Alasdair Beckett-King & his Rapuntzel’s worth of hair has arrived in our galaxy-corner via some wormhole or another, to take a cleaver to society & dissect it with his philosphical mind. As Shelley placed poets both at the center & the very edge of all things, so too stands the unconvential conventiality of Beckett-King. He begins his show with a brilliant animated theme song, based very much, I believe, on the Ulysses cartoon of my youth. I have given them both for fun.
“This is observational comedy, but I can’t guarantee we’ll observe the same things, can I?” quips our showman, & off we float on a merry balloon trip over Britain & beyond – orchestrated by a funny professor with the imagination of a myriad-sided spinning top, whirling around quite wildly & leaving us never knowing on which face it shall land. Sometimes a cheap gag, sometimes a shrewd slice of the innate impotency of our planet. Alasdair Beckett-King is a lively, robust performer, a golden apple in the orchard of the Fringe, whose accomplished gifts blend erudition & entertainment in a way I’ve never quite felt before, creating cute & cosmic comedy.
The heavens opened on my way to reviewing the comedy play Cry Babies: Danger Brigade. Fortunately, neither heavy thunder, lightning nor what I could have sworn was at least 2 inches of rain in 5 minutes could dampen my enthusiasm for this offbeat WW2 farce with the three actors (Michael Clarke, Ed Jones, James Gault) sharing multiple roles to keep the action rolling along at a furious pace. We got an inkling of what we were in for right from the start, with a frantic barrage of introductions to the great list of characters who would be involved in the plot that was about unfold. They used a screen for this and the lights went on and off frequently, while lighting their faces with torches whenever they wanted to indicate something particularly horrible.
The plot involved the actors playing both German and British military personnel, all of them in full uniform. Which of course involved a good deal of changing in and out of costumes, during which they threw everything around with great abandon, ending with the three lads in nothing but their underpants. Which somehow perfectly fitted into the general mayhem of the production. The acting was top level, with the performers relishing their roles and delivering their outrageous lines with great gusto, turning this drama into hilarious farce.
There was a villain who crept up to the stage from behind us in a long leather coat and spoke in an accent that would rival the greatest. There was a mop which emerged as a character in the hand of a humble cleaner dressed in a white vest. The mop was a dear friend to this cleaner who mopped the floors of Westminster in London and returned many times to converse with its owner. And then there was the Rat King, representing the evil Nazi regime, with rats at his feet as he created an army fit to destroy all that was living and replace it with his tyranny. Not to mention a Star Wars moment as sons and fathers were revealed.
It sounds like complete chaos, but in fact there was a plot, which moved fast and fluidly and was incredibly easy to follow, thanks to marvelously conceived writing and perfectly timed – if manic – performances by the cast. Their jokes arose out of the underlying seriousness of the situation. They. had a dangerous mission to perform. Would they be cry-babies or worthy members of the danger brigade they found themselves part of? In an impossible situation perhaps the only sensible thing to do was to turn to comedy and slapstick. This show was a multi layered mix of farce, wit and theatrical enterprise. While we laughed at the jokes we were left in no doubt about the absurdity of war. It’s clever and genuinely funny. Go and see it, you won’t be disappointed.
With a sudden thump, a happy cheery chappie going by the name of Eli Matthewson enters our life for an hour. Bringing his stand-up comedy show all the way from New Zealand was a gamble for any ‘inconvenient poof.’ but the gamble is clearly paying off. Eli has a calm, sensitive look about him… but don’t be fooled, he has a bigger opinion than a defence lawyer without a case. We were soon engrossed in a melee of open-hearted jokes and diverse humour-strains. Eli is not shy when it comes to the subjects dear to his heart. Climate Change and Global Warming are serious issues but Mr. Matthewson gives us hope…
Tearing down the walls that keep him inside, he unleashes his desire for change. From cat lovers to gay Christians, TLGBT (T standing for Thirty) to Greek Gods, this is a comedy landslide of never-ending fun. If the 21 year old Eli could speak to the 30 year old Eli, what would he say? Forget sexually transmitted politics, forget Octopus, forget Easter Camps, and for sure forget High School, just go get humped and talk to your Dad… This is a witty, gritty, charming wee comedy show delivered straight up and honest. Its clean yet dirty, with sprinkles of laughter and smutty innuendos throughout. This show is cocktail of comedy and a classic throw back to the good old days of stand-up. No stone is left unturned, and no road left untraveled. Allow your attention to be absorbed and enjoy the Eli Matthewson experience.
