Steve Bennett is a well respected man about the comedy circuit, yes, but I am getting the feeling he is rapidly becoming the Arsene Wenger of comedy reviewing. On three occasions this Fringe I have been completely blown away by the youthful talent & bountiful originality of certain artists, whose shows’ names I shall leave out of this wee pontification. Five star shows the lot of them. Yet, a couple of days after my own visitations, Mr Bennett trundled in to see the same shows & is only giving them 3s. Is he observing the same shows that I am? Is he seeing the same hunger of performers in their prime, the same tenacity of talent, the same boundary-breaking of burgeoning genius? Clearly yes, for he does describe each show’s sheen accurately enough – but the substance & magic, definitely not.
Once is opinion, twice is taste, but thrice… that doesnae even make the Europa League. Perhaps it is time, like Mr Wenger, for Bennett to retire from front-line duties & leave the reviewing to a fresh generation. Throughout the 21st century comedy, like football, has evolved & it seems like Mr Bennett is stuck firmly in the stand-up of the past, when comedians of today are soaring on the winds of the future. Chortle is a great addition to the comedy world, & if Mr Bennett focuses his energies solely on the admin side, the site will be of further assistance to the Fringe & beyond for many years to come.
The Edinburgh Fringe Festival is home to thousands of no-holds-barred acts that consistently push the boundary of what we might consider to be performance. From musicals about Brexit to a flight crash simulator show there’s no end to the weird and wacky at this year’s Fringe. Then there’s Roman Fraden’s show ‘Roman Fraden: Back in the Closet’ which seems to redefine the whole genre of comedy: bizarre isn’t a strong enough word for this one-man show filled with drugs, figure skating, Nutella, Tonya Harding, sequins and penises.
Former figure skater Roman Harding has always been an overachiever, with a childhood filled with figure skating training, dieting and missing out on normal teenage life shaping the man we engage with in his one-hour show. His set is a mixture of stand-up comedy, figure skating re-enactment, songs on the piano, dancing to psychedelic music and a fully functioning phallic puppet. This variation takes some time to adjust to: but the way that Fraden throws himself into every personal anecdote just about saves the show’s jagged structure. This is perhaps where the show occasionally falls down: there’s no clear narrative voice or extended look into any area of Fraden’s life – the spontaneity of the piece is fun but also perhaps limiting. As a result we have a clear idea of who Fraden is now but not a strong idea of how he got there, meaning we enjoy a very entertaining hour of performance that does not necessarily offer much.
Having said this, it is undeniable that Fraden is a magnetic performer, delivering his set as if he were spontaneously talking to a group of friends: anything from stating that the English word ‘gay’ in Russia will merely order you more sauce to casually telling us that Tonia Harding taught him how to hotwire a car is done with casual humour and effortless delivery. This is the show’s greatest strength: it’s engaging and funny but earnest and at times moving, with the show ending on a positive note that leaves us as an audience feeling as if we’ve spent an hour amongst a group of friends. Jokes made at the audience’s expense are sharp and clever but never cruel – a difficult balance to strike that Fraden achieves effortlessly, using them to bring the audience together as we laugh at ourselves. Though disconnected, Fraden’s show is a madly fun and occasionally moving look into an unusual life delivered with warmth and humour.
The show began with an excitable character with an indeterminet Euro-sleaze accent welcoming us and directing us into the venue which was lit up with flashing coloured lights and loud disco music. He tried to get us up and dancing with him – I call it ‘vaughing not vouging’ he said – before demonstrating to us his beatboxing skills. He mixed himself live accompanying himself on a cod-German ditty about breasts. Just as I was getting used to – and warming to – this rather ridiculous fellow who was reminiscent of one of Sacher Baron Cohen’s wilder creations he disappeared before our eyes. It was a shocking moment which took me a few minutes to recover from. It turned out that this whole charade was the ‘real’ Charlie Partridge’s comment on the nature of artifice and the efforts we go to present a fraudulent more exciting, more charismatic version of ourselves.
