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Matt Boothman

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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…

Stripped

Stripped

Insightful, not salacious

(4 stars)23 Aug 2010

Hannah Chalmers proves herself a versatile performer in this one-woman show, dropping comfortably into an array of archetypes: the naïve first time stripper, the lecherous club manager, the nervous, kind-hearted client. Chalmers seems to acknowledge…

Others

Others

Impressive piece of verbatim theatre exploring the modern media

(4 stars)19 Aug 2010

Jemma and Kylie, two thirds of the Paper Birds, perch in an armchair and speculate about Nazim, an Iranian woman Jemma’s been corresponding with by post. Maryam, the third Bird, plays Nazim, updating her performance to reflect her colleagues…

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…

Gutted. A Revenger’s Musical

Gutted. A Revenger’s Musical

Elaborate but strangely poorly thought-out revenge

(3 stars)15 Aug 2010

Orphaned Sorrow has finally married her parents’ murderer, step one in her elaborate but strangely poorly thought-out revenge. Early on her resolve fluctuates for the sake of making her redeemable, instead making her a ditherer: an even less sympathetic…

The Harbour

The Harbour

Folk tale’s inherent poignancy still manages to show through

(3 stars)14 Aug 2010

Peter, a fisherman, falls for a selkie (a seal-woman) he finds in his nets. Peter is at sea a lot, not to mention underdeveloped as a character, so the focus falls on the strained relationship between ‘Sally’ the selkie and Peter’s mother Betty. Sally…

Cirque de Legume

Cirque de Legume

They must be aiming to be ‘so bad it’s good’

(2 stars)14 Aug 2010

The most impressive feat achieved in this send-up of circus performance is training the audience, Pavlov-style, to applaud whenever the phrase ‘How ‘bout that?’ is uttered – whether it follows a ‘levitating’ radish or an onion ‘striptease’. The two…

Poignant

Poignant

Three Argentinean stories are narrated consecutively

(3 stars)14 Aug 2010

The effort that’s gone into creating this multimedia experience is phenomenal considering its brevity. Three Argentinean stories are narrated consecutively through our headphones as we move through the environments being described, watching the action…

Lorca is Dead

Lorca is Dead

A lament in the key of surrealism

(3 stars)13 Aug 2010

Belt Up’s eulogy for Federico Garcia Lorca is anything but a stately affair. So much happens, and continues happening, all at once, in such a short space of time, that it’s impossible to pay attention to it all, and frequently difficult to know what is…

Marek Kohn

Marek Kohn

Tackling climate change denial head-on

12 Aug 2010

Think of Marek Kohn as the mouthpiece of the moderates in the climate change conversation. His new book, Turned Out Nice: How the British Isles will Change as the World Heats Up, strips the sensationalism from the story and projects a thoroughly…

The Vanishing Horizon

The Vanishing Horizon

Idle Motion stick to their winning formula

(4 stars)11 Aug 2010

Did someone accuse Idle Motion of being one-hit wonders? Because as if in response to such an accusation, the company has recreated the success of its 2009 smash Borges and I with near-scientific precision. Recreated, that is, as opposed to…

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…

The Door

The Door

An unexpected outcome to an ultimately un-engaging play

(2 stars)11 Aug 2010

Two men argue in spiteful spirals about responsibility and religion as a door bangs offstage. Each has his own particular brand of self-righteous posturing; both are equally grating. The outcome of the debate is unexpected without being contrived, and…

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…

Julien Cottereau - Imagine-toi

Julien Cottereau - Imagine-toi

Former Cirque du Soleil performer conjures a spectacle from nothing

(4 stars)10 Aug 2010

The power of Julien Cottereau’s imagination knows no bounds. He has only to imagine a ball to make it as tangible for the audience as for himself. When he imagines an adorable suffering puppy, no one has the heart to put it out of its imaginary misery.

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…

Poland 3 Iran 2

Poland 3 Iran 2

Merhdad and Chris share the political football

(3 stars)9 Aug 2010

Iran’s narrow defeat at the hands of Poland in the 1978 World Cup serves more as punctuation than as the main text of this lecture-cum-barroom shaggy dog story. Lecture because its main visual element is a slideshow; barroom tale because it’s told in a…

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…

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