I was a little early for this one and had to wait 20 min for the show to start. So I was right at the front of the queue and first one in the room, where I was politely asked to sit right at the end of the front row! As I sat down and looked at the weird array of objects scattered around the stage I thought to myself – rookie mistake I wish I wasn’t right at the front,0 This guy is going to be all over me! Thankfully he was not; I love a good show but I am not too keen on being a star of it! Saying that, there was a lot of audience interaction throughout the show, with most of the people coming from the front middle. Spencer was actually very nice to them and didn’t take the mickey that much! He is a very funny guy, very quirky and you wonder what you have got yourself into from the start as soon as he appears on stage. Spencer has a way of seeing humour in just about everything from a noise, a squeak, a prop &… so on, with all of his observations very funny indeed!
Spencer’s routine is delivered at a reasonable pace and sometimes I was wondering what exactly was going on, but you just need to roll with it with this guy. Some moments are pretty out there while others are comic genius! it’s a weird collection of stuff that just shouldn’t be funny but so is & I guess that’s the true test of a comedy genius; make people laugh from nothing! He is a lovely man who really cares about what he does and I adored the fact he went to the door at the end and thanked everyone personally for coming. His act looks very natural and perhaps even easy, though I am sure that to make the littlest things appear funny must take an exceptional amount of work to master. Well worth a visit take a friend or two and don’t be afraid to sit at the front.
The Pleseance is one of my favourite venue,s with a thriving courtyard & several bars as you wander through, all of which are buzzing, and an undercover seating area which looks great to chill out in. Tonight’s venue, Room 4, possesses quite a modest name; it’s massive and holds hundreds of people – & tonight the place was packed for the show. Jess likes to make everybody very welcome as they enter the room, even standing at the front to help usher everybody in. She is a very classy lady and has the looks & acumen of a real star. In a nutshell, her show is a classic – though she does go on about her divorce a wee bit too much. OK we get it… comedians deal with their sorrow by making it part of their show, but do we really care about other people’s loss? No! Is it funny? Not really! But Jess has a lot more characters she can draw on for material than just herself… every famous woman there has ever been it seemed! She is a highly talented impersonation impresario, and nailed every one of them, I felt!
‘Impressive’ is a highly entertaining hour – the impersonations, singing & comedy weave together effortlessly & give the punter a lot more for their money than the average Fringe show. The supporting band are top notch, & were brought into the show at times, along with some great audience participation throughout! By the way – if you sit at the very front I hope you’re not shy and have some hidden talent.
I took a friend along to this one who absolutely loved it as well! Yeah, Jess does go on a wee bit about her divorce, but it’s not that big a deal really, & by the end of the show me and my mate would have quite happily signed up for the job of hubby number two. She is a very endearing talent and her ‘vision’ was thoroughly entertaining from start to finish.
Loose Brie is part of the Free Fringe, a rather rather insightful look into life played out in the middle of the afternoon in the basement of the Newsroom. Phil & Martin – the Loose Brie duo – appeared after what seemed like an age of shockingly bad intro music (did something go wrong backstage, perhaps?) & with oodles of enthusiasm driving them pell-mell through their pretty decent routine. I laughed – a lot – they had the right energy levels and charisma, they have excellent timing & a have a good crack with the audience — but something told me these dudes are by no means the finished article & can improve & then go on improving. Their material should evolve over time – there is certainly some stuff in there which doesn’t need to be here next time round, but some which clearly has to remain a part of their repetoire.
Overall though I was pleasantly surprised – the boys are not afraid to be a little bit out there and definitely gave it everything they had. They blended good audience participation into their show’s decent flow and we were never left wanting. Worth chucking a few squiddlies in the bucket for if you’re in the right place at the right time..
This was one wild ride from start to finish! As I stood in the queue at the Potterrow to enter the show I noticed the venue had been done up with a jungle feel – wooden decking and fake trees floating about everywhere. We were in the Queen’s Dome, & as I sat waiting for the rest of the crowd to come in I saw that even the ushers where up for this one! There was a real feel of electricity in the air — the word is out these guys are good! This was the biggest show I had seen so far with an audience in the hundreds rather that the tens. .
So, out they came, three seasoned professionals readying to blow the audience away. I was sat two from the front, so perfect eye-level view for the show (I did come to regret my view later!) These guys are in your face and loud, right from the start, in an action-packed, fun-filled carnival of testosterone. They have obviously been doing this a long time and it shows. They were funny throughout, with some genius comedy sketches thrown into the show that were simply brilliant. These guys are good – very, very good – they bounce off each other seamlessly, and I had a great time from start to finish. They never lost me once and all three were as equally as brilliant as each other. My Nana would love these total lunatics, and maybe my wee niece, but I would have to cover her eyes once or twice.