What followed was a stand up routine based around the familiar tropes of crappy jobs and difficult relationships. We learned about Partridge’s work as a voice over artist, snack ambassador and bingo caller and his dissatisfactions with both his career and love life. Partridge presents himself as a self-depreciating melancholy fool forever chasing an unrequited love to ridiculous extremes. In other hands this could have made for tiresome company but there was a warmth and pathos to the material that made me connect with it despite the hipster jet-setting lifestyle it portrayed. In fact as he later commented he had lulled us into feeling pity for him despite his privileged position. Some of the points Partridge makes about self-delusion and denial were interesting but neither the self-analysis nor the comedy went quite far enough. Indeed in more adept comedic hands there would have been great mileage in a dissatisfying trip to a San Franciscan orgy but the laughs were thin on the ground. The situation wasn’t helped by a a mass walk out during this section by a school teacher and their class which only added to the bizarre nature of the enterprise.
More could have been made of Partridge’s box of musical tricks but this was only intermittently dropped in to the show at certain points. These demonstrations of his skills behind the mic creating gibberish songs of faux Asian trance or in one memorable skit the effects of a DMT trip were amusing and worth exploring more. Despite this though overall I was left rather bemused by the confessional nature of the material. The first part had rather thrown my ability to trust him and this in a sense never quite recovered. This of course wouldn’t have mattered if I was caught up in the laughter but although I found him an interesting and engaging performer I simply didn’t find it funny enough. I felt the act worked best when playing up the silliness. Partridge clearly has a gift for puns and wordplay which I felt he didn’t really utilise enough. More could have also been made of his skills as a musician/beatboxer too and by the end I was rather hoping for a return from the faux-German character and his silly songs. In his brash, larger than life way he felt more compelling than the sweetly deluded loser he portrayed in the main act. A strange slightly disjointed show; part confession, part song and dance routine and part character comedy it succeeded in not really satisfying any of those aspects whilst remaining an intriguing oddity all the same.
Sisters are doing it for themselves, or is it brothers transcending a range of limitations beyond their control? Mark and Christy are the co-founders of SISTERS: On Demand. Two young, bearded, cocky lads with confidence leaking out of them like an out-of-control toothpaste tube, gracefully glide onto the stage. From the very outset the laughs were rampant, drawn from the audience like a fish struggling for air, you’re hooked. Simply put, Sisters: On Demand is an app you can use to hire, these likely lads for functions which will guarantee more excitement than any Netflix film can offer.
Subject matter is important to any show and this one does in way disappoint. Grasping at life’s funny and difficult situations, we are catapulted from one sketch to another, ysing not much more than a white sheet, a baseball cap and a remote controller as props. I found myself being treated to some of the finest raw sketch acting on offer at this year’s Fringe. Diving deep into the sketches, we are made aware of how funny life can be; arguing parents using kids as ammunition, marriage proposals at an airport check in, sexual robots, a virtual reality Hitler game and not forgetting the local classic Sunshine on Leith, all of which add to this roller-coaster of a show.
A day without laughter is a day wasted, & the well conceived & professionally planned-out Sisters: On Demand is a barrel of laughs and a breath of fresh air. Mark and Christy have pulled together a delicious slice of sketch comedy – dark, bad, funny, direct, confusing, light-hearted, impressive and thought-provoking in the most questionable of ways – the laughter that rose riotously at the beginning remained with us all until the very end.
The Edinburgh fringe is phenomenal, just to see the craziness, of what all all these people are doing with their lives. It’s always so inspiring. It felt like running away to the circus for a week. Read the full interview
Experiencing Barry Ferns the comedian work a room reminds me of Peter Oundjian conducting a symphonic orchestra. There is control & there is beauty. As an artist, Barry is not rude, nor is he shocking us for laughs – he doesnae need to be confrontational – he’s just happy to share with us all the one truth he knows, & we soon come to know, he gets comedy & he’s shit-hot at it too. He is what I would call a multi-generationalist, sweeping grandly over his topics from the millennials’ take on things & events, to the age-group of his sadly deceased grandfather – a man who turns up in this year’s show, fondly enough, via voice-overs recorded a decade ago.
Barry takes us on a personal journey, from playing with his birth-name Barry, to his hilarious experiences as a comedian in Sweden, & so much, so much, more. But that leads us to the one flawback to his show – it feels too long. For Fringe audiences used to football-halves of comedy, Barry took us well beyond the sixtieth minute, drifting out of his well-sustained excellence & into feet-shuffling territory. At the start of ‘Barry Loves You’ it certainly felt as if I was watching a five-star show, & if Barry were to trim about fifteen minutes from his composition, then the malleable clay of his comedy will set into something we can define as a true objet d’art.
