I had been hurting like for heck since I awoke this morning. Kind of walking the edge of heart break blues. If I ever needed healing it was today. I awoke with the heaviest of hearts. So I had some breakie and tuned into mission control to find out what Divine’s daily delight would be. For some reason I thought our wonderful Mumble editor was taking the piss. When the promo reads Holistic Quantification and other such buzzwords, my back was already up, As you know Divine is a Reiki Master and Teacher of The Arts That Heal. So I accepted the Mumble Mission. If this was gonna be a dodgy performance then both My Mumble editor and my unsuspecting comedian were gonna get it in the neck.
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It was a stormy Friday… warm, wild and wet… just like a good woman. I spent some time in Saint Andrew’s Square and took the scene in. I remeberd when the art work on the front of the Tent was being painted over in Adelaide – Divine was married to an Ozzie once a long long time ago. Bye eck them were’t days. From Saint Andrews square, I headed to get my ticket for the above show. As I entered the small theater, I was greeted by my good friend Shane, who was doing the sound and the lighting. So I immediately felt at home. I did my best to clear judgement and detach from expectation. Because in my time as a Mumble Reviewer. I have witnessed irrelevant comedy, intellectually-misinformed comedy, silly comedy, & so on. But today I witnessed Comedy as Genius.
Serendipitous and educational, Nick Revell’s show is a man’s guide to mid-life dating if you like. Whether one is a Christian, Buddhist, Muslim or Hindu it does not matter – because in this very clever tale of Human metaphysical development, the prophets of each end up in a pub fight. It is all done in the best possible taste though, & has a very effective and powerful message which Divine lapped up. It was comedy as Soul Food, comedy as therapy. The first line of the promo reads, ‘A year of near death experiences‘ I couldn’t work out what the near death experiences were as there were no references to any near death experiences in the performance. But when the penny drops it really is a giggle. & to see that penny drop one will have to go and see this master of his art, & indeed, Comedy as genius. A True Master Class! A Well deserved Five Stars! Divine Approved!
25 year-old Rory O’Keeffe is a refreshing wee marvel in the panoply of stars that shine into Edinburgh each August. A soft-spoken, quick-witted geezer, he builds an immediate rapport with his audience that never falters, taking us on a merry ride through his theme – the comedy latent in language, something we can all relate to. Indeed, some of his own contributions to the English language are simply brilliant & should definitely become a part of all our perfunctory patois. A central motif is of this show is his adventures in learning Italian, & when one is shown the Italian hand-signal for the Risorgimento, one knows one is being entertained by a clever fellow. O’Keeffe was trained as an actor, & where many before him have attempted the cross-generic saunter into comedy & failed, he has actually gained something in the transition – a platform for his absolute mastery of the spoken word. He’s funny too – you know as soon as he begins to say summat about summat, then when he says summat else about that particular summat, you’ll be laughing – every time!
Rory explores his theme with an adept credibility & a knack of connecting with our personal, subconscious comedy observations. Working his room without getting too involved with the audience, he is assisted by a supreme confidence in his material which cements all essences together. He also uses a power-point with precision, & just as Sean Dyche got the Burnley FC managerial job with a brilliant power-point presentation to the board, then led them to the riches of the Premier League, so too is O’Keefe’s canny use of said equipment propelling him into the higher reaches of the comedy universe that is twinkling over Caledonia’s capital right now. This guy is definitely mid-blossom, on his way to being one of the better comedians around, & when you hear the sound-engineer still chuckling nine shows in, you just can tell that he’s gonna go far.
Watching Geneva Rust-Orta’s first ever performance at the Edinburgh was a bit like gazing at a Leonardo Da Vinci sketch. There is genius there, clearly she has the gift for comedy, but her youth & her inexperience still dominate both performance & material. She is only 21, and although her patter is of a woman twice that age, her life experience is such that is a scanty bed-soil from which to feed her talented eye for fun. Credit where credit is due, however, she’s only been doing comedy 9 months – a recent graduate in theatre down Yorkshire way, her end-of-year show had comedy elements in it, & her tutor suggested a spot at the Edinburgh Fringe. The spot she got was at half-past midnight, & trust me some of her stuff really does need to be on this late – she’s a bit, well, ‘open’ & a bit too ‘raunchy’ for anything earlier – but its all, well, rather hilarious.
