Pleasance Dome – AceDome
August 15-27 (23:00)

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.’

Damo

Opium
Aug 15-25 (14.30)

Material: Delivery:  Laughs:

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.

Damo

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.

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)

Pleasance Courtyard – Pleasance Beyond
August 1st– 27th (17.00)

As we are told at the beginning by the narrator/detective everything we are about to witness is entirely improvised. I wondered how this was possible in the context of a play being – outside of ‘Whose line is it anyway’ – something of an improv virgin but soon I found out the ingenuity of the enterprise. Basically we were dealing with a real life Cluedo in which the stock characters found themselves involved in a murderous situation and we have to guess which one of them has committed the crime. The scene of the crime and vital object are decided by the audience by shouting out suggestions whilst a single audience member chose the victim and murderer by picking cards ( unknown to anyone except himself and the actors). In this rather inventive way the audience helps to create the show – and a unique show every time.

The show has grown, and we feel it’s a real challenge to keep it within the sixty minutes after performing it as a two-act interval show.
Read the full interview

This was how we ended up placing the characters in the setting of a Penguin festival, our mysterious object being some chocolate in the shape of a kilt. From this bizarre starting point one had to wonder how the actors would manage to create something that worked and allowed us to suspend our disbelief enough to enter into the fun. My misgivings were swept away initially by the sheer gusto with which the performers threw themselves into it. They came up with some truly inspired skits about penguin training and the cloak and dagger world of the international chocolate trade. There were some marvellously silly scenes such as sensitive penguin trainer Miss Gold giving her ailing penguin Tony mouth to beak resuscitation or a heated argument about chocolate piracy in a crows nest. I found myself entering into the surreal vision they were creating, made that much more enjoyable because I felt that we the audience had helped in some small way to create it.

The live piano accompaniment and the painted drawing room set were both reminiscent of the kind of church hall am-dram productions that the play was also in its own subtle way spoofing. They added to the atmosphere and charm of the show. For the first part of the show it was impressive how the flights of fancy seemed to flow and the jokes seemed to come easily to the cast. They seemed to be having fun trying to outdo each other with the quality of their silly chocolate related puns. The characterisations were bold and colourful and the costumes helped to create a strong cartoonish identity to each one reminiscent of the characters in the original game of Cludeo ( we even had a Miss Scarlet). I found it enjoyable seeing how the performers found ways to draw the characters together and create intrigue between them which gave the latter half of the play a real sense of unpredictability in terms of the ultimate outcome.

However as I’m given to understand is sometimes a problem with improvised theatre about two thirds of the way through, a little after the murder itself it all rather started to run out of steam. There was some noticeable stalling from the cast at times, things didn’t flow quite as effortlessly and the jokes either took the form of increasingly laboured puns or tumbled over their own ridiculousness into implausibility. I ceased to believe in their silly world and the spell was rather broken. Overall though there was enough laughter and good natured fun to forgive the slightly fumbled ending and I was certainly impressed with the quick fire skills of all concerned and the imagination and talent such an enterprise clearly takes.

Ian Pepper

Underbelly Cowgate

Aug 14-26 (21.20)

Welcome to the collaboration of the year. Welcome to the stunning fusion of youth & chemistry that is award-winning Zach Zucker & Viggo Venn; teaming up with LA-based, intergalactic dance force, Sun-Ra-inspired, Thumpasaurus. There is a story; set in a world taken over by Amazon’s Jeff Bezos. A Frankenstinian doctor has created an anonymous worker for the company, played by Zach Zucker as the Pinnochio hero of the show. There is music; Thumpasaurus are just, like, ridiculously good. They look like a bunch of D&D kids, whose foot-stomping free-form jazz accompanies the action & whose bass player must have been born with a full size one in his hands, under some pool table in Santa Fe. There is dancing; of the Torrance Community Dance Group sort. There is clownerie, like Gaulier on ketamine, & above all there is laughter, lots of it. ‘That was like the Saturday Night Live sketches, but better,’ said my American wife, who should know.

