Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh In this winning pastiche set at a gender reveal party, Doherty plays a monstrous estate agent battling occult forcesCome to a show called Gay Witch Sex Cult, and you don’t expect a host like this. Kaelan Trough is an esta…
Back for its 15th year, this festival favourite finds a bespectacled primate sitting silently on stage for 56 minutes – to wild applauseThe queue snakes around the bar, stretches down the corridor and up the tightly packed lane to Edinburgh’s Victoria …
In standup especially, a joke is indivisible from its context. The ‘you had to be there’ rule should be more carefully observedDelayed in transit with Mr Z, I was looking for a way to fill precisely one minute. I’d scoped out my responsibility in the c…
One standup asks moral questions about her family’s post-Soviet wealth, the other uses a self-satisfied persona to survey his gilