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Comedy and Matt Boothman

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Celia Pacquola

Celia Pacquola

A buoyant performance, surprising and cathartic

(4 stars)10 Aug 2010

If performing stand-up is flirting with humiliation, Celia Pacquola takes humiliation home to meet her mum: having never learned the piano, she ends Flying Solos by attempting a virtuoso piece. She prefaces the attempt by effusively recounting previous…

Legend of the Card Ninja

Legend of the Card Ninja

Flinging playing cards like throwing stars

(4 stars)25 Aug 2010

Jav Jarquin flips the whole concept of the card trick on its head, flinging playing cards like throwing stars to knock over small objects or embed themselves in pieces of fruit. Not all the tricks work first time, but warmly self-deprecating stand-up…

Felicity Ward

Felicity Ward

Has to inflate embarrassing mishaps into excruciating humiliations

(3 stars)23 Aug 2010

Being less a ‘moron’ (her word) than a victim of circumstance, Felicity Ward has to inflate mere embarrassing mishaps into excruciating humiliations to get her desired reaction which, with some neat turns of phrase, she does. Aware that her brave but…

Josie Long

Josie Long

A joyous kickback against disillusionment

(4 stars)18 Aug 2010

Josie Long claims that losing weight has meant sacrificing her joie de vivre. It’s true that she gets more than usually angry, bitter and disillusioned in this, her first Edinburgh appearance in two years, but could a comedian bereft of joie de vivre…

His Eyes Were Like Oysters

His Eyes Were Like Oysters

Pop culture references, surreal concepts and non-sequiturs

(3 stars)18 Aug 2010

Imagine The Mighty Boosh without the mellowing constraints of consistent characterisation and mainstream success. Oyster Eyes’ sketches are a bewildering tissue of pop culture references, surreal concepts and non-sequiturs gummed together by dour…

2-Man No-Show

2-Man No-Show

Gurning in place of gags

(2 stars)16 Aug 2010

This Canadian duo will make you laugh, but not in a way you’ll thank them for. They sensibly wring dry the comedic potential of their distinguishing features (one’s Jewish, one has scoliosis) at the earliest opportunity, but too many of the subsequent…

Terry Alderton

Terry Alderton

There’s probably a joke here for all tastes

(4 stars)16 Aug 2010

Watching Alderton is like channel-flipping between several different acts and finding that, by a million-to-one fluke, the composite experience makes perfect sense. ‘You can’t please everybody all of the time,’ chides his Gollum-like alter ego; but with…

Jo Caulfield

Jo Caulfield

Trademark snarky wit

(3 stars)11 Aug 2010

Jo Caulfield wants everyone prepared for life’s realities, even if that means shattering a few illusions. Her husband’s been edged out of this routine by her friends (and strangers mistaken for friends), but her trademark snarky wit remains, finding…

Maff Brown

Maff Brown

You probably had to be there

(2 stars)11 Aug 2010

Some funny things have happened to Maff Brown. Funny, that is, in the way that you probably had to be there to appreciate fully; like his dad Lesal reacting to being widowed by moving to Korea and Skyping 23-year-old Ukrainian girls. Thinking his…

Beta Males’ Picnic

Beta Males’ Picnic

Preoccupation with death and sexual deviance

(3 stars)11 Aug 2010

The Picnic’s preoccupation with death and sexual deviance has finally reached a logical conclusion: the extinction of the human race. Their post-apocalyptic sketch bunker houses mutant abominations, infanticidal robots and (naturally) a sinister…

Babbling Comedy: The Perfordian Show

Babbling Comedy: The Perfordian Show

Slapstick, magic, juggling all lend to adequate family entertainment

(2 stars)9 Aug 2010

Once you’re over the sight of four grown men capering about dressed unconvincingly as babies, this is perfectly adequate family entertainment. A toybox of props provides pretexts for magic, juggling, balloon modelling and a healthy dollop of slapstick.

Paul Zenon - Lounge Wizard

Paul Zenon - Lounge Wizard

Old tricks with some new twists

(3 stars)8 Aug 2010

Paul Zenon was once a TV regular. Now he’s performing in a Chinese-themed nightclub basement on the Five Pound Fringe. His quips to that effect, while delivered with self-deprecation rather than bitterness, carry an uneasy ring of truth that echoes…

Tiffany Stevenson - Dictators

Tiffany Stevenson - Dictators

Top Trumps of despots

(3 stars)8 Aug 2010

A quick glance at the leaderboard Tiffany Stevenson uses to rank and display her top five dictators reveals all you need to know about this comic and her style. First, that she scores power-crazed and often genocidal individuals like they were Top…

Flesh and Blood and Fish and Fowl

Flesh and Blood and Fish and Fowl

Look busy, it’s the end of the world

(3 stars)6 Aug 2010

When the human race has all but died out, when the Earth has erased almost all evidence of our existence, the last redoubt of our once great civilisation will be … the back office of a microwave meal manufacturer. As a premise, it sounds half-baked…

Helen Arney delivers Songs of Modern Loving on the ukulele

Helen Arney delivers Songs of Modern Loving on the ukulele

Ukulele-wielding comic with one eye on the future

29 Jul 2010

When comic musician Helen Arney debuted at the 2009 Fringe with 81/2 Songs About Love (and other myths), she’d already named her 2010 follow-up. ‘Songs for Modern Loving sounds like a lot of things,’ she says. ‘A David Bowie song, a Jonathan Richman…

Max and Ivan

Max and Ivan

TV-influenced sketch show with a mission to entertain

28 Jul 2009

‘Last year we opened to no one in the audience,’ says Iván (Ih-vaan), the bearded half of comedy duo Max and Iván. But by the end of August their debut show, Max and Iván Exposed, was routinely selling out. That success was thanks in part to…

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