars)23 Aug 2007

The sketch show has really struggled this Fringe and this supposedly upcoming troupe do nothing to elevate the form. There’s a recurring gag about an arts interview show with people you’d imagine to be well-spoken but aren’t (Ridley Scott: he’s a…

Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre

(2 stars)23 Aug 2007

There’s absolutely no doubting the effort put in here with this one-man sock puppet show, but there seems to have been more time spent on perfecting the timing between the two characters and less on any kind of script. Being billed as ‘worthy of Abbott…

Sean Hughes

Sean Hughes

(3 stars)23 Aug 2007

On the face of it, the stage Sean Hughes of 2007 doesn’t seem a whole lot different from the one who nabbed his first bit of fame back in 1990 as the youngest winner of the Perrier. With that boyish gaunt look still intact, he certainly doesn’t look any…

Stephen Grant

Stephen Grant

(4 stars)23 Aug 2007

Stephen Grant is a comic whose toil cannot be over-stated. The evidence is there on the back of his shirt which, over the course of an hour, becomes entirely drenched in sweat. Not that he’s a particularly physical comedian, but in the confines of a…

Steve Williams

(3 stars)23 Aug 2007

There’s something quaintly old-fashioned about the Steve Williams shtick and his Binge Thinking is all the better for it. An array of well-worn targets (the British and their attitude to queues), are given fresh hurricanes of life with his amiable and…

The Bratchpiece Family

(1 star)23 Aug 2007

It’s never a good sign when the compere insists that a comedy show is a ‘two-way thing’ and if we can show the acts some love then they will make us laugh. I’d always thought the latter came before the former, but neither is in much evidence as…

Deborah Frances-White

(2 stars)16 Aug 2007

The bowler-hatted one is back with an advice shop for men and women on seduction techniques. You know a show is struggling when the comic takes a seat in the front row to let her audience play out the scenarios she’s dreamed up, leaving a series of…

Field Study

(2 stars)16 Aug 2007

A virtually laugh-free show about three scientists analysing the mechanics of comedy is an irony lost on no one. The young trio try their damndest but there simply is no material here worthy of the name as they mug their way through an hour’s tortured…

Found 47 articles.

Sorted by date / most viewed. Showing 10, 25, 50, 100 per page.