Last year we met this amazing funk band in LA called Thumpasaurus and convinced them to come out to Edinburgh. They had a killer run and afterwards their singer Lucas wrote a 20 minute opera called Where Does The Love Go. We decided to team up and built it out to an hour-long collaborative show that is going to be very serious and artistic. Zach & Viggo

Where Does The Love Go? is an infinitely memorable show, very much of its time, an early record of humanity losing its soul to convenience. The stage on which it is set is simply ensembling with talent; Zach & Viggo are superbly accomplished performers while the band were, as I’ve said, exceptional. But there is more, for into the mix came the supercilious, carnival-barking character of Jeff Bezos, played by an actor I didn’t quite catch the name of, but actually outshone everyone else. Lets just call him Mr X for now, & I feel the show should be renamed Mr X, Zach & Viggo & Thumpasaurus! By the way, I am still singing the operatic theme tune as I write this, such an ear worm it is! A truly remarkable hour!

Damo

Special Comedy Update

The Mumble have recently been informed from a very reliable source that Mr X has a name – Jonny Woolley. Apparently he directs all the Zach and Viggo shows but ended up acting in this one with a larger part than they originally planned! 

52 Canoes, Grassmarket
August 4-19 (20.15)

Material: Delivery:    Laughs:

Every year the Fringe flood which saturates Edinburgh with performance spaces penetrates newer & newer spaces. That’s what certainly comes to mind when sat in the basement of 52 Canoes, by the Grassmarket. But its actually an indelibly charming wee space, which was at capacity for the double-dose of stand-up that is Sikisa “Twix” Barnes and Adrian Tauss. These two comedians from that London bring a cracking show where their personal vulnerabilities in love, dignity & vocation are exploited with much amiability for our entertainment.

I love being able to interact with audience members and seeing their reactions to my jokes. No audience is ever the same
Read the full interview

‘Kisa’ came on first, combining the cheekiness of a Cockney wide boy & the attitude of a Streatham rude girl into a snappy set. There is a rawness to her soul-searching, but an almost elfin delight in the way she relates it. Her partner, Adrian Tauss, was playing a subtler tune, a little less attention-grabbing than Kisa, but entrancing all the same. Sharing his memories of the time a comedy promoter got the crowd to decide which comedians that night got paid thro’ their cheering is a perfect example of the aforesaid ‘vulnerabilities’ of our two acts.

Barnes & Tauss are very smart cookies, & a lot of fun to be with. They are just two of thousands of performers in Edinburgh right now, all of whom are vulnerable in one way or another. All are hoping for validation in what they do & who are they. The thing about Barnes & Tauss is that they are among the very few who are brave enough to admit it. If I were to give them one star, they’d probably take it on the chin, have a sulky ponder for a bit, then turn it into comedy stardust. But I’m not, they’re getting four, because they know what they are doing & they do it damn well.

Damo

Laughing Horse @ The Newsroom
Aug 12, 14-26 (19.30)

Material: Delivery:    Laughs:

Set in the basement of a plush bar The Newsroom was a slightly rough looking night club venue. I thought it would be a fitting venue for the expected degrading content of the show. And indeed around a quarter of the way in, several members of the audience stood up and left in disgust at the dire material. The perpetrators of this comic affront were Martin and Phil, known as Loose Brie, who have shared a flat for many years and came up with the idea of writing a show based on solving all of the world’s problems. In an hour. In tackling many issues very relevant to today’s media driven world, the dynamic between the two seemed only to highlight the contrast they created between themselves and caring responsible adults. The more sensitive the issue, the more distasteful their reactions – no blood, guts or gore, but plenty of nasty physical insinuations.

Mixed in with unspeakable content (of which more later) was some quirky witty banter between the two that was perhaps a product of the real time they spend together in their poky flat. They used improvisation that delighted them – they had a big thing with delight – which actually shone through but didn’t stop more walkouts in disgust. Did we know we would be walking the plank by coming to this event? It was a show filled with distaste and laughter, if you can manage it, in the face of two guys parrying with each other about faults and discrepancies, really about them living together.

It’s a highly physical sketch show, but all the context for the disgusting/distressing physical stuff we do is in what we say. It’s a much darker show without the words
Read the full interview

The title ‘Loose Brie Solve Everything’ afforded some good jokes, as they listed lots of things that need solving, from public embarrassment to which they gave the quick solution of acting weird all the time. They mushed around concepts, finding negatives about each other and then finding it difficult to have anything positive to say. Although it seemed to be about the world, really it seemed to be about them. No sooner had the general remarks and issues momentarily won our attention, than we were shocked back into the howling torrents of abuse as they set an imaginary fire under yet another idea.

