In his beard, build & general bounciness there’s a bit of Brian Blessed in Garrett Millerick. Of course, Garrett is waaayyyyy funnier than Brian. He’s an impressive fountain of fun is this lad, I especially dug the way he projected into the future to find his comedy – based upon the fast approaching demise of our Queen, but I loved that. Most comedians are retrospective & contemporary in their search for material, but Garrett’s mind wanders everywhere.
Its nice to have the Russians back – every generation needs a good, proper enemy
A highlight for me was his adulation of Jeff Bezos, portraying him more as a Father Christmas figure than the oppressor of workers. I even went home & shared his opinion with my pals, such was Garrett’s influence. Its probably down to his extreme confidence in his ability to make us laugh, which I witnessed regularly throughout the show. There is a universality to his material which I noticed was reflected in an audience of all ages & an even gender spread.
Now the evil of the Welsh has risen in the east
At the end of his set Millerick is dripping with sweat, so energetically composed is his performance. That set, by the way, is full of such deadpan phraseology which I hope sometime he or his inheritors compile into a compendium of wisdom. ‘Don’t bring a baguette to a knife-fight you fanny,‘ definitely has to go in. He’s like the Lao-Tze Tung of laughter, & paints landscapes of the same vistas of life which we all can see, but his are guaranteed to make us laugh.
Gilded Ballon Patter Hoose August 3rd – 28th (6.30pm)
With his trade mark “unbranded” yellow shirt, Patrick Spicer bounces onto the stage for his hour at the Edinburgh Fringe. Even with a moderate audience, the room had an energetic feeling about it and you could tell from the outset that this was a young, cheeky laddie with a lot to get off this chest. With no time to waste, Mr. Spicer had the crowd heating up like a fresh chilli running around your mouth with nowhere to go. Patrick is a man of principle. Laugh with him, laugh at him, but one thing for sure, you will laugh through the entire 24 years that he has walked this earth…
Strong, brave, lucid and cool, this is a totally relatable comedy masterclass. Addressing all of his life’s ups and downs from anxiety, younger muggings, kebab-trading, cafe dating, teenage branding (there is that word again), Tik Tok, bum doctors and death, you certainly were made to feel you could relate to one or more of these tribulations of growing up. Delivered with a constant smile and excellent audience interaction, Patrick Spicer can definitely hold his own. Most comedians revolt at the thought of being heckled, but this young man takes it in his stride bringing the audience ever closer to his heart…
Growing up is not easy, unless your Patrick Spicer !! This is classic comedy at its finest. Raw, witty, direct, yet heart-warming. The journey Mr. Spicer takes you on is as much educational as it is funny. Subjects that others would steer well clear of seem to bloom under his spell, I mean, who needs to know about radioactive body fluids? Patrick’s ultimate moral is, life is beautiful and this is why death is in love with it, so make people laugh and maybe death wont be so crap. Great, hard-hitting fun delivered with fantastic dialogue and charm. A true wee gem of the Edinburgh Fringe.
Assembly George Square – The Box Aug 8-16, 18-28 (19:45)
Tonight I went out for a double bill from Zach Zucker’s Stamptown empire, one of the most prodigious & highly thought-of comedy umbrellas, which sends its Kraken-tentacle acts all across the world. Looking at the Fringe guide I’m like I can do two in a row in the Assembly Quarter of Edinburgh. Man & Woman was first, after which I had half an hour to get a butty a brew & a seat in the Box for BriTANicK. I was in a reyt good mood after my first slice of Americana, a buzz which was grabbed by Emmy-nominated writers Nick Kocher & Brian McElhaney, crush’d up into an energy ball, stretch’d out with phallic rolling pins & folded up into a funny-looking hat which they placed on their heads for an hour of sophisticated tandem clownerie.
