The Gilded Balloon Study at the Pleasance Dome
13th-31st
14:45
£8-£9

****

From watching the grim realities of War and Angels, I found my self with 15 minutes before performances. To get to the Gilded Balloon press office and pick my tickets up for a cute and cuddly, Gay Comedian. It was as tight as  a gnat’s chiff,  but I made it just in time. As one can imagine my head was in a bit of a whirl, it was a hot and sticky afternoon. The humidity levels were high. Instantly the cool of the venue put me at ease. As Mr Hart congratulated me on my late arrival, the previous performance’s descriptions of Man’s inhumanity to Man soon cleared, welcoming myself and his intimate audience into his camp, funny world.

Slowly he began to tickle my funny bone, & a smile started breaking out across my face. My my, a celebrity comedian that was genuinely funny. Divine sometimes has a hard time with such folk because they take themselves far too seriously. But Joe Hart hit all the right notes and deep guttural laughs started erupting from my belly. The heaviness of the earlier play soon lightened as the healing nature of humor and laughter cleared the blues away. This was quite the tonic that the whole audience needed.

If you are looking for an antidote to the after-effects of harrowing fringe performances, then Joe Hart is your clown. This performer has a healing magik all of his own. Gifting us with an hour of pleasant, unoffensive comedy in the Pleasance. Unpretentious, warm and genuinely funny, Jo Hart a favorite of housewives nationwide, & on bringing his show into my heart this afternoon I left with a spring in my step. And the apple bit? Well one will have to buy a ticket to find out. You will nae be disappointed. FOUR STARS

****

Reviewer : Mark ‘Divine’ Calvert

Underbelly, Big Belly (Venue 61)

12-17, 19-30 August

£10-12 (conc £9-10)

****

*

A one man show written and performed by Ben Norris. Norris is a man who has grown up wondering about his stoic, enigmatic father. How did he become this way? Does he feel any emotions other than for his beloved football team? Why was his father so different to him? (“if I’m a pea in a pod with my mum, Dad and I are a pea and a microwave Chicken Balti”). Ben is an extrovert that can’t stop talking? Is he his dad’s antithesis? Norris narrates us through his life from childhood to adolescence. He undertakes a hitchhike to all of the places his father lives thinking that the act of being where his father had been might bring them closer together. There has been 3 moments in his life where he felt close to his father. These are emotively explained.

*

There’s clever use of video and photos from this journey interspersed with old family photos where charting Norris’ metaphorical journey from adolescence to manhood. Ben changes his outfits as the time passes to match those he wore on the actual journey. All this makes the monologue far more colourful and adds depth to the narrative.

*

*

He takes us right up to the point where his mother has left his father (“his indifference to this was unconditional”) and he has had to show love to a father so impotent in his ability to overtly show it. He has to teach his Dad how to hug! Eventually his father moves on…I’m not going to tell you the ending but do we all end up telling Dad jokes. Hitchhikers Guide to the Family is tender, endearing and an unexpected tipped-hat to the nature-nurture debate at this year’s Fringe. FOUR STARS

*

Reviewer David McCaramba

Assembly George Square Theatre – The Box

5^th – 31th August

7.20pm

£10- £11 (£9-£10)

*****

*

A glossed-up oven-baked porta cabin named The Box, pitched up outside the rather more ostentatious George Square Theatre, was the rather doleful home of tonight’s show. However we were welcomed in magnanimously by an enthusiastic steward who assured us of the Alice In Wonderland palace awaiting for us within. Once inside it was indeed an endearingly cosy space, with warm velvet curtains, keeping the temperature stifling, as we packed up and unpeeled beneath a great sound system and amongst an expectant air of excitement for the jam-packed, sold out show.

*

Armed with a massive smile and a Hawaiian shirt, Alfie Brown sprung onstage in a colourful tirade of offensive yet somehow endearing, energetic outrage to deliver his show using some splendid dramatic dialogue. Opening with fast-paced audience interaction, mixed up with some particular personal lamentations on bagpipes, poets and vegans, it quickly becomes apparent just how smart this impromptu act really is. Through a steady, effortless stream of quick fire jokes and dynamic improv, all varied, colourful and animated, he jumps with ease from contemporary liberal philosophers, Ebola news reports and his theory on the dark side of Thomas the Tank. Is licking a chicken quite as bad as snogging a baby? – Just don’t ask Morrissey.

