The festival’s best joke award may have been binned this year, but the one-liners keep coming. Here are our favourites• 10 of the funniest jokes from the 2024 fringeOlaf Falafel: We named our children War and Peace – it’s a long story.Andrew Doherty: A…
Continue ReadingThe once musty old art of voice-throwing is back in vogue on stage and online. Its new hip practitioners – plus 1980s TV mainstay Roger De Courcey – explain why their vocal tricks and errant dummies are wowing audiences againIt is the greatest duet, pe…
Continue ReadingMonkey Barrel, EdinburghAmusing vignettes about arrogant consultants and undignified poos keep things light as Phillips documents a harrowing hospital experienceExpectations and reality don’t always align when it comes to childbirth. Lily Phillips (not…
Continue ReadingPleasance Courtyard, EdinburghThe character comic returns with another daft set of surreal characters and sharp one-liners – this time stuck in an open-all-hours cafeWhen Lorna Rose Treen won the best joke of the fringe award two years ago with a cheet…
Continue ReadingMonkey Barrel, EdinburghThe 2023 best newcomer winner rebuts her ‘mild’ reputation with choice quips and boyband eroticaOn her first visit to the fringe, Urooj Ashfaq left as the surprise winner of the best newcomer award. Now she returns, to rebut a d…
Continue ReadingScottish Storytelling Centre, Edinburgh Alan Bissett embodies both the expansive Big Yin and the detached author of Lanark in a thoughtful, entertaining search for their connectionThere is a scene in Alasdair Gray’s landmark novel Lanar…
Continue Reading@sohoplace theatre, LondonHenry is the first of a group of star performers taking Duncan Macmillan and Jonny Donahoe’s hit show about depression into the West EndSince its premiere in 2013, Duncan Macmillan’s one-person play about depression has gradua…
Continue ReadingAssembly George Square Studios, Edinburgh Robert Daws stars as the great comic author in this one-man show but is let down by lukewarm humourRobert Daws has lots of previous form on PG Wodehouse: he has played in various Jeeves and Woosters through the…
Continue ReadingThe sense of wonder never wavers in Hart’s charming ‘best of’ set, a fringe favourite in a year of crowd-pleasing card work, mentalism and a hidden-squirrel routineMagic is addictive. The more you see, the higher the bar rises, but the itch to be astou…
Continue ReadingPleasance Courtyard, EdinburghThe south Londoner’s avian theme frames a fine debut about family, neurodivergence, pigeons, pigeons and more pigeonsTwenty years ago, Original Pirate Material emerged from Brixton and made a star of Mike Skinner AKA the S…
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