It’s going to last about 2 seconds & quite possibly kill you
At its simplest BriTANick is sketch comedy, but as their show delved deeper & deeper into the wells of their shared creative genius, it slowly dawn’d on me I was watching an extremely well-woven & innovative tapestry of leitmotifs & running gags, all glued cleverly together by the natural chemistry of two consummate performers. I especially loved the Wild West Saloon scene with its multiple characters & the potential man kiss between a father & his daughter’s suitor. The surreal memory-loss sketch is also a joy to behold, followed not long after by the tornado vortex of the the rip-roaring finale. As it erupted into the room, there was actual adrenaline running through my veins – proper exciting, like -, & I was genuinely fearful of being abducted into the show!
So… its comedy, & its art, & its pretty entertaining stuff. Nick & Brian got the crowd proper cooking with their athletic performances, smart writing & infectious appetite for fun & I think everyone will leave the Box in a reyt good mood for the rest of their Fringe.
Assembly George Square Studios – Studio Four Aug 8-16, 18-28 (18:15)
Tonight I went out for a double bill from Zach Zucker’s Stamptown empire, one of the most prodigious & highly thought-of comedy umbrellas, which sends its Kraken-tentacle acts all across the world. Looking at the Fringe guide I’m like I can do two in a row in the Assembly Quarter of Edinburgh. Man & Woman was first (BriTANick was second), brought to us across the ocean by Jack Cornell & Marcia Belsky,& oh my god it was proper funny, like! From Tik-Tok acorns do oaks of humungous funniness grow & it was from the aforementioned online video vignette medium that Jack suddenly found a girl he’d never met before, but living round the corner, bouncing comedy of his little sketch. BOOM ! Chemistry ! Action ! & a year or so later a buzzing masterpiece has vaulted into Scotland with broad American accents & an amazing dissection of the realities of romantic heterosexual cohabitation.
Stop being so curious, it isn’t good for you
Men & women is pure parody is all about well, men & women, & their heterosexual intertanglings & bubbles with cutting edge socio-anthropological insights while at all times making us laugh out loud. Is it a sketch series? Is it theatre? I’d say a bit of both, that’s why its going in both Mumble Theatre & Mumble Comedy. Either way, when Marian met her Jom-Jom at nursery in Chipaquaqua County, after 3 years of life & loneliness, she knew he was the one for her. The show then flows through the rest of their lives together with great & innate detail surfing an ever-high level of hilarity. I loved the way kids keep popping up in a constant mission to get one that doesn’t ‘flop’ in life, while the comedy is spliced by commentaries on how ‘women influence life & society from the private sector of their homes.’
Can you stop reminiscing & treat my actual wound
Of our performers & their deliveries, Marcia is eminently watchable & Jack is emphatically suave – it really is top notch stuff, & includes the immortally dodgy exchange ‘ I told you I didn’t want to work with a paedophile — You are so closed minded it’s unbelievable.’ At the half way point we stepp’d away from the storyline into an actors’ workshop world & a Q&A intermission, which did halt my buzz a little bit & perhaps tainted my full appreciation for the rest of the tale – it was a funny interlude but definitely disturbed my trance in which I’d been more than happy to have been foster’d into. All the same, I swear down I actually shed a single tear of happiness at the end – a strange reaction – but I completely enjoy’d myself, which doesn’t happen all the time, in fact most of the time, when I’m out reviewing. Really brilliant stuff.
Pleasance Courtyard – The Cellar Aug 8-14, 16-29 (18:05)
The Cellar at the Pleasance Courtyard is a simple black box venue, my favourite style of comedy space. It really helps the mind to engage with the act. Today it was Katie Pritchard, who has previously won best act at the Musical Comedy Awards and tonight’s show, her debut hour at that, totally represented her well-worthy of such an accolade.
The theme was set around her ex partner/flatmate leaving her. It was a musical bonanza like mixing every possible variety of Walker’s Crisps in a bowl and eating them with chocolate. You really never knew where she was going next, & that’s what made the show so exciting. Disco Ball is simply bursting full of wonderful and weirdly random content; I particularly enjoyed Kate Bush’s ghost while the audience were fully immersed in the 2-letter word scrabble song.