Our thoughts dallied, wondering if we were safe or not just for being there. But we perked up, or slouched in our seats just to see what would happen next, and next it came. Martin used his Freddy Mercury lookalike joke to reel us in, and you know as performance goes he wasn’t too bad at it choosing to growl and speak loudly not to sing poetically. The same strain of intelligence that ran through all of it did bring with it a certain continuity like you’d find in a less disturbing version of theatre, it hits highs and lows, but their reality was to offend the sensibilities and discover who was willing to endure it any further.

The level of uncertainty seemed to be very much on purpose, for although they apologised each time for going too far, they then struck the chord of the kind of comedy where nothing and no one was safe. At least they got me thinking about my own mortality I questioned myself as to how I truly felt about the show I was seeing it was succeeding in doing that for me. This pair weren’t rock stars far away from the actualities of everyday life, these were two guys going through life more than willing to provoke the world (in a small night club in a plush part of Edinburgh’s West end)

For their amazing finale they took their trousers down, bare for all to see! I couldn’t believe it but as a member of the audience, when no one else reacted neither did I, it was socially bad but drew out some laughter as they pretended to speak out of their backsides. If this lot appeals to your darker sensibilities go and watch everything you have ever held dear be blasted away.

Daniel Donnelly

Just the Tonic @ The Caves
August 2-26 (22.10)

Material: Delivery:    Laughs:

The Dirty White Boys are back at the Fringe. They are white, yeah, they’re a bit naughty at times, but as for boys, nah, these guys are real working men in a realm which needs good solid performers. I love the physical quality of their act; they come across individually as a young Christopher Biggins & the bullying intensity of an early Ade Edmondson. As a double act they are the 21st century’s Two Ronnies; the sketch where they are speaking in unison is particularly sublime. The rest of their sketches do vary in quality – like a box of Quality Street – a couple were, well, sketchy, but when they really let rip it is comedy adamantine.

We exhaust one idea of comic potential and move onto the next one. No stone left unturned. And they’re really beautifully bizarre ideas this year
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Happy to indulge in international stereotypes & other such comedic archetypes, yet chucking original ideas into the mix, their show is a lovely blend of manic & amusing moments. Examples include a Crystal Maze clip, Judith & Valerie’s Avon sex-toy chat, Maud & Milo’s Motel & Mortuary & the opening Russian spy thriller which is a stormblast of guffawing perfection. The best, however, was the Pub Quiz section where the quizmaster focused all his efforts on the break-down of his marriage. Watching the Dirty White Boys makes one proud to be part of the Great British sketch tradition, which the lads are handling with confidence, deference & talent.

Damo

The Caves
Aug 12th-26th (14:00)

Material:  Delivery:   Laughs:

If there’s one thing you can’t flaw Ms Ford on it’s her honesty. Largely. Her show is based around the mostly true story of her life up to this point and she doesn’t spare any of the grisly details. The unboxed of the title refers to her father who was CEO of a box making company. I wouldn’t want to reveal anything more about the story in case I spoil the numerous surprises – suffice to say that her life is a lot more interesting than a few cardboard boxes. The big hearted Ms Ford tells her story with a delightful whimsy and energy while not shying away from darker territories and the pathos that goes with any show this revealing. I have rarely seen a comic being this candid about their personal life and it was certainly refreshing.  It is also apparent that she has a reasonable amount of experience in the field and I regret not seeing her previous show Kagool which, if this show was anything to go by, I’m sure would have been a treat for the senses. And treat for the senses it was. The stage set comprised solely of an unpromising stack of cardboard boxes. But they were soon brought to life with imaginative projections and ingenious sound design.

When I was 5 my Dad took me to his huge warehouse in the Fens in East Anglia. It was full to the ceiling with cardboard boxes and he said to me ‘one day all of those will be yours’.
Read the full interview

However, what really made this show stand out was the unexpected twist towards the end of the second act. I don’t want to give too much away but a shift in tone was created quite suddenly and to great dramatic effect. The M Night Shyamalan of comedy if you will. Certainly a brave move and one that, in less skilled hands, could have been disastrous. But all credit to Ms Ford she unshirkingly (is that a word?) stared into the void and the void stared right back. Only at us, the audience who, rather than recoiling, leaned in and pricked up our senses in anticipation of what would follow. Don’t be fooled by the cardboard boxes and apparent infatuation with Philip Schofield this comedian is anything but dull. If you can handle the truth, and maybe a little bit of R Kelly, this shows for you.

Victor Pope