How is it possible that from such an unassuming, almost melancholic delivery, volcanoes of comedy burst from our psyches to join everyone else’s in the audience, like the tectonic creation of a new world. That world belongs to Will Mars, a dedicated comedian with a surreptitious story to tell. In fact it is very much the story of being a stand-up, warts ‘n’ all, & deglosses some of the glory we lesser mortals assume when staring at the life-size technicolour images of the pantheon which surround us in the Edinburgh streets. According to Will Mars – and I do believe him – comedians are mortals too, who can bleed, & can also feel…
I do not want to give away the plot of his show, because every nuance of his tale must be appreciated without forewarning to fully appreciate the telling. A lovely Northern lad, he didn’t even need a microphone as he waltzed thro’ his rites of passage; from the gallon-a-girl gigolo of his early twenties, to the late 30s ‘worst version’ of Mr Mars, where he’s refreshingly unafraid to admit men also possess the tick-tick-ticking biological clock. It is impossible not to feel some kind of empathy for Will Mars, & he makes you laugh as you do so. As a storyteller he is a joy to experience; like a quirky terrier yapping jokes at our feet, when every now & again he’d sink his teeth into our calves with a hefty bite.
Comedy is a strange beast. Or rather Comedians are strange beasts. Especially the nerdier varieties which make sure they obtained a degree in law, and have an innate love of computers and technology in general, just in case the dream of being a funny clown didnae pay off. Welcome to Yianni Agisllau and his most exotic of names. Yianni itself conjures images of beautiful melodies and Greek mythology – indeed our comedian possesses a face as handsome of that of a Greek God. Everything was going swimmingly until he opened his mouth. In an instant, I was transported back to Adelaide. Yep thats right Yianni is as Ozzy as they come. Not that this fact detracted from the performance. Indeed most of tonight’s audience were repeat offenders coming back to marvel at Yianni’s thought-proving show. Theatre 10 of the Dome was packed with people and it was as hot as a South Australian summer’s day. Just to make the Ozzies in the audience feel at home, he had an air conditioner on stage that made no difference at all.
Yianni has gone down a storm on the Australian Fringe Circuit, and with the strength of his performance, I can understand why. This guy works hard to keep his audience on the ball. His chosen subject matter, information technology, instantly creates a comedic tremor in one’s soul. His delivery was relentless, a comedian with a lot to say. I Human is an education into both IT history and the future of IT and its speed of evolution. Even the most celebrated of clowns would find it difficult to make this subject matter interesting and funny. Did I laugh? Well yes, it was a very entertaining hour and nerd comedy has found a new home in my heart.
Creating a thematic improv show is like cooking up a curry. It’s all about the ingredients. Each night throughout the Fringe, Yianni Agisilaou dons the head chef’s hat & attempts to cook up an hour of entertainment using the spices, meat & veg of three different comedians. Thus, the show will always vary in quality, & on the night I was there the sparks were not flying alas. Still, many in the largish audience for such a late slot were thoroughly enjoying themselves with pints in hands; most of whom – my wife & I were guessing – were players of the game ‘Cards Against Humanity.’
After the conventional improv games which gel our performance trio into a street- fighting unit, the show-shift arrives at bouncing off the politically incorrect, fill-in-the-blank statements found on the cards given to every member of the audience. Our three comedians relished such mischievous fodder & seemed to thoroughly enjoy the occasion. Comedians Against Humanity is good if you’re drunk & uneasily offended, or the aforementioned fan of the card game – both groups of whom in the audience were in stitches. For the rest of us, its a bit like Jack Fultons, a frozen food retailer from South Yorkshire, whose customers are all very much aware of the street proverb attached to that store – ‘pay your money & take your chances.’
David McIver is Daftness Incarnate is a more appropriate title for the laddie’s latest contribution to the Edinburgh Fringe. I reviewed him personally last year & I always like to see how comedians grow in 12 months, & I noticed marked improvement in David’s delivery – he’s a much slicker prospect in 2018 & is a cut above most free fringe shows.