Katie mentions she can play 12 instruments and I found her to be a supremely talented singer, belting out some fantastic & funny lyrics of which I loved the hilarious & melodic ‘I wish Robert De Nero was in Cats.’ With audio-described costume changes we experienced everything from burlesque to rap. Katie was very interactive with the audience, she is super bubbly, giggly and highly energetic. She also critiqued herself throughout in a most tongue in cheek fashion which endeared us to even more.
An awesomely brave performance set to shift you from your comfort zone and tickle your funny bone. Definitely worth a watch if you’re out & about day-drinking.
Just the Tonic at The Caves Aug 8-14, 16-28 (14:20)
238 lunar months have passed since the finale of the supernova 2019 Fringe. Since then we have had socially distanced mini-fringes in people’s back gardens thro the summer of 2020, & last year’s ‘Five Percent Fringe’ which I attended rather like the time your third cousin thrice removed adds you to the wedding guest list cos they don’t have any real mates. But, 2022 is a completely different story & the world has once again descended on an Edinburgh August with much enthusiasm to entertain & be entertained. Its also given all the artists 3 years to perfect their shows. In one particular corner a legion wanders amongst us wondering who is set to change the face of comedy, & who is taking a year out to just enjoy themselves & try the material that they really like, while all the time industry opinion lies like hungry sharks off the estuaries of Peru.
So, to Hannah Fairweather, my first comedian of 2022. I’d set off from home on Arran on the 11 am ferry & reached Waverly at 2.12, giving me precisely 8 minutes to make the show. Arriving out of breath I took a seat at the back in time to hear Hannah’s irrepressibly seductive opening salvoes, a really entertaining introductory unicorn bounce thro, ‘hello I’m Hannah, & welcome to my show’. I was immediately glad to be there.
Before I started doing this I thought I was my own worst critic
Hannah’s sparkling sense of humour began life as a defence mechanism, & has now turn’d into a full-blown career, & as she spreads her comedy’s metaphysical arms around the room, an hour with her flows rapidly, it really does. Entering the corridors & chambers of her theme, we met a number of individuals in Hannah’s life who have wound her up the wrong way, & are now getting it. After the starbirth opening, the show trots on at more sedate a pace where it felt like Hannah was striking a box of comedy matches, her flaring punchlines & epithetical observations illuminating the room with the laughter-light of her clear talent. One of the matches would occasionally be dud, for me anyway that is, tho’ I did feel the room was enjoying the entirety rather more than I was.
Young, humble, exquisitely intelligent & artistically eloquent, Hannah gives her all with a face that is a constant & inviting portrait of lambkin happiness. She’s proper buzzing, you can tell, & that thoroughly infected the room. For me, I think her ability to find & convert comedy is a gift, & OK she’s relatively young, so maybe with the garnering of more life experience her material will be injected with better stuff than getting caught drinking in an American student dorm. She should be striding forward into an optimistic future & not looking back in time for up to a decade with a hiss. But that’s the only negative, I think, she was generally & genuinely funny, & its worth a visit just to laugh at, & with, Hannah. She’s on at 2.20 in the afternoon, so just go!
Underbelly, Bristo Square – Daisy Aug 8-15, 17-29 (16:15)
This is my second dose of Sasha Ellen in Edinburgh. The first was in 2018, a delightful tale of when she & her boyfriend brought one of the Channel Islands to a halt. I remember comparing her comedy to the rising bubbles of a bottle of prosecco on a summer’s day. Four years on the prosecco has morphed into Havana rum & I can definitely feel her experience & intelligence crafting a fluffy-soul’d comedy souffle, whose only true theme is that of making us laugh.
I am this close to mounting quizmaster Dave – medicate me!
