Comedy Reviews

Jessica Fostekew: Hench

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VENUE: Monkey Barrel Comedy

TIME: 1:30pm – 2:30pm, 1–25

Aug, not 12

TICKETS: £5

Feel that buzz. Jessica Fostekew bounds into this packed room in an impressively low-key fashion, despite the palpable excitement throbbing from the throng. Given the fitness theme of the show, she could have blown off a bit of pre-gig tension by doing a few squat thrusts, or a quick circuit of Monkey Barrel 4. But no: Fostekew is preternaturally relaxed, hits the ground running with a spot of feminist flirting, then barrels straight into her topic, and the pain of a very modern pick-up line. “Thank you for my compliment!” her wounded soul bellows.

Actually postnatally relaxed is more like it, as the Motherland star has been through much bigger stresses than a hotly-tipped Fringe show. Motherhood, in short, and all the gender issues that entails, when your little boy starts aggressively following traditional stereotypes, despite your best efforts. First, though, Fostekew takes us through the birth, a routine so excruciatingly funny she manages to get great chunks of the audience doubled-over in pain too. It’s a marvel of timing and tone, keeping the narration as calm as can be to really maximise the moments of great shrieking fury. It also features the best ‘shut up!’ since Rik from The Young Ones

This really is a masterful set from Fostekew, with much to say about body image, gender roles and the undeservedly tough status of the testicle – although there’s a definite cooling in the room when she disses diets, at length. Perhaps demonising that whole concept is a step too far. Otherwise, it’s flawless. Absolutely flawless.

✏︎ Si Hawkins

Paul Currie: Trufficle Musk

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VENUE: Heroes @ The Hive

TIME: 9pm – 9:55pm, 1–25 Aug, not 7, 14, 21

TICKETS: £5

One could experience a performance of Trufficle Musk and conclude that Paul Currie is a master at getting audiences on side, but his relationship with today’s crowd evidently goes back beyond this particular show. Even before he has said or done anything, the sell out room has willingly offered itself to him. They will gladly do whatever the performer asks, whether this involves clapping and singing along to the snippets of music that soundtrack his clowning, or being blindly escorted by him onto the stage. There’s a great atmosphere in the venue, unlike anything to be found at other comedy shows,

Alice Snedden: Absolute Monster

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VENUE: Pleasance Courtyard

TIME: 9:45pm – 10:45pm, 31 Jul –25 Aug, not 14

TICKETS: £8 – £10

Why change a winning formula?

Alice Snedden was in this same bunker at the same time last year, with her debut, and sold it out. Halfway into this run she gently mixes things up, by trying out an exciting new way to bring herself on stage – but that’s about it, on a gimmick tip.

and it makes for an intoxicating experience. It must, however, be admitted that at this stage, the audience is as much responsible for this mood as the performer.

What Currie does prove himself a master of is undercutting the celebratory nonsense with a palpable sense of pain and darkness. Abuse and trauma are strongly hinted at throughout the piece, the otherwise joyful tone rendering these naked, emotionally raw asides all the more poignant.

If you want to take Trufficle Musk as pure whimsy, then it holds up as supremely inventive prop comedy. However, there’s much to recommend in the show beyond this, and you don’t have to strain too hard to find its bold and true subtext. ✏︎ Lewis

Porteous

The following hour is just rip-roaring standup, from an act who seems almost too close to the finished article, already. They’ve definitely been operating some sort of leftfield-entertainer training school over in her native New Zealand, like those sinister old Soviet Olympic camps. Ever wondered what happened to the Lord of the Rings locations? There’s your answer.

Actually Snedden is a bit off-message in that respect as Harry Potter is more her steam, and umpteen references to that franchise hurtle past along the way – the old stuff plus the new play. She’s up to speed. Not that the wizardly-agnostic need worry, as she tackles a whole range of subjects that may not sound instantly relatable to everyone, from mooncups to her other life as a lawyer: the delivery is key.

Those lawyer brags are part of Absolute Monster’s major theme—that Snedden’s life is probably better than ours—but she’s actively pushing our buttons here, skilfully sewing that awesome-Alice seed before it takes a sizeable twist later. In truth the big comedown isn’t quite as well-crafted as the build-up, so the show fizzles slightly towards the end. Perhaps that’s intentional, though: always leave them wanting more. Same time next year? ✏︎ Si

Hawkins

Eric Lampaert: Borne of Chaos

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VENUE: Laughing Horse @ The Counting House

TIME: 4:15pm – 5:15pm, 2–25 Aug

TICKETS: FREE

Borne of Chaos is a bold, dramatic depiction of the genuine terror of mental health issues and the subsequent clarity that develops when these problems—temporarily or permanently—go away.