McIver’s montage begins with him being beaten up with baguettes, & continues through a series of characters all loosely held together by a Decameronesque 18th birthday party. Each one is screamingly funny at times, & even when the jokes go off piste a bit, you still laugh anyway because Dave is just such a funny entertainer. This is the true secret of comedy & McIver has found the portal. Changing costumes before our eyes, we were presented with an Alan Partridge style ‘Supply Sergeant,’ a mid-life-crisis kinda, street-savvy ‘Cool Dad,’ & ‘Taz’, the Masculinity Guru.
There is nothing not to love about David McIver, & everything to praise. He is one of the rare comics in Edinburgh, actually, who I would say go & see again, when I believe you will end up laughing even harder. He’s a one-man comedy cult is our David & needs to be seen at least once every Fringe.
Picture this – you’re a parent out in Edinburgh with the kids for a few hours. You wanna catch a couple of shows that entertain both you & them – while seeing a bit of Edinburgh in between. Well, The Mumble has just found the perfect combo; Signor Baffo’s Restaurant at the Principal Hotel in the New Town at 11:00, followed by Fun Kids Radio’s Epic Roadshow Adventure at Bristo Square at 13.00. The beauty is, at the end of Signor Baffo’s show, everybody gets complimentary pancakes & drinks to fuel the wee hike across the Old Town to Bristo Square.
The shows themselves are full of energy, laughter & lots of audience participation. The technicolourful Signor Baffo is aimed at a slightly younger audience, who all sit cross-legged at the front, but everybody gets swept along by the sweet silliness of Signor Baffo’s attempt to become a proper cook in the absence of the boss, Signor Figaro. While the cat is away & all that. While watching, I recalled an ancient Tamil proverb which compares the sounds of giggling children to flutes, & listening to the symphonic laughter of the children became, for me, an integral part of the show. Dodgy puns & punchlines abound, but done so well its difficult for an adult not to laugh anyway, & the language-burgeoning kids are absolutely delighted with the gags, the action & the messy kitchen Baffo creates.
Pancakes @ The Principal
A wee wander across town later, on an increasingly damp Sunday, my family & I found ourselves at the grand old Medical College by Bristo Square for Fun Kids. Also in attendance was an American family who’d chosen the exact same passage as ourselves, & we happily shared thoughts on how excellent Signor Baffo had been, like a live version of Pixar’s Ratatouille. It was then time to enter the next show, a different affair in which the slightly older kids were led voluntarily onto the stage one by one – with a couple of parents as well – to aid our hosts’ mission. This was to save their radio show from the axe & involved a series of madcap games delivered with perfectly pitched ebullience by Bex Lindsay & Dan Simpson. The show is based on fact, actually, for Fun Kids is a real show on a real station, but given a twist for the stage. Cue the kids (& the parents) shouting out ‘BOTTOM’ at the tops of their voices, animal impersonations, dancing, karaoke, &, well, you get the picture – the variety rotates at breakneck speed.
I cannot recommend this wee sequence enough, both of which, in the scheme of things, are excellent 4 Star Shows & worth checking out in their own right. Perfectly timed & perfectly spaced for a full Edinburgh experience, Signor Baffo & Fun Kids are just what the doctor ordered for a family day out. By the time you take your leave of Fun Kids, clutching bags full of stuff handed out by Bex for later playtimes, its 14.30, with plenty of time left in the day to experience all the myriad other aspects of Edinburgh during the Fringe. Enjoy!!
Damo
The Principal Hotel Aug 14-19, 21-27 (11:00)
Underbelly, Bristo Square – The Dairy Room Aug 14-27 (13:15)
Steve Bennett is a well respected man about the comedy circuit, yes, but I am getting the feeling he is rapidly becoming the Arsene Wenger of comedy reviewing. On three occasions this Fringe I have been completely blown away by the youthful talent & bountiful originality of certain artists, whose shows’ names I shall leave out of this wee pontification. Five star shows the lot of them. Yet, a couple of days after my own visitations, Mr Bennett trundled in to see the same shows & is only giving them 3s. Is he observing the same shows that I am? Is he seeing the same hunger of performers in their prime, the same tenacity of talent, the same boundary-breaking of burgeoning genius? Clearly yes, for he does describe each show’s sheen accurately enough – but the substance & magic, definitely not.
Delivery: 
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Mumble Comedy 