Saturday 18th October 2014

Beehive Inn, Edinburgh

Last night saw the first occasion The Mumble had gone down to the regular weekend giggle-fest that is the Beehive Comedy Club. It lives in an upstairs room of the catacombesque Beehive Inn, on the Grassmarket, & offers the same line-up each Friday & Saturday nights, though differing, of course, week-by-week. The regular feature is the compere, the inimitable Rick Molland who commands & warms the room with an unpretentious confidence that really eases the audience into a mind ready to laugh. During his amiable sweep around the room checking out his punters, he asked me what i did & responded by saying I was reviewing him. This usually stalls a comedian, who swiftly move son & leaves me alone. Instead, Rick pounced like an irate, hungry tiger & showed me up a right treat from then on!

The Beehive Comedy Club is split into three acts, the first of which tonight was played out by a cuddly Glaswegian singer of very funny, quite deadpan & occasionally butt-squirming ballads called Harry Garrison. One of the songs was about unrequited love, & how he tied her to a bike under his stairs, while the best was a quality ditty called Evil badger. The heart of the evening was given to two up & coming comedians, who both had ten minutes to strut their stuff. First up was John Miller – a cross between Chris Evans & Penfold – who offered up some witty observations of a man climbing from the working classes into the middle… i.e. he now leaves a 20p piece in a public toilet basin if it falls in. Next up was the self-confessed ‘androgenous wind-chime,’ Robin Grainger, whose madcap manic mind is actually full of really funny anecdotes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_HM0eLy9IM

The headline act was the hurricane-style force of comic nature that is Jellybean Martinez. Camp, sweary, & funny as, he seemed to have observed every bit of chit-chat that had gone on through the night between Rick Molland & the audience, & wove it all together on the spot in a celebration of high-octane comedy. He was suddenly on first name terms with the cute hen party from Lancashire, & the middle-aged American couple in Edinburgh with their 20-year old daughter. He even chucked me a bag of jellybeans in order to get a good review – but he didnt need to do that, I was hooked from the first second & the sheer energy of the guy is a joy to behold. A great way to finish a great night & if all the Beehive nights are like this, the club should run & run.

The Stand Comedy Club

Edinburgh

Tuesday October 14th

Tony Law bounds onstage, brandishing a trumpet wildly, his thinning black leotard festooned with assorted tat. There’s no support act: he doesn’t need one, two thirds of the audience are avid fans, and the rest are swept along by his manic energy. Law carries himself like a merrily deranged tramp who’s mistaken the bottle-bank for a cocktail lounge, and you -the terrified stranger he’s trapped into conversation- for his bosom chum.  “It’s YOU!” Law cries delightedly at folk in the audience, remembering times they’ve shared “way back” getting high at the gates of Troy, or crusading about the Middle-Ages together. He ricochets between funny voices -which often argue between themselves- and fellates the microphone, making it honk like a fog-horn. We’re all laughing, but I’m not sure what at, really. “I don’t know why either,” shrugs Law, seconds later, as if in response. That gets a big laugh too.

            Maybe it’s the relief. He’s no “worthy” comic come to lecture us. Law does skits on those current affairs conversations where you realise you know nothing, nothing, and can only desperately agree, hoping no-one notices: “Ya ya me too” he booms like a caveman, one we would feel safe going for a pint with. Many jokes seem geared specifically towards exhausted young parents. An Octonauts reference goes down well, as does an attack on businessmen who get annoyed about young children on trains. Some bits seem more suited to the toddlers themselves, a bemused but willing audience member is pulled onstage to toss a beach ball to and fro with Tony, whose facial expressions throughout would delight any pre-verbal child, but fall a little flat for even some of the diehard fans. It goes on, and on. “It gets funny again after fifteen minutes,” Law assures us, but fortunately doesn’t attempt to prove it.

Pleasingly, Law isn’t wildly enthusiastic about his wildly enthusiastic fans, you can’t imagine him coaxing young sycophants into the toilets after the show with a bag of cocaine and the promise of reflected glory. He actually heckles an audience member for laughing excessively. She loves it, and loves him regardless, shouting “we still love you, Tone Zone” moments later when he inadvertently snags a rubber snake on the lighting rig.

             Because Tony Law is as likable as he is strange, no one minds when he chuckles to himself at aborted jokes, then doesn’t share them; or performs five minutes of his act to the back wall, leaving us nothing to stare at but his lycra-clad bottom; or does throwbacks to material from old shows. Everyone loves it. Everyone but Tone Zone. A lot of his act consists of apologising for the rest of it, he grimaces at his own jokes, breaks off for yogic breathing and makes repeated references to mental breakdown which -amid the laughs- illicit noises of genuine concern. Ultimately, looking for the method in the madness may just be another type of madness. If you like being bemused as much as amused, you’ll love your time in the Tone Zone, and the die-hard fans never want to leave it. Tony Law is a flawed, but thoroughly engaging dude. FOUR STARS

Reviewer : Katie Craig

The Caves, Edinburgh

What a show !    Very well written and executed…  Written and delivered with pace and good humour … A great piece of Comedy – Story Telling from very much an up-and-coming comedian..    A show that any audience could relate too..  Runaway laughs and thoughts of what”s coming next, the audience were engaged throughout the whole show… 