*

*

It becomes apparent his real passion lies in politics, where the meatiest part of his show is packed with intelligent jokes and provocative observations, and the audience are keen to play along with a well-deserved standing ovation. By far the best act seen so far at the fringe this year, this guy is an exceptional talent and the future of British comedy. FIVE STARS

*****

Reviewer: Teri Welsh

Bobs Blundabus, Potterrow Underpass, Venue 212

Aug 11, 27-29

16:30

Pay-what -you-like 

****

This was definitely a fine afternoon to be in Bobs Blundabus.  As soon as I got up the stairs the upper deck sparkled as the sun shone in over the leafy underpass and ignited the colour of the painted glass in this recently converted double decker.  Local legend Cammy Sinclair was at the back of the bus which has been kitted out with rows of benches  that do a brilliant job of maximizing the space.  With about 15  adults and 4 children it is comfortable and cozy. He kicks this family show off with a song about a dog with its legs cut off, ‘This songs for the adults, you wont understand it,’ Cammy explains to a child in the front row and to be fair none of us do but that’s the point, there’s something VERY Ivor Cutler about it.    Behind the drum kit, up front, Cammy’s son Robin is in charge of the good majority of the show.  Cammy constantly looking to him for direction, its very sweet.  Not at all like some of the scenarios you expect when parents get their children involved with performance.  They are playing, I’ve no doubt the in the same way they do at home so its almost like an insight into their eccentric and fascinating relationship instead of a strictly choreographed  show.

Although the lads only 3  he belts out a mean bit of controlled drumming which he has obviously been learning at home and I must say I’m impressed.  Cammy has been in many bands as the drummer over the years so I’m not surprised when this is the instrument of choice for his son.  Oh, and he is really good at timing a honk from his red nose too.  I’m most impressed by the fact that the wee man sits their for the whole show and you know he wants to be there.  Theres loads of audience participation, kids songs made daft enough so that the parents don’t need to feel like its a week day in term time but enough like it to keep the kids engaged.  In another game an audience member is asked to participate as a victim while others pass round pre written heckcles.  It’s chaotic but always fun.  and culminates into some of the worst juggling I have ever seen!

*

This is a happy wee event in a great location,  Cammys surreal nonsesical humour is almost rationalised by his wee son and is well worth looking at.  FOUR STARS

*

Reviewer : Sarah Marshall

The Assembly Rooms

Aug 11-16, 18-30

22:30

*****

*****

In the middle of the multi-studded maelstrom of comedy that is the Edinburgh Fringe Festivals, last night I found two true gemstones. The first was the salubrious, clipboard-usher’d lushness of the Assembly Rooms, opening itself to the grubby masses far from the darkling broom-cupboards of many an August venue. The second was The Man, whose social commentary is nothing short of astounding, a genuinely brilliant survey of these our modern times which cuts through the modern brainwash like a surf-skimming jetboat.

*****

Beneath the chandeliers of the Assembly Rooms, The Man transports us neatly to Hyde Park’s Speaker’s Corner, which since 1866 has given every person capable of speaking a chance to freely air their views in public – & boy does The Man take advantage. Spoiler alerts are kicking in here, & I don’t want to give away any of the material, for the conglomerated effect of his attacks on the modern ‘Kardashian’ Age, where Britain’s Got Talent is won by dogs, is an amazing experience. Although some of his material is decidedly dodgy, a delicate mixture of offensive subjects that even the hardest heart will be pricked by at some point, The Man somehow gets away with it & proceeds through his ‘case against’ with the liberty that his station at Speaker’s Corner dictates. FIVE STARS

*****

Reviewer : Damo Bullen

Just the Tonic at The Community Project (Venue 27) ​
16:15
Aug 11-17, 19-30
Buy a ticket in advance to guarantee entry or Pay What You Want at the venue

****

*

As I circumvented the bee-busy hoards of festi-revelers scampering about the Cowgate, ‘There was no better way,’ I thought to myself, ‘to celebrate the diversity of the fringe than spend an hour with the perfect buffoonery of Louise Reay (pronounced Ray).’ Her offering at this year’s Fringe is an alternative take on the little-known fact that ninety-three percent of what makes us laugh is actually non-verbal. After spending said hour with Reay I have to agree… I swear down, the way she peppers her jestering physical theater with sly looks at the audience, the tiniest raise of an eyebrow set me off in fits of giggles.

Louise conducts ‘Its Only Words’ entirely in mandarin – well, perhaps it’s mandarin, but whatever language she is speaking, made up or no, here delightful chirupping patter accentuates her series of skitches (not quite skit, not quite sketch) with the most billowing beauty. Entering here stage with big 80’s hair an Arthur Daley jacket, Reay whisks us through her funky set-pieces with aplomb… experiencing the Peggy Mitchell- Frank & Pat Butcher love triangle from Eastenders in madcap Mandarin is, well, one of those moments.

In the tradition of the greatest clowns, she properly utilises props along the way, whose chief artefact was a white sheet which used with such diverse ways as turning her into an Opera singer & a chaste, immaculate-conception-seeking nun… before being ‘born’ out of her lady-garden with a great deal of extended hilarity, then swaddled up into a new-babe born. She is also an expert at audience interaction – five members of the audience joined her on stage throughout the show, none of whom looked awkwardly placed, so adept was Louise at making them – & us – feel comfortable.

I would love to go back in time to that drunken moment in a pub when she said, ‘do you know what – I’m gonna try & write a comedy show entirely in Mandarin,’ & do you know what, she’s bloody succeeded, n’all.! FOUR STARS

****

Reviewer : Damo Bullen