Gilded Balloon at Old Tolbooth Market Jul 1st – Aug 25 (18.00)
Material: Delivery: Laughs: Room:
The Gilded Balloon at the Old Tolbooth Market had a welcoming feel as we climbed the stairs to the small space where “Harriet Braine – Les Admirables” was to be performed. Harriet introduced herself and her themes in a song packed show full of clever insights and intertwining jokes. An award-winning comic, Harriet not only looked back at her own career, but also brought into the limelight the lack of female representation in history. She was aided in this endeavor by her guitar and a small projector screen to illustrate the tales she would tell.
I found this an effective format, where Harriet would talk about her own past; telling us about school plays, university and her development as a writer, artist and musician – not to say the point she’s reached now in the field of stand-up. Along the way she touches on themes of feminism and her own struggles against ignorance, and illustrates these struggles using the lives of women figures from science that history seems to have forgotten or even shunned, often presenting these characters through her songs. I have to confess I’d never heard of them before (not that I’d admit that to her), but I suppose that illustrated the point! I found myself sympathising with her and appreciating the education that she brought to her performance.
Harriet’s interaction with the audience was intimate and daring. She kept us entertained and totally engaged with an enchanting mixture of humour and music and rhetoric. An accomplished musician, her songs spanned many different styles, as did the hcomedy – at one point she had us in stitches when she placed cat faces on famous pictures making them look weird and drawing us ever further into her quirky world. She could be wholesome, she could be falling apart, she was a woman with something to say and her material was very strongly delivered with an individual and confident voice. Harriet Braine will entice you in, entertain you and enlighten you. You should go!
In Radical Centrist, Erich McElroy delivers a hilarious look at the political tug of war going on around us, where both sides are vying to out-extreme each other. Being an American who has now become a British citizen, Erich is able to relay an outsiders perspective on both countries politics. He claims “everything is political now” and in his jokes shows how he is constantly battling to do the right thing in his daily life.
Erich McElroy is a bona fide comedian and his show is a guaranteed laugh. He speaks a lot about the differences in cultures between the US and the UK, and as an American, I agreed with his radical view on beans for breakfast. Erich told one joke about baseball which missed. I think it is difficult for UK people to get an image of baseball in their heads, and the joke felt out of place. But he made other astute observations about British customs and habits, which were appreciated by everyone in the room. He told hilarious and poignant tales about raising children in today’s political climate and he explains how even his choice of dog was a political act.
In the UK and in the US (I still get a vote there) where both countries are so polarized we can’t get anything done if we don’t try and meet half way. I talk about that in the show, but in a funny way. Read the full interview…
The show helped me examine my own political choices in a new way. Erich mentioned some of the common ideas amongst left leaning people, and it made me question whether I really thought that way or if I was just agreeing with my peers. I think Erich McElroy can help us look at our politics with a bit of humor, and this could be the first step to finding common ground with the other side.
Martha McBrier is a mad little maverick mistress of mirth. I’ve never seen anything quite like her. The over-riding feeling I got while watching her in action was that of a one-woman Under Milkwood set somewhere in colloquial Glasgow. There were wee twists of audience participation, but most of the show was a one-way dramatic monologue of sorts, which is different from a comedian telling a joke, & its appreciation as an audience member depends very much on our performer’s abilities. Martha has the ability, that’s clear, she’s a bubbly & amenable soul, but what of her ‘drôle matériel’?