Eric Lampaert approaches the topic with admirable frankness. He

Lou Sanders: Say Hello to Your New Step-Mummy

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VENUE: Monkey Barrel Comedy

TIME: 3:15pm – 4:15pm, 1–25 Aug, not 14

TICKETS: £8

Surfing a handy wave of recent TV exposure, Lou Sanders lands back in Edinburgh as something of a Fringe stateswoman, with a solid batch of shows under her belt. She’s perhaps not a matriarch, though. Are step-matriarchs a thing?

That show title is chiefly due to Sanders’ love—particularly on social media—of sexy dad jokes – or rather, sexy jokes about your unsexy dad, and a couple of juicy examples set this show’s bar early doors. Anyone who discovered this reformed absurdist via a TV show such as Taskmaster might be taken aback by the sheer scale of her oversharing. She’s almost like those ‘80s primetime comics, candidly lays out the significant events from his childhood and adolescence that he believes contributed to his own mental health issues, and in doing so he opens himself up for dissection.

Aspects of the show are highly disturbing, with Lampaert able to contort his body and voice in the most sinister of ways. The comic’s horrifying physical manifestation of depression itself is something that will remain in the subconscious for a while.

But he flits between sinister theatrics and knob-gags frequently, and while the transition sometimes feels slightly strained, the smut feels like safe territory and we’re happy to get back to it.

Although indulgent at times (with some of his dance routines, it isn’t clear if he’s taking the piss or not), Borne of Chaos has huge theatrical value.

The show isn’t designed to be a smooth ride. It’s an artistic depiction of depression, anxiety and psychosis, and we shouldn’t find that comfortable. Ultimately, Borne of Chaos is about growth, developing understanding and forgiveness. It’s about owning your past experiences, trauma and mistakes, and seeing how you have grown from them. ✏︎

Becca Moody

who’d then do a bit of blue in the clubs, but a patriarchy-poking 2019 version.

Then again, any fans of the recent live shows might worry whether Sanders has anything left to give. Let those fears be allayed: she remains absolutely awash with jaw-dropping anecdotes, even after a chap-free year due to the advice of her WhatsApp-based spiritual healer. There are teenage antics, massages-with-benefits, and when all else fails, wildly inappropriate dreams.

These are no idle or compulsive boasts, though. There’s a sharp undercurrent of social comment to Sanders’ shows nowadays, while joking candidly about rarely-discussed body stuff can make a useful difference: as she recently discovered, going public about your private parts is a big deal when there are young women considering potentially harmful procedures due to porn-fed paranoia. Comedy reaches places that other outlets rarely reach, and Sanders is a fearless pioneer. All power to her elbow.

Hawkins

Laura Lexx: Knee Jerk

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VENUE: Gilded Balloon Teviot

TIME: 5:15pm – 6:15pm, 31 Jul –25 Aug, not 5, 14

TICKETS: £9 – £10

Laura Lexx should be in a bigger room than this. She’s been around for a while – she was part of The Pleasance’s productive AAA Late line-up back in 2013 – but, after a successful festival last year with an hour of sweetly sad standup about her inability to conceive, she’s consistently selling-out Gilded Balloon Teviot’s tiny Turret space with her new show Knee Jerk, and seems to be belatedly earning the accolades she deserves.

Her strength is her ability to discuss difficult, depressing subjects with a rare lightness of touch. She practically bounces

Sean Morley: Soon I Will Be Dead and My Bones Will Be Free to Wreak Havoc Upon the Earth Once More HHHH

VENUE: Heroes @ The Hive

TIME: 3:20pm – 4:10pm, 1–25 Aug, not 7, 21

TICKETS: £5

The single-minded Sean Morley is having a bit of moment when it comes to comedy. He’s had good moments—much acclaim for last year’s show, I Apologise for My around the stage with nervous energy, her face constantly lit up with a cheeky grin. She freely admits that she can only just keep a lid on her mental health issues. “But it’s a shit lid, like a coaster over a pint glass,” she laughs.

In Knee Jerk, she takes on the stuff we’re all worried about: politics (she wittily skirts the B-word, replacing it with “Leeds United” instead), climate change, and robots taking all of our jobs. She tackles each with a refreshing lack of invective, though it’s not difficult to work out where her sympathies lie. “It’s 1939 and the Germans are coming over the hill,” she regularly repeats. “And we’re sat here playing tiddlywinks.”

She’s got the bite to back up her bark, though. Her closing bit, about transphobia in sport, is an increasingly irate, and utterly inspired analysis of netball. It’s classic Lexx: heavy stuff, dealt with lightly. ✏︎ Fergus Morgan

Recent Behaviour— but this one is more existential, an entertainmentbased ennui about the whole talking-at-people business. And so Morley has chosen to express this emotion not by taking a sabbatical and writing a self-lacerating blog post, but by crafting a typically memorable show about, well, bones.

