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Issue 584

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Shazia Mirza

(3 stars)23 Aug 2007

Most notorious for her line about the name on her pilot’s licence, Brummie comic Mirza here conjures up plenty more where that came from. The point she makes is as important as the quality of her material, lampooning the audience for choosing to see…

Jerry Sadowitz

(4 stars)23 Aug 2007

The Sadowitz invective seems ever more bilious each passing year. The victims of his ire in this show range from the English (‘feckless cunts’), Heather Mills (‘cripple’) and even Harry Potter (‘fictional cunt’). Outrageously offensive and with a…

Minor Spectacular

(4 stars)23 Aug 2007

Plested and Brown’s fifth Fringe show is a quaintly conceived offering about Terry, a Hotpoint washing machine repair man who risks life and limb in only half a van working in the not too distant future Watford by Sea. Ingenious scene changes…

Two Days in Paris

Two Days in Paris

23 Aug 2007

The lovely French actress Julie Delpy has the honour of closing this year’s EIFF with her second film as writer and director. This lighthearted culture clash comedy focuses on highly-strung photographer Marion (played by Delpy) and her American…

Dan Willis

(4 stars)23 Aug 2007

Very few things that are this good are offered for nothing. Willis turns a potentially difficult venue to his advantage, ad-libbing off his audience and displaying obvious ease behind the microphone as people from the pub downstairs wander in and out.

Four Wenches and a Free For All

(3 stars)23 Aug 2007

An entertaining hour is spent in the company of these talented actors. The laughs aren’t massive, with some jokes a little obvious, but the more creative ones include the ‘Vodafriend’ shop where you can exchange your old mate for a newer model with more…

Mantra

(3 stars)23 Aug 2007

Does everything happen for a reason or are some things just tragic, inexplicable accidents? This age-old conundrum is explored by Katy Wix in Mantra, which examines the long-term effects of one such tragic accident on her relationship, and almost drives…

As You Were

(3 stars)23 Aug 2007

Packing them in for their observational stand-up, tag-team Roger Hailes and Todd Womack and have caused quite a stir with a simple comedy club format, welcoming an alternative Fringe guest each night (on this occasion the sublimely smutty guitar duo…

Greg Fleet with Mick Moriarty

(3 stars)23 Aug 2007

Fleet has survived drug addiction and a guest part in Neighbours. Now, with the aid of a double bass and guitar-playing sidekick, he successfully battles tree frogs, a tiny but disproportionately vocal audience and being a punning private dick straight…

Howard Read

Howard Read

(2 stars)23 Aug 2007

Usually seen performing with his animated sidekick Little Howard, this year’s adult show has Read on his tod with a show that in theory is half-clean, half-dirty and you, the audience, decide which is funnier. The answer is that neither half lives up to…

Mark Dolan

(2 stars)23 Aug 2007

An irredeemably bland interactive format, in which the audience does most of the creative work, kiboshes the good offices of Dolan’s natural charm. Showgoers write their problems on paper and the comedian riffs weakly on them, but the fatal flaw is…

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…

Simon Amstell

(4 stars)23 Aug 2007

Amstell is a good date. He makes you feel clever with his philosophical musings, draws you in with candid tales of heartache and social ineptitude and proves that his pulling power is still mighty away from the telly with tightly written, machine-gun…

Tony Woods

(3 stars)23 Aug 2007

American Woods cultivates the awkward laugh. In fact, many of them are his own. Tapping the mic in a well-met gesture towards tough crowdism, he lazily relays his thoughts on adult themes of a predictably breasticular nature. Not shy of politics and…

Touch by Bill Dare

(3 stars)23 Aug 2007

Touch is a charmingly sweet play, though not sickeningly so. It’s about a meeting between two lonely souls in unusual circumstances. Their quirks and foibles somehow fit together in a case of opposites attract. The two characters, Emma (Lucinda…

Butch

(3 stars)23 Aug 2007

Skinny, effeminate Menno Kuijper has many things, including his wit, style and falsetto vocal cords, but what he really wants is to grow muscles and date army captain ‘Stud’, reasoning that: ‘if Harry Potter can do it, why can’t I?’ In a theatrical…

Neil Delamere

(3 stars)23 Aug 2007

Irish comedian Delamere treats the Fringe to a history lesson on the Vikings and although you’re in danger of learning something, you’ll be relieved to know that it’s mostly a ruse to shoehorn in the gags. All well-written and pleasingly delivered by…

Rich Hall

(3 stars)23 Aug 2007

It’s difficult even to imagine a Rich Hall performance being less than entertaining. His intelligent, grumpy, pragmatic worldview is broadcast by way of believable absurdities, anarchic situational vignettes and memorable wordplay. A pity he feels the…

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…

Heroes and Villains

(3 stars)23 Aug 2007

This two-hander by Matt Greene and Darren Richman features a pair of life’s losers not quite winning a huge fortune on the lottery and spending the next hour chatting about girls and their problems with some level of humour and verve. The piece thinks…

Janice Phayre

(3 stars)23 Aug 2007

With Occasional Showers is like a comedy hit and run: over before you know it has begun, it leaves you stunned by an onslaught of gags about relationships, sex and being an asshole. Its finale is so surreal and utterly surprising that not even the…

Pegabovine

(1 star)23 Aug 2007

This is a sketch show based around different generations of the same aristocratic family with a time-travelling coat thrown in for good measure. Whilst you can’t fault the foppish enthusiasm of its trio, you can fault just about everything else.

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…

John Hegley

(4 stars)23 Aug 2007

Taking turns to play stern, deadpan schoolmaster and playful kid, poet-comedian Hegley rhymes and sings his way through a beautifully quirky set. Deceptively innocent wordplay on the daft and surreal – zebras, his Folies Bergere dancer grandma and a…

Alyssa Kyria

23 Aug 2007

Kyria’s talents as a comic actor are evident in this patchy but entertaining character act. Compered by Ariadne the Greek socialite, the show also features an Australian New Age dimwit, a snooty tennis-playing nymphomaniac and plenty more grotesques.

246 articles.

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

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