Her theme, & title, is an admonishment of the ‘Happiness Bully’, those ‘cheer-up’ pushers of positive emotions who you just want to punch in the face when you’d prefer to be stewing in your own moody juices. While flyering, her target demographic, she tells is, are ‘miserable lookin fuc£ers!’ So asking them to see the show is quite hypocritical really, but I’m just nit-picking there, sorry. She’s very much a mixed bag is Martha, one minute snappily observing Humanity with a wry smile & a cutting line, the next getting a bit lost in the absence of presence during the act of transplanting creativity into our minds. Her routine was, well, routine, but her lilting diction is a pleasure to hear, & the oral mini-documentary about her life is most entertaining. But as comedy? It doesn’t quite get there. Like a pot of rumbledethumps without the hot mustard.
This is the story of Walter and Herbert, two Jews who escaped the Nazis, came to the UK and became famous and successful. Joe Bor is the grandson of Walter Bor, who was a famous city planner from the period of new town construction. Meanwhile, Herbert Lom was appearing in dozens of films, including the Pink Panther series. The two men had a lifelong friendship after they came to the UK in 1939. Joe Bor tells the story of his grandfather and his friend through pictures, audio recordings, videos and comedy.
It’s a show that I’ve been working on for a while that means a lot to me, that’s funny and interested and heartwarming, if that’s what you like. (Read the full interview…)
Joe Bor presents The Story of Walter and Herbert with the aid of a slide-show. This is definitely not a boring uncle showing off his holiday snaps. No, this is a really enjoyable ride as Joe injects a personal apsect into an excellent story excellently told, a very meaningful piece I thoroughly recommend. His comedy shines throughout, enlivening the show and our hearts. I learned so much about Walter and Herbert, and I was instilled with curiosity to discover more.
People from Walter and Herbert’s generation are dying. How will we remember the lessons they learned? Joe Bor does a fantastic and entertaining job of preserving this small slice of important history.
I shall preface this review with a quick bio of AJ Holmes as he is someone who is very famous in very specific circles, but largely unidentifiable to anyone without very astute musical theatre knowledge. Holmes was cast in the Broadway production of The Book of Mormon when he was 22, he has a bloody incredible pair of lungs on him, and he can play multiple instruments with admirable precision and pizazz. He is also a composer and performer for StarKid Productions who produced A Very Potter Musical, a comedic Harry Potter pastiche which you may remember accompanying just about everything you did in 2009.
Now 29, with a few ‘Fringeable’ experiences under his belt, Holmes commands the stage for just over an hour of imaginative showtunes peppered with bouts of ego-driven stand up. Yeah, but Not Right Now is essentially a one-man stripped back musical about Holmes’ life. He put great effort into making us gush sympathy on him (for his upbringing, his career, his love life), all the while bellowing showtunes about his annoyingly cushty life – and I think that is the joke. Holmes displayed a very precise self-awareness, but there were some members of the audience who were rather lacking in this trait. Holmes has the kind of face that is utterly irresistible to Madison, 23, from suburban New-Hampshire.
Type his name in on YouTube and the first hit is a playlist entitled “AJ Holmes being just generally adorable”. About twenty percent of the seats were occupied by these adoring fans, and they supplied about ninety percent of the cheers. They made it kind of difficult to decipher the moments which were intending to hit a darker note, as each pause was filled with the same devoted laughter. I didn’t mind it though, it contributed to understanding his tale of the life of a young Broadway star and gave poignancy to his song about dealing with sudden attention from adoring female fans.
Holmes is clearly a bright guy and pulls off some genuinely funny songs, there were moments of Flight of the Conchords style absurd humour dotted in there. Conversely, there was an entire showtune Facebook joke which would have been passé a decade ago, but as the kind of guy who could get people queuing up to lick his boots, why the heck not?