Britney? Britney? Britney? ‘Why was this comedy show called such a thing?’ I really wasn’t sure what to expect when I turned up for this one. Eventually I eventually discovered that the show is in fact about a brain tumor, & well, we were all now supposed to see the funny side – that laughter is the best medicine. The story is not all doom and gloom… it is a pilgrimage of hope, friendship, survival and love. It is about saying we should feel OK to speak about Britney and not to feel bad about it. Britney is a fact of life and she touches far too many of us. There were awkward moments for me as I watched, but this is the price of being confronted by brave, nerve-jousting comedians.
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Saying all that, however, I am very glad I went and saw them two girls in action… they have an incredible amount of talent, tons of depth, an endearing spirit and a very bright future. I did connect with the story probably a little too much for my liking and had a few tears in my eyes at the end. The problem was the Fart Twins – as the girls are more commonly known – were good, very good in fact! Hard not to like and very easy to connect with. Would I go back and see these girls again… yeah for sure! But for me, Britney was a touch too powerful.
So… I took a friend along to this comedy show, and I was definitely glathat I did. It was his first show of the festival and said afterwards ‘he will be back for more with his full family!’ The cats of Mixed Doubles began by portraying life in rural England and their trouble with re-naming the village green. It might not sound the most exciting of plots for a singular-themed sketch show, but it was very surprising and funny throughout. There wasn’t too much audience interaction, but that didn’t matter as were quickly immersed in this excellent show. The Doubles portrayed a smattering mix of village folk with very defined and very identifiable, yet uncliched characters that one instantly warms to as they wander about their small eclectic community.
This is a very polished act done with a lot of skill and great comedy timing, with each of the four cast members are portray their characters impeccably. The jokes are fresh and the material is mostly taken from ‘village life.’ This is actually a show for all the family & I would be happy to take my Nana along or my wee niece, being sure they would get a lot out of it. A great night is ensured – these guys are funny, on point, and their humour won’t offend anyone. Definitely one everyone should see – you won’t be disappointed!
It has always amazed me how someone can produce consistent humour week after week. That’s what a cartoonist does, often more frequently than that. “Drawing’s the easy part, being funny’s the hard part,” Harry Venning said to me after the show. For those of you who do not know him, Harry produces the cartoon strip ‘Clare in the Community’ in the Guardian, the (mis)adventures of a rather dour, humourless, ‘politically-correct’ social worker and her long-suffering, slightly overweight husband. He also draws ‘Hamlet’ a theatre-going pig, usually seen at the theatre bar – another dour, humourless character – for The Stage. Dour or not, they get laughs, and that’s the main thing.
Harry has been doing this release-your-inner-cartoonist routine, in one form or another, for some time now, so it’s not actually a new show he’s giving at the Pleasance. It is, however, one adapted for a family audience. It’s the kind of thing you might have expected to see advertised as ‘For kids of all ages’, meaning adults too, and indeed it comes with the warning ‘Parental guidance advised’. That means blood will be spilt, and occasionally there’ll be something slightly rude – but then kids love that sort of thing! The show or, more precisely, the audience-participation workshop, takes place in one of the little studio venues at the Pleasance, up several flights of stairs. It’s a small, intimate space, and is just about right for cramming the level of participation Harry aims for into an hour. Harry takes up his position – everybody’s slightly scruffy, eccentric, excitable uncle – at the front, with a flipchart and pens, we sit opposite, each of us with a clipboard, a few sheets of blank paper, and a pencil, and he kicks off with the story of Michael the Tiger. Michael the Tiger was so badly-drawn that no one even realised he was a tiger. That’s where the blood comes into it.
With the help of The Sad Puppy, Wayne Rooney, and The Eskimo Brothers, we are conducted through a quick and easy way to draw cartoons, starting with the eyes. The show’s humour isn’t side-splitting, nor is it at all cutting-edge, in fact it leans towards the Christmas-cracker, back-of-matchbox standard, but what the hell! I’ll give you a wonderful example. The kids in the audience join in with gusto while Harry draws a cartoon alien to order, responding to demands for twenty-eight eyes and fifteen ears by sticking the former on stalks and the latter in two rows of seven down the side of the alien’s head… making fourteen. The fifteenth he puts in the middle of the alien’s forehead. “You see,” he says gleefully, “I left space for the finalfrontear!” Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. There are twentieth-century cultural references left like Easter Eggs in the material for older members of the audience, perhaps making a gap between them and the youngsters, but overall Harry pitches it all just about right. That’s not easy to achieve.