Before arriving in Edinburgh, Californian Rust-Orta has already been pronounced as the UK’s second funniest Jew. Checking this & other stereotypes with a cheeky grin, Rust-Orta offers a unique insight into life, with realism rising out of every breath. A romantically-minded, comic poetess trapped in a neo-modern cage, I have a funny feeling that if Geneva sticks at it, her place in the comedy pantheon is assured, & her juvenilian sketches grow into a masterpiece even Da Vinci would have been proud to call his own.
Throughout 2016, it seems, women are slowly taking over the western world. Teresa May owns the UK, Clinton should take the States, Merkel dominates Europe & in the world of comedy, the Mumble has noticed that the best comedians at this year’s fringe have been, in the main, female. Last night I saw the veritable queens of these amazonians – a couple of intensely brilliant feminazis who strut onto stage in cat-suits barking, ‘I am woman, hear me roar!’ Bouncing off each other like lightning bolts thrashing a perfect storm, this is a comedy couple working at the highest possible pitch; sociopathic comedy, dramatic soliloquies, sexy vignettes are all stitched together to form a never-ceasing tapestry of fun, which the girls’ sheer excellence in accent-variation rises to the fore.
For me, the highlight of their material was Jackie Cooper Clarke, based, of course, on John Cooper Clark — a parody that was better than the real thing. The girls use classic songs, slightly tweaked, to accentuate their set – Black Velvet, Don’t Cry For Me Argentina, for example – which are all played on a keyboards by the wonderful Christoph, who also pipes in from time to time with some deep-throated stage directions or a joke of his own. Dangerous & dirty, brash & bolshy, wild & wicked, to N&P all men are fuc£-puppets – such as those two wine merchants from Windsor – & basking in their own sexuality they portray an absolute unfloundering confidence in their comedy. A true treat.
On a cold wet miserable Edinburgh night I found myself upstairs in the Aprex Hotel, awaiting the wonder that is Paul Vickers. We were here to witness the birth and demise of Twonkey’s Mumbo Jumbo Hotel & with a name like Twonkey I was not sure what to expect. My curiosity was getting the better of me. Emerging from behind a black curtain with puppet in hand, which looked like it had just come out of a witches cauldron, the room ballooned with instant laughter! The stage before us contained a minature set which reminds one of a child’s bedroom, while our host resembled a 1970’s children’s TV presenter. All this made a direct impact with the audience, that with a bewildered look on their faces looked completely baffled…
This is a comedy show with all the trimmings, mixing puppetry with accompanying soundtracks, we were cascaded down a waterfall of laughte – being tossed back and forward from sketch to sketch you are soon caught up in the mayhem of Twonkey’s Hotel. With a coconut duck and a singing tree stump, one audience member looked dumb-founded. This was an intriguing piece of comedy. Like a mad professor from another planet, he appeared to be more nutterey than Nutella. With psychic knickers, finger-puppets, miniature people, dynamite, and a chainsaw this allowed the audience the chance to participate in the madness at hand. Mumbo Jumbo Hotel is a throw back to childhood fun, with humour that punches you in the head, & in the bruise linger fond memories of days long gone.
With the puppet sketches, well-written hilarious songs and crazy dance moves, Mr. Vickers did get the unsuspected audience in stitches of laughter. Caught up in a wonderland of toys, mad impressions, miming, crazy jokes, this was all rather gob-smacking. An imaginative piece of theatrical comedy that will have an impact on all who see this show. If you have a cheeky one hour to spare at 9PM this August, take a journey back to your youth with Twonkey’s Mumbo Jumbo Hotel and you wont be sorry….
Comedians are clever people, yes, but Phil Mann is a genius. Not a comedy genius, although he is a pretty funny geezer, but seems to possess a wikipedia’s worth of fun & imagination in the creative whirpools of his soul. This is Mann’s tenth year in Edinburgh – he’s a highly-trained actor as well, so he must lead something of a romantic life, one thinks.