She’s like a cool comedy kitten is our Sasha – I say ‘our’ because she really does make you feel that you’re one of her mates. Y’know, the mate that every ebullient bundle of hormones & horniness needs to bounce their brilliance off. Her material is a blend of white-knuckle risqué & teenage nerdiness – her idea of bagging a doctor is a level 9 healer in D&D. The way she rolls thro her show is meteor-like, an incandescent blaze of comedy that slices thro’ the stratosphere of a Scottish afternoon.
My favorite part of the show was when she went off mic for 3 minutes & 30 seconds to relate the story of an incident in her life which lasted the exact same amount of time. This was the moment when Sasha’s talent for audience intimacy really shone through. The overriding feeling is Sasha loves what she does, & she certainly has master’d the comedian’s main obligation in life which is to find humour in all situations. She’s a natural, & there’s also a subtle sophistication behind her act which is camouflaged by her gloriously giddy approach to performance.
Just the Tonic at the Caves (Just Up the Stairs) Aug 4 – 14, 17:05
Great to be back at the amazing 2022 Edinburgh Fringe festival with thousands of show up for selection; mood is good as you find your way among the streets. Today’s play by the incredibly hard working Amber Glancy is a solo show held at the Just the tonic at the caves venue down in Cowgate called ‘Wine Show’.
With polished wine glasses set on tables the small room quietened, Amber took to stage all in white. The wine part happened quickly as bottles were opened and glasses were drunk. In fact the first 5 min were dedicated to that but not without a really good plot line, she tied everything together of things we weren’t even aware of.
The come as you go element to her comedy/theatre proved easy for her as she quickly made for crowd participation. At one point I though the whole room was in on a set up because that was how surreal it all had become, for all the people who she roped into sharing her stage seemed to have great acting prowess.
The heralded wine literally poured and flew into the room she told her tale as the character Bailey Barrel, a wine maker, all she wanted to do was taste wine for a living. By now she was red from the spilled wine that she guzzled tasting each glass in excitement coming through with electric energy. She knew how to walk the stage and compel the room.
Her comedy was wicked, very dry and energetically endearing to happily watch for the next event to come whatever that may have been. She seemed panicked a lot but that could have been due to the characters father’s death. We were in her club, washed with alcohol, looking absurdly into the future she did her damndest to spread joy and energy (that she very cleverly slowly built up).
From all the chaos to ensue the writing didn’t falter, she displayed the skill of drawing out the story. Amber even toyed and cajoled with her audience. Time flew filled with how she grew in stature, she absorbed the act making a feeling of deep satisfaction and a feeling of being looked after. She is a multitalented playwright who has worked for a long time in LA, America, and has been involved in screen and stage.
Her experience shone through in this accomplished show, how to probe and fall about (without injury). Using live action to extenuate jokes and personal deprecation; a live comedy that will swim very well at the fringe I feel to blow other shows away.
Monkey Barrel Comedy Aug 7-12, 14-18, 22-28 (18.10)
#Pierre Novellie originally wrote this show to be performed at the Fringe in 2020. He’s had 3 years then to hone this hour of finely distilled impotent fury, and it really shows. This is, almost, a faultless performance of high-status musings on all of the things he does not enjoy about life, and there are many of them.
Novellie is akin to a stand-up Doctor Strange, and we the audience his Peter Parker. He escorts us on a voyage through a mental multi-verse of realities featuring cameos from ‘big pharma bro’s’, silicon valley CEO’s, survivalists, ‘fishing people’ & a very famous ‘piss-goblin’. To keep the audience on track requires an intimidating arsenal of talent, charm, and skillful delivery. Thankfully, he has all of these in abundance.