A man that had sinned and was happy to share it with us..  Exhilarating and funny, I left with a feel good factor about life…  a well deserved FOUR STARS

Reviewer : Spud

Assembly George Square (The Box)

21-24 August

£10-£11

22.00

Shirley & Shirley & sassy, sexy, young, scream-out load comedy duo from ‘sahf o’ the river,’ whose hour of hilarity is a white-knuckle ride of sketches, skits, impersonations & sheer silly fun. I mean, the taller Shirley was giving an ‘air’ blow-job while her dad was in the audience, which shows these girls have no fear when it comes to subject matters & daredevil delivery. Another example was when they impersonated two gay Italians, & got two butch lads from the audience to bob from a bucket of water – but not for apples, for sex toys!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8dCD1R5A-Vo%5D

As I was watching their show, I couldn’t help but think this was themost fun I’d had with any of the ‘comedy’ shows, a matter of saving the best til last, perhaps. At the show commenced, they asked the audience who had seen them before, & uprose a glorious roar of happiness. the rest – myself included – were virgins. Come the end, I overheard a coupel of guys go, “if they were on next year would you come back?” – “yeah definitely!” I have to say, I agree.

Reviewer – Damo Bullen

Gilded Balloon

20-25 August

15.00

£5

Back in 1966, Eric Clapton, Ginger Baker & Jack Bruce formed the iconic British rock band, Cream, a supergroup of musicians who had moved on from their former bands. In the same fashion, three of the our recent student comedy elite have convereged upon each other to deliver an impressive hour of quick-fire comedy sketches. Just as Ginger Baker drove the Cream sound on with his pounding drums, so has Minor Delay’s own red-haired genius, Harry Michell (Footlights President 2012), written & directed this set of short sketches which arrive in our comedy laps in a relentlessly funny fashion.

Michell uses the traditional punch-line with aplomb, & is well supported by Abi Tedder (Footlights President 2010) and Joe Barnes (Leeds Tealights President 2012). The three of them are each given a chair on the stage, flanked by the quite pretty Héloïse Werner (violin) & Amelia Drew (cello), who whip out a pieces of Werner’s own classically influcenced music inbetween the sketches. Although the show seems better placed for radio, watching the three comics strut their Thalian stuff is an intimately entertaining experience. FOUR STARS

Reviewer : Damo Bullen

The Caves

19-24 August

20.00

£6-£7

My take on Mark Simmons: A comedian that has the old school one liner joke show. The show opens with a bombardment off one liner jokes and a few facts of life, leaving the audience a bit bemused as to where this show will take them, Mark proceeds to get undressed. What next !! Adolf Hitler with a Badger as a moustache ? Who would have thought of it.. Mark Simmons did. As the show goes on, the one liners keep coming leaving you a bit exhausted, “not too many one liners please” I heard a member of the audience mumble.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_vJfcpgRUY

Mark held his ground well, especially when one member of the audience was texting, stretching and yawning and totally oblivious to Mark, whom was talking to him for 5 minutes ” one of the better laughs of the night” and by this time Mark was in his slippers and evening wear!! Was funny, well written but a bit long on the one liners. Would give an honest THREE STARS for a well thought-out show and would go see him next year with improvement on my mind…

Reviewer : Spud

Pleasance Courtyard

19-25 August

15.15

£8-£9

Catriona Knox is one sexy cookie, who grabs the audience by the balls & doesnt let go til all are abuzz to the comedy gold-dust she scatters about, what is definietly, her room. The show she has brought to Edinburgh this year allows her to unveil her wide range of voices, from the 1940’s English housewife, to a rabble-rousing American evangelist.

Throughout her show she used the same guy from the audience as her comedy stooge, who too had to take on different roles to complement Knox’s relentlessly amusing slices of the world. A real treat this one, & I feel that from now on no trip to the Fringe would be complete without checking out Knox. FOUR STARS.

Reviewer – Damo Bullen

Assembly Rooms – Ballroom – George Street

31^st July- 24^th August (not 11^th)

£16

20.55pm

We feel the electric buzz and excitement build as we walk into the grandeur of the Assembly Rooms Ballroom through an atmospheric colour spectrum of smoky haze spewing over the massive chandeliers. The expectation and anticipation is high and rising from the star of BBC1’s Live at the Apollo and Michael McIntyre’s Comedy Roadshow as the room packs out with enthusiastic Friday night excited bubbling tourists.

His enigmatic voice-over has the audience rolling with laughter before he even arrives on stage which instils a positive confidence as to what colourful treats lay ahead from this particular comedic cookie jar….And we are treated nonetheless to a bounty of comedy as this sexy, charismatic, fuckin mental psycho that he is, bounces on stage in an ‘extravaganza of awesomeness’ theatrically claiming his mum fucked Zeus.  Indeed, Sir, she may well have! His dry, skeptical humour is peppered with witty improvs keeping it feeling fresh and spontaneous throughout his one hour alternative show. His favoured topics for this evening cover drugs, age and parenthood as he showers us with his delightful observations in charming proportions. Bill Hicks meets Billy Connelly meets Spaghetti Western …on fireworks! Cracking comedy genius! FOUR STARS

Reviewer Teri Welsh