Loosely based on the theme of the abstract state of ‘nothingness’ Mann’s show is essentially one-man improv session, but remarkable in the fact the only person he really has to bounce off is himself. Beginning the show by nicking someones phone in order to create the soundtrack of the hour, & after the audience filled the blanks in several ‘read out’ cards, Mann proceeded to imagine this wee wonder;
Scene 1: Big Butts — A man who loves big butts and cannot lie is seeing a therapist in a hospital atop a mountain peak. He reveals issues about his past, his Dad, his life. The therapist is concerned about the size of his own butt.
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Scene 2: Canada —(Silent scene) Two bears fight and then make out. Two lumberjacks stumble upon them. They make out. Then the bears and the lumberjacks make out.
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Scene 3: Technology —A student invents a machine that writes essays for him. It writes “Vindication of the Rights of Bears by Bear-y Woolstonecraft.” They decide to publish.
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Scene 4: TV SHOW:Dexter — Dexter finds a serial killer that likes bad stuff, so he has to torture him by being nice.
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Scene 5: Big Butts — The hospital detaches from it’s peak and slides towards certain death. The therapist and New Yorker realise they can save themselves and cure the NYer of his Big Butt fetish by inflating the NYer’s butt and using it as wings to fly to safety.
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Scene 6: Canada — The Bear, now in a relationship with the lumberjack, manipulates him into not cutting down any more trees because if there’s no woods, then no bears can shit in the woods, then no truth can exist and he’ll ruin philosophy.
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Scene 7: Technology —The professor arrives and is dismayed to find that not only have his students made bears all powerful and stopped logging, but have actually created something new which is totally not the purpose of academia: you’re just meant to research things that already exist and write about it in another essay.
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Scene 8: VIDEO GAME:Car Crash Comedians 4: In order to win the game you have to find James May and beat him to death with a baseball bat, while he is crawling out the wreckage of a car crash.
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Scene 9: (Synthesis of all scenes:) The bear is killed by the flying therapy hospital as it flies past on the massive buttcheeks of the NYer. The lumberjack falls in love with a rabbit instead. The rabbit reveals “Vindication of the Rights of Rabbits” written by the Essay Machine indicating the whole cycle might start again…
And this quick-thinking wit ninja did all it so bloody well…
Reviewer : Damian Beeson Bullen
THE MUMBLE – Your show is a unique creation, what is the idea behind Nothingism:
PHIL MANN – It is a unique creation — even amongst the improv crowd, although most have been very supportive, some people have given me a very hostile reaction when I tell them what I’m doing. People don’t like you breaking the mould.
Nothingism is inspired by my love of art galleries and a number of paintings I’ve always loved. One of my favourite periods in art is the really weird one just after the turn-of-the-century. The Futurists, the Surrealists, the Dadaists were all very passionate about what is a collection of very weird, and very silly art. Passionate enough to riot in the streets, smash up theatres and galleries, get into massive brawls — I wanted to have a bash at creating my own movement that would do the same thing: take itself seriously and do an incredible amount of terrible things, but also be silly and funny at the same time.
I wanted to create an organisation that stood for nothing, meant nothing, did nothing, but also seemed to be behind everything major. Like a form of minimalism that did everything as well as nothing.
I am therefore extremely frustrated when after the show people tell me that Nothingism obviously meant something and represented something in particular (which they always seem to do) as I have gone out of my way to create a world which makes no sense and is a complete waste of everyone’s time.
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THE MUMBLE – This is your tenth trip to the fringe are you any wiser since your first about material
PHIL MANN – I’ve learned not to do stuff I don’t like. Some people have an attitude that “you can make a joke about anything” and that means you can say offensive stuff. I prefer to see it that if you are able to make a joke about anything, why would you waste that opportunity to make dick jokes and mock people worse off than you, when you can make a joke about anything else, and fill your show with amazing stuff.