He holds pauses with a light confidence, & his weaponised enunciation & tactically applied repetition of key phrases is punctuated beautifully with eyes, brows, grins and grimaces. This is a performer who considers the weight & nuance of every aspect of their delivery, to allow the audience to slowly inhabit his ‘other world’, & gently pull us in. Make no mistake, the audience needs these finger holds. The main body of the show is a truly wonderful, & labyrinthine, flight of inner monologue fantasy. As Novellie himself warns us, these are ‘decision tree thought processes which can spiral into destruction’. Next time you consider asking a friend, or partner, “What are you thinking?”, you may have second thoughts.
As with all of the finest performers of densely layered, thematic, comedy, Pierre allows the set itself to do all the work here. There is an easy confidence dripping from him as the hour progresses, beading like the fine sweat on his brow, and hanging from his frame as he moves about the stage like the fabulous, tailored, velvet dinner jacket he sports to make corporeal his affected superiority to the chattering classes who ruin his evenings at the theatre with their reeking Pringles and drunken chit chat. This is John Kearns level of surreal storytelling excellence which Novellie delivers with his own matured, idiosyncratic, mastery.
There is only one weak section of the show, and given the incredibly high quality of the rest of the material it stands out a little sorely. The jokes about Tesco meal deals are a little too close to Peter Kay territory for my own liking, and this material jars with the Spike Milligan surrealism of the stand-out flight of fancy section in Berlins famous Berghain nightclub. If you can leave an entire room in stitches whilst riffing on bodily fluids, mayonnaise, BDSM, & fish blood at 5pm on a Thursday, you’ve probably found your calling in life.
I had the pleasure about 7 or 8 years ago of watching a group of my favourite stand ups performing a ‘super-group’ midnight show, and I accidentally ended up with Pierre as company for the evening. Throughout that set we both guffawed, heaved, yelped and squealed in delight whilst watching masters of the art, and several future award winners, freely do their thing in joyous fashion, in front of a room packed with adoring fans. It felt a great privilege then to find myself watching Pierre performing to precisely this level, and receiving the same rapturous applause, himself. It is apposite in the extreme that with “Why can’t I just enjoy things?” he has joined a pantheon Fringe classics, & comedy greats, which includes so many of his own favourite performers.
Pleasance Courtyard Grand Venue 33 (16:00) Till 29th August (Tuesdays excepted and strikes permitting) Strobe lighting Possible Brouhaha
An hour long drum solo performed by two French hippies/mime artists and featuring a kazoo trombone fashioned from the plumbing aisle at B&Q is a hard sell. and would have me reaching for my gun. On hearing this pitch the temptation is to roll the eyes and stride off indignantly muttering ‘festival bollox.. grumble grumble…’
There is no doubt the festival has its share of ‘Macbeth on a bouncy castle‘ codswallop, and long may it reign, but these things are not everyones cup of tea. So you’d be forgiven for dismissing this show out of hand. and flicking the safety off*
You would however be missing a cracking percussive hour of virtuoso drumming visuals and music that thrums along as tight as a paradiddle.
First and foremost these guys are world class drummers.
They employ a surreal quiver of instruments, from drills with which to torture their instruments and each other. From the aforementioned kazoobone (ed.?) to chainsaws and their skulls, and more. They belt out the classics from Queen to AC/DC via Pantera and Grease with brioche (ed. I think you’ll find you mean brio) Of course being French you get a bit of Jean-Michel Jarre and Daft Punk. (Mais qui, d’accord, bien sûr, pôt pourri).
As they are the only two French recording artists since Edith Piaf that anybody takes seriously. MC Solar doesn’t count.*
The dynamic between the pair is played upon but not dwelt upon. Excellently conceived vignettes are conjured. Morricone’s Wild West, Bruce Lee style Martial arts movies and Star Wars. There is crowd participation, but this involves a bit of whooping and stomping and not the the dreaded dragged up on stage variety.
The audience loved it from kiddie winks to ‘aul grumpy punters (like me). The lighting sound musicianship choreography and timing are all as tight John Bonham’s trousers and everyone left with a smile on their face and a slight ringing in the ears. Excellent.
Mumble Comedy 