I won’t bother with much more commentary, but I will mention a device which, for a cartoonist, serves many useful purposes. I refer, of course, to the humble asterisk. It’s because of that humble asterisk that I now have an original, signed cartoon of a dog’s bumhole. I shall treasure it forever. I’m going to be kind and give the event four stars across all categories – material, delivery, and laughs – with the proviso that groans are as valuable as laughs when we’re dealing with this kind of humour, and that its appeal is obviously limited. Go to it, and take kids. If you have kids that like to scribble on pieces of paper, or you’re an adult who likes to scribble on pieces of paper, and you’ll find it very enjoyable.
Nestled in a pigeon hole which looks as if it’s Cab Vol’s flyer distribution office the rest of the year I find myself awaiting Conor Drums (@conordrum) one man show. The venue is packed to the rafters (Capacity: 25) and the audience are keen to discover whether this slice of Free Fringe will prove to be worth throwing money in the bucket or throwing another hour of your life away.
Dubliner Conor quickly settles into his obcom routine, a skilled raconteur he rarely stumbled on words and in such an intimate venue his story-telling style worked well with the proximity aiding eye-contact with the audience He’s a young 35 and this mirrors in the comedy staples that provide his material (is there anyone who doesn’t do a joke on dating websites?).
The title of his show refers to watching all his friends get married off and that he’s got hardly anyone left to go out on the sauce with to be his wingman with the ladies. Housemates,snoring (she sounded like Darth Vader swallowing an apple) testicles, cheese, heroine and Netflix get covered but it’s his story about the stag do in Prague that is the most skilfully written and performed and also gets the biggest laughs and, you suspect, is probably true. I wish I had got the contact details.
He’s no Fringe virgin having been coming since 2012 and was completely unawed by an intimidatingly small venue and yes- I did put my money in the bucket (pint glass actually).
Award winning 8 out of 10 Cats writer James Farmer can certainly pull a crowd, 12.30 on a drizzly afternoon is no deterrent for fans hoping to see his festival debut “Can’t Adult, Won’t Adult” at the free fringe. We arrive at the venue 25 mins early to find there is already a queue winding from the Cowgate up Niddry Street; this show seems to be proving popular with people being advised to come back tomorrow; he could have filled the room 3 times over. Proclaiming his affinity with childishness, Farmer doesn’t fail to deliver. He opens the show with some audience participation; prompting the crowd to shout out their favourite word for penis; TODGER! BOABY! COCK! echo around the room, this gets the crowd giggling like little kids.
James takes us on a nostalgic journey through growing up, teenage angst and a bit of time travel back to 2003 where we reminisce about life before I- Tunes. The hour long show is gag heavy and he really packs a lot into it …if not at times predictable with some typical jokes and one liners. He is a likeable character and his delivery is enthusiastic and well received, with the biggest laughs coming from the younger members of the audience, as maybe the over twentysomethings have heard “the postman being your Dad” joke more than enough times. The sentiment behind the show reminds us of the struggle to become an adult, revisiting our childhood and the refusal to accept life’s obligations. This show is rude and silly and although might not make you belly laugh it is definitely full of giggles.
With a title like Lazy Susan: Crazy Sexy Fool my imagination was running wild. As we entered a military-like bunker at the far end of the Pleasance Courtyard and took our seats, the show began in earnest. Darkness became light and with that two animated figures burst from a corner, propelling themselves onto stage with criminal intent. Straightaway I knew this was old school sketch comedy at its best! Taking a trip through this comedy maze of slapstick jokes and hilarious facial expressions you are soon taken in with this wonderland of fun that is at hand; from cocaine-induced gangster squirrels, news reporters, police officers and slappers in a club, these two had the audience in bouts of laughter. With quick costume changes and backing tracks fitting like a glove, this show had something for everyone… .
Bringing us back to the early days of sketch comedy, it was heart warming to see such effort being put into their art – the show was well thought-out and planned with the audience ever in mind, is easy to get along with and delivers a catalogue of shocking but fascinating wee jokes. With Steve Coogan and a friend sitting next to me, I took the opportunity to ask them what they thought of the show and on answering he said ‘its nice to see comedy sketches from such young talent, totally enjoyed it.’ Enough said…
With an ‘Absolutely Fabulous’ feel to proceedings, the girls poking fun at feminism along the way, there are no places to hide if you are part of this audience. Laugh, giggle, chuckle, gasp or be shocked, take this show in your stride and be transported back to days past when comedy was comedy. Consistent, courageous , calculated and clever with good delivery, this show is worth its weight in gold. Spend your money sensibly and buy a memory by going to see this mind-curdling show by two elegant ladies. Fantastic entertainment !!!!
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Mumble Comedy 