The Mumble remain dedicated to their role as
The most progressive publication at the Fringe
Every Sunday I like to go to Stockbridge & buy a couple of pounds of my favorite grapes, which arrive there from Mauritius that morning. Chomping on a juicy handful last Sunday, I began making my way up through the New Town, arriving in the York Place area where the trams are. This is Stand country, & a few years ago was the epicentre of laughter in the Fringe. These days its all a bit like a weekday wake & might as well be out in Fife, for there has been a seismic shift to one Edinburgh street in particular – the sloping, cobbled thoroughfare between the Cowgate & the Bridges that is Blair Street. This is the real epicentre of Fringe comedy these days; where comedians, punters & flyerers mingle in a smiling Sunset Strip.
Things evolve, & the stranglehold The Stand had on making people pay for ‘safe’ mainstream comedy has been utterly smashed by the innovations of the Free Fringe & its quality, liberty-laden shows. All things change – I mean I’m actually writing this article on a speech-to-text app walking through Holyrood Park on the way into town. So if Fringe comedy can evolve, what about the ancient art of reviewing. Think of those ancient Greeks who first stepped down from the Dionysis theatre during the reign of Pesistratus, who had just observed the very first play there from its seats, who have been babbling opinions & critiques to each other as soon as they left the hilltop. Criticism is as old as the performance art it observes, so how does its own evolution fare in 2019?
Well, not that much really. Beyond the windows of Mumble Towers, the Fringe Press of 2019 seems an archaic institution – chained to amateur rules dished out by a hereditary feudal demense, & a narrow luddite marking system which, even if the stars are split into halves, can only ever give a ‘marks out of ten’ assessment. But half-stars are an ugly aesthetic, a deformed evolution of the species. Like Darwin says, it’s not the biggest or the fastest that survives, but the one that adapts. If the five-star marking system is not to go extinct, it must evolve from its primitive 5-point Ape, through the Homo Erectus 10-point system of halves, & into something more suitable for an increasingly sophisticated modern world.
The trained reviewer can actually feel a show’s quality as 1,2,3,4,5 within moments of the start. So what are the qualities that provide such an esoteric sensation. Since 2016, the Mumble had identified three factors in each of its genres. For Comedy, we had Material, Delivery & Laughs; while for Theatre we had Stagecraft, Script & Performance. This was an improvement on the old system, where now in essence a score was obtained between 1 and 15, the Neanderthal if you will. As the Mumble went into the 2019 Fringe, we were still using this system, but have finally recognized there was still a certain imprecision to the score.
The old system (R.I.P)
Under our old system, to obtain four stars, for example, a show needed to score 3.66 – which is simply closer to 4 than 3. The overall marks would then be described as a low four, a natural four or a high four. The eureka moment came the other day while sitting in two comedy shows. On one occasion I was the only one laughing, while at the other show the room was in uproar & I was sat stony-gilled. It was time to add that factor into the marking mix, the Room… how does a comedian play their audience, do they keep tickling funny bones like a comedy octopus, or is each viewer sat there playing on their phones.
Material: Delivery: Laughs: Room:
A four-star Room at Gary G Knightley
The Room category in Comedy has a natural cousin in Theatre. I have called it S.O.D, with the first review to use it being published yesterday (before this article). Quick off the mark, the company sent me this email;
Dear Mumble
We have asked our wonderful PR company; we have asked the amazing Pleasance Press Office; we have asked the astonishing Head of Programming at The Pleasance – no one can help.
We are delighted by our review by the excellent Daniel Donnelly, but no one seems to know what S.O.D. stands for!
Please can you elucidate?
Many thanks
(and I’ll get the prize for the first one home with the answer!)