A skeleton does indeed make some important appearances here, notably in the epic opening piece that involves an ancient king, a worthy champion, a packet of Rennies and—he insists—just “a nod to comedy”. Nope: it is rattle-the-ribcage hilarious, making genuinely impressive and easyto-overlook use of some lengthy pre-taped audio that could easily be a right old mess if this wasn’t such a tightly run ship of thoughtful weirdness.

There is method—and message—to this apparent madness. The show’s mid-section involves a lengthy debate about the adult-and-baby dynamic, which leads to much jocular audience participation, while loosely concealing a heftier metaphor. Today, it flies; other days, who knows?

Then we’re onto comedy, and whether it should exist the way it does. The whole mic/stage power trip does cause some acts some angst, and before the mind-bending finale here Morley suggests a less problematic alternative, involving performers basically shouting up from a well. Presumably the bucket speech would then involve people filling it then lowering it. It’s a wild guess, but you would probably receive less. ✏︎ Si Hawkins

Demi Lardner: Ditch Witch 800 HHHH

VENUE: Gilded Balloon Teviot

TIME: 9:15pm – 10:15pm, 31 Jul –26 Aug, not 12

TICKETS: £10.50 – £11.50

Two years in and Demi Lardner already seems a significant fixture in the Fringe firmament, much to her apparent surprise.

Where other comics court the critics and awards, with powerful shows about their messed-up lives and our messed-up world, Lardner is drawing mutant horses, spewing gunk and having a right good dance. Her shows are like a twisted update on those cool ‘90s comedy shows like In Living Colour, where they’d cut to a bunch of random street-dancers between sketches: Lardner’s on a budget so does it herself.

The award-laden Australian is even less beholden to narrative than last year, where dark themes

Tony Slattery: Slattery Will Get You Nowhere HHHH

VENUE: The Stand Comedy Club 3 & 4

TIME: 3pm – 4pm, 13–25 Aug

TICKETS: £12

Ably assisted by comedy historian Robert Ross, Tony Slattery is on the comeback trail and the Fringe is all the better for it. Revered for having one of the sharpest minds in the industry, his lurked under the lunacy – lots of stepdad digs. There’s still a hint of that here, notably some bizarre old home-movie footage, but generally it’s just a riot of ideas thrown together. She even forgets to do one bit, and decides to ditch it with no obvious repercussions.

This may be haphazard but there’s something splendidly distinctive about Lardner’s big beat-fuelled and often gleefully gross gags. She gives due recognition to the sound guy—whose timing needs to be top-notch too, as many of these punchlines involve audio tricks— although what’s also refreshing is her lack of faux-politeness about the Fringe, and even her venue neighbours.

Evidently there’s been an issue with her banging tunes interfering with the show next door, but it comes back the other way too. “Hearing his applause is so fucked up,” she says, during an otherwise quiet bit, “but I’m taking it.” She doesn’t need it. ✏︎ Si

Hawkins

talents have been held hostage to well documented personal troubles and substance abuse. 40 years on from his Edinburgh debut, however, he proves that his wits are largely intact. His brilliance simply takes longer to come into focus.

At times he appears to lose the thread of his thoughts, lapsing into incoherent speech and tapping his knee frantically as if trying to fix a broken TV set, but he always recovers. It’s thrilling watching Slattery’s spirit overcome his body.

The format of Slattery Will Get You Nowhere is alarmingly cosy. Ross—who repeatedly insists that his friend is a “legend” with a “unique mind”—is here to prompt a series of unprepared anecdotes which we’re expected to savour for a full hour. But once we get beyond a predictable opening that sees the fallen star make light of his current need for professional rescue and justify the career moves that cost him fame and money, we really do start to see an interesting, honest and funny performance. The old charm is present, but joined by a compelling intensity and darkness. At its best, this show is like looking into the abyss only for the abyss to laugh back. ✏︎ Lewis Porteous

Frisky & Mannish’s PopLab

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VENUE: Assembly George Square Gardens

TIME: 7pm – 8pm, 1–25 Aug, not 12, 19

TICKETS: £14 – £16

It’s been 10 years since comedy music duo Frisky & Mannish burst onto the Fringe, and seven since their last new show. This year’s festival sees Laura Corcoran and Matthew Floyd Jones—certifiable Fringe royalty—return with PopLab, another hour of silliness with songs. It’s a show of two halves – the first is great, the second is not.

The pair are now scientists in a laboratory, where they perform experiments with test tubes full of musicians and genres – a framework that allows them to creatively cross-pollinate tunes.

Bob Dylan and Adele become Bob Adelan. Cher and Aerosmith become Cherosmith. “And I don’t want the world to see me,” sing the Pussy Cat Goo Goo Dolls. “Don’t Cha?”

The showstopper comes early. Frisky & Mannish have detected an outbreak of Tropical House Virus, and they lay the blame squarely at Ed Sheeran’s door. It’s incurable, unfortunately, and they hilariously test song after song against the trite xylophone riff from ‘Shape Of You’ to prove it. Even the entirety of Les Mis is infected.