I’ve learned to put myself in my shows wholly and chase what it is I love and hope an audience will follow me down that path instead of trying to make myself into something that already exists. I remember doing a show when I started out with a lot of “…and if you’ve met my ex-girlfriend…” type stuff. And I just can’t pull that off. I am weird, thoughtful, I love sci-fi, I love dystopia, I love long, complicated sentences, I love testing the boundaries of what is a joke, I prefer funny concepts over snappy punchlines. And I’ve gradually found an audience who likes that too.
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THE MUMBLE- What is it about Edinburgh that makes you keep coming back
PHIL MANN – That I can do my show here: it offers an opportunity to see shows and be seen, to do a full-length show without having to do ten-minute spots (which I don’t like doing, if I’m honest), and I don’t feel pressured to be anything but myself doing what I love. Being able to see six shows a day on my days off. Being able to flit between friends, bars, shows that I love and know someone in every pot-hole. Tramping around the gothic streets of black stone. Eating badly, drinking too much, watching the sun rise every day, throwing myself around in sweaty rooms in front of crowds. What’s not to love?
John is a story-telling comedian who takes you through a mixture of his own life story, little segments of his personal observations and occasionally ties-in formatted jokes. For me, John’s material has potential to be knock-out funny, but his delivery is well-off being fully honed. At the moment, John is concentrating on self deprecation as a tool to sarcastically induce a laugh from the crowd. However, it didn’t pay off for me. It is a dangerous style of comedy because if not measured correctly, it can leave the audience feeling pitiful.
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Cynicism and darkness are of course, styles of comedy, and can be great when measured correctly. I found John to be a bit more of a depressed Peter Kay, rather than the lunatic, Jerry Sadowitz. So I would encourage John to fight the fear and use them peepers to help the energy flow back and forth between him and his observers. John may know himself, but I think he still needs to find himself on stage. John has drive and a relaxed demeanour; essential for the job! He clearly has a thick skin and this makes him resilient. I think if John worked on mastering his craft a little differently, to tweak his raw ability, then he will be one to watch for next year.
The wee Kasbah room is tucked up inside a warren of rooms in the Espionage venue. A tiny arena befitting an intimate night out rather than the stage for an excellent comedian, it was fairly full of expectant punters. Of course with the front row was typically empty. They need not have been afraid to take their seats though, as Njambi had already told me she didn’t pick on audience members, as she wanted to keep them on her side. She introduced herself before she came on, which kickstarted the laughs, and she slipped onto stage with her elegant black dress and braids; fitting for the dry, sardonic sense of humour that she was about to unleash on us. As dry as the Sahara, if you’re going to use an African stereotype. ‘I’ve come by plane, just so you know’, and so begun her quick, cheeky unravelling of all those well worn Western stereotypes of African people. The flyer promises the following: ‘Having survived a beating that nearly killed her, Njambi McGrath is forced to confront the perpetrator, her father, for answers when their paths unexpectedly cross again.’ Although the painful relationship with her violent father formed the backbone of the hour, most of the flesh was in the form of punchy, hard hitting jokes, cleverly entwined metaphors and dead-pan one liners on a variety of topical subjects.
Njambi didn’t delve into a linear account of the story of her father as you might expect from the flyer. It must be such a painful story to tell that it has to be shredded up and tossed in to the script in a piecemeal fashion, padded out with piles upon piles of sharp, edgy jokes. This particular audience were a little stiff and quiet, not seeming sure of what to make of her material; unsure if it was OK for them to laugh or not. It was almost as if she was too clever for her audience, or perhaps the jokes were so hard-hitting and so dryly delivered, and served up with just a hint of a sardonic smile that they were falling on deaf ears. Come on guys, her Kenyan accent isn’t THAT strong…She throws in some comments about her father early on, so you get an inkling of his character from the start. Her needing to lie to him in order to avoid a severe punishment. “Who painted on the wall? Oh, Banksy did it!” or “Who threw those stones outside? Oh it was the Devil!”.
To be fair though, her delivery was so fast that you had to concentrate to keep up with the constant of barrage of jokes pelting out surreptiously into the audience’s minds. I was a little sleepy and slow after a late night out, and my brain was still slightly on slow-mo, but there was only just enough time for one joke to hit and sink it before three more hard-hitters followed. It would have been good for her to pause and watch the tough nuggets to get digested by the audience fully before moving on. Let us savour and enjoy her wicked jibes in their full, succulent glory. She threw in jokes thick and fast with clever metaphors that had some of us dullards struggling to keep up. By the time the significance of one joke had hit us hard she was off, running down the track with another.