The answer is, of course, Suspension of Disbelief. I know my poetry, & within Coleridge’s wonderful Biographia Literia, he elucidated on the driving phantasian spirit behind his co-creation of the Lyrical Ballads with Wordsworth. Its essence is the state of mind reached where there is, ‘a semblance of truth sufficient to procure for these shadows of imagination that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith… awakening the mind’s attention from the lethargy of custom, and directing it to the loveliness and the wonders of the world before us.’ In modern lay terms its like switching off reality & becoming immersed in the production. Is that your mate Nigel before you? Do you see them behind the make-up, or are you lost in the drama & believe this drag-queen before you is the fabulous Nigella?
The introduction of another genome into the star system, the aforetitled Expansion of the Mumbleverse, seems wholly natural. Our planet is divided into four seasons, the main elements are still earth, fire, air & water. The four bodily humors were part of Shakespearean cosmology, inherited from the ancient Greek philosophers Aristotle, Hippocrates, and Galen. Ovid, in his Metamorphoses divided the Ages into Gold, Silver, Bronze, and Iron. Now the reviewing star system can also be divided into four harmonious parts. Marking-wise, to obtain those 4 stars, a show must now be awarded at least 3.75 points as opposed to 3.66. The overall marking goes like this
As cultural surveyors, The Mumble can now give a more detailed account of a show for both artist & potential audience member – its now a case of, “you need to sort your tiles out, pal, and there’s a bit of damp in your back bedroom – you’re wirings seen better days and of course you’re gonna have to update your boiler system, it’ll never pass the new laws.”
Underbelly, Bristo Square August 6-13, 15-25 (16:00)
Material: Delivery: Laughs: Room:
Around halfway through Tania Edwards breakneck 45 minutes of slyly charming vitriol I had to remind myself, again, that I was supposed to be writing a review about this. It is as great a compliment as I can think to give, that I was almost too busy enjoying her set to actually spend any time analysing it while I was there. So here, in retrospect, are my reflections. Edwards is not one of those classic Fringe awards bait numbers, the ‘Theme Show’. Attempting to wedge some overarching universal truth, or hard won moral lesson, into her set. As she informs us from the off, she doesn’t have time for that kind of thing, as she is a new mother to a bouncing baby boy. So the theme, if we really must discern one, is tiredness, and raging against anything that has been unfortunate enough to come into her eyeline in the last few deeply sleepless months. This frequently includes the audience.
It’s essentially a top-ten hate list that gets added to everytime she peers through the lights and into the crowd. Over-sharers, pensioners, young people, her friends, her husband. Nobody is safe from her ire. She delivers it with such confidence and chutzpah, and a wicked winning smile reminiscent of Nina Conti at her most charming, that it never slides off into monotone Gammon-esque impotent fury. Enough self-deprecation is tossed into the mix to keep you on her side, her rage at her own post-pregnancy body is used to deliver some creatively surreal riffs instead of the standard stand up fare about ‘Spaniels Ears’.
The audience are captivated, and every piece of excellent crowd work was a testament to this. That her not so friendly chit-chat with a pair of Ex’s in the front row, who still lived with each other for the pragmatic purposes of paying the bills, felt like part of her set, and received the same belly-laugh reception, tells you that she has spent a hell of a long time really grafting at honing her schtick.
She closes the set with a ‘racist joke’ about her husband Sanjeev, that usurps expectations enough to have the audience exploding with increasing crescendo at each of the punchlines. A real jab, jab, hook combo of Vladimir Klitchko proportions. However, the most telling moment of the afternoon comes when she realises that she now has to finish up the set, after an uproarious ending, by asking for contributions to the ‘Begging Bowl’, present at all Pay What You Want shows. This too she spontaneously turns into a punchline, which has the audience cheering her all over again and putting hands eagerly into pockets to pay their share.
This show was at 4pm on a Tuesday in a sticky basement, less than a week into the Fringe, and it was standing room only. Grab a ticket to see Tania Edwards now, I’ll be astonished if she’s not gracing the stage at Live at the Apollo this time next year.
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