Marlon Davis: Emotional Black Male

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VENUE: Underbelly, Bristo Square

TIME: 6:50pm – 7:50pm, 31 Jul –25 Aug, not 12

TICKETS: £10 – £11

Modulating his voice, Marlon Davis commands both upbeat club-style material, amplified and ebullient, and sections oozing with emotional depth. All soft tones, you can almost hear our chairs creak as we lean in to listen.

Wisely, he begins with the upbeat: a bit of chat with the crowd, jokes addressing his slightly squeaky voice – his young son has a deeper voice than him already even though his voice hasn’t broken yet. It’s all carefully constructed good-natured banter, emblematic of an act comfortable with the comedy circuit.

But we learn that things started to unravel for Davis in his personal life when his girlfriend announced she doesn’t feel the same way about him anymore. Then he hit a tree with his car and ended up in a coma for a month.

If the first half is borderline brilliant, though, the second is distinctly stale. An attempt to rework Rick Astley into different musical styles suggested by the audience fails to work three times out of three – 'Never Gonna Give You Up' can’t be crammed into Motown, apparently. The duo are as deft as ever, but when they start rolling out old material (the 'Stalker Medley' of love songs is almost as old as they are), you can tell they’ve run out of ideas. ✏︎

Fergus Morgan

It’s a measured performance that is beautifully penned. Even a routine as regular as stealing towels from hotels is invested with so much embroidered language it raises it above the norm.

That said, the chronology of the piece does feel slightly confused as he shifts about in his tale, the effect somewhat disjointed. Was the break-up before the accident? Is the majestic Lucy his ex? But overall it doesn’t distract from the impact of the material. It’s a gripping tale with one of the most satisfying bits of wordplay in any title on the Fringe. ✏︎

Marissa Burgess

Georgie Morrell: Eyecon HH

VENUE: Gilded Balloon Teviot

TIME: 2pm – 3pm, 7–26 Aug, not 12

TICKETS: £9 – £10

Georgie Morrell is blind in one eye, and for one year had no sight in either eye, and is startled to discover she has become an accidental icon of the disabled world. She bemoans how supposedly well-meaning media speak to her as if she represents all people with disabilities, and require her and others to be either

George Egg: Movable Feast HH

VENUE: Assembly George Square Gardens

TIME: 4:30pm – 5:30pm, 1–25 Aug, not 12

TICKETS: £10 – £12

They say that history appears twice, first as tragedy and then as farce. When George Egg first broke onto the scene, he forced us to think outside the box – to look beyond the constraints of modern corporate-controlled life and seize control. Poaching fish in a hotel kettle wasn’t just a way of making a tasty meal, it was an act of liberation conducted in a soulless hotel room – a way of seeking lemonade when modern life seemed tireless in its lemon supply.

What, then, to make of tonight’s menu of chicken cooked in an oven an inspiration or superhuman. The aim here, then, is to offer an alternative, individual voice. While much of her set is structured around her appearance on the Victoria Derbyshire show, it also speaks to her desire to not be required to speak on behalf of what she calls “blindees”. Indeed, she’s keen to indicate that she’s a pretty unpleasant person, addicted to gossip and obsessed with royal feuds and Chris Hemsworth. An anecdote concerning a puppy certainly seeks to comically disgruntle in its grossness. She also hates feminists, seemingly because they supposedly insist she shouldn’t take compliments from men.

But this bitchiness doesn’t fully convince. Her barbs are not vicious enough, and she comes across as someone trying to be nasty rather than it being ingrained in her core. Similarly, a sequence where she reimagines her life as a Hollywood movie— replete with the inspirational narrative demanded by the genre—is not forensic enough in its detail to sparkle comedically. So while she makes a persuasive and necessary case for transcending the representational status foisted upon her, the show doesn’t culminate as a display of an alternative comic voice.

✏︎ Brett Mills

done up to look like an engine, or aubergine cooked on a kitchen grill with a laptop sticker stuck on? Sure, it’s not fair to criticise a comic for developing their act into something different, but what even is this? As a cookery demonstration it’s fiddly but fairly beige; as an inspiration to do things differently it’s a gaudy spectacle. Egg can still deliver flashes of inspiration (black lime powder, anyone?), he can sure fillet a fish, and he can’t help but be likeable. But as he trundles out pedestrian banter on modern coffees, or Waitrose, it’s not inspiration that’s the predominant mode. Two Tim Key-like poems provide nice tonal variation, but don’t sizzle. Ironically, the biggest laugh comes when he mentions the dishes from his previous shows.

If there’s an image that sums up Movable Feast best, it’s that of Egg using a cement mixer to toss salad – over-engineered, wasteful, unnecessary. ✏︎ Evan

Beswick