We all enjoyed the jibes at internet attention seekers putting their heads in crocodile’s mouths and expecting to be spared. As she named it, ‘Teaching assholes a lesson’! She imagined Donald Trump and Sarah Palin being tortured with general knowledge questions that they can’t answer. ‘What is the capital of Togo?’. The fitting punishment for their ignorance being ‘hugged by Muslims with ticking clocks’! And laughs came at twisting our perspective to being the recipients of all those unwanted cuddly toys dumped abroad, those that resemble the wild animal you’ve just had to flee and being the children suspiciously ripping the heads of sinister looking white dolls. Watching cows’ shit was much more entertaining, she muses, as the Barbies we got don’t even have a vagina!
She talked quite a bit about her childhood growing up in Kenya, laughing at the trials of having a battery-operated TV set, which when it cut out, had imaginative aunties as back up to fill in the blanks in the story. She pauses as she imagines talking to her aunt with the wide eyes of a child, “Are you sure there was witchcraft in Dallas?” She talked about being grounded in good African reality rather than the Disneyfication of our hopes and dreams; that marrying for love rather than obeying your family’s wishes is really not going to work out for you. I must find a copy of ‘Love Brewed in the African Pot’, just to give my own Disney inspired ideas of ‘Happily Ever After’ a reality check. As she said, Beauty and the Beast a few years down the line isn’t going to be all it was cracked up to be, with him old, grizzled and foul and demoralised Beauty going to look for sex with waiters on holiday!
I think it’s difficult when you want to discuss some serious matters as part of a comedy show, which all good comedians attempt, but your audience have no cultural or historical reference points to really understand the depth of what you’re trying to convey. The horrors of King Leopold of Belgium’s holocaust in the Congo, the Mau Mau rebellion and the concentration camps run by the British a handful of years after the Jewish Holocaust are not subjects the audience was familiar with. I’ve studied African history, been to Kenya and my son bears a Kikuyu name, so by accident I happen to know a little of the subject matter. But we should all know this stuff. The British education system deliberately steers us away from facing up to our own historical crimes, and this is why new voices on the comedy circuit are like a breath of fresh air into the hidden vaults of our own shameful past.
There were very poignant moments as she recalled the full horror of what her father did to her and how she faced it. It’s so fast you barely have time to imagine the scene, but fleeting images are probably enough. It’s an inspiring story of hope and compassion; digesting the pain of it with both compassion and humour. She lost the crowd a little towards the end, perhaps because she was worrying about their muted reaction. It was very mixed; the group in front absolutely loved it and found it fascinating. The group behind, from the Scottish countryside, were bewildered and confused, muttering that they ‘felt cheated’. Having just witnessed such a unique and well constructed show for free, I wondered what experience they had been expecting?
Ben Shannon (Nottingham) & Mike Reed (Merthyr Tydfil) are old Uni mates – they love each other & their love each other’s comedy in equal measure. Last year they found themselves on the geographical fringes of the Fringe – Moriarty’s on Lothian Road -, liked it, & decided to come back & do it all again. Its location, actually, is good – its more like a machine-fun border post for West Edinburgh, trying to take folk out with laughter before they hit the battlefield. Going there’s a bit like going to Skye – its a bit of a trek but its worth it!
Bright, cheerful and consistent, this was great free comedy by a determined duo. The show is divided into two – Ben is a cheeky wee surrealist, who feeds on the audience energy like a jack russel wanting to go for a walk when it sees its owner get his shoes on. Back and forward his banter went, as with a questionnaire of curios questions they dug deep to find the fun in peoples occupations. For the second half, Mike is a classical joke-teller, all of which are buzzing amidst the perfect storm of his mind. The two styles on offer make for a good blend throughout the hour. With slap-stick jokes about family and girlfriends & modern life, they managed to get their increasingly talkative audience to chuckle along like a leaf on a river in May.
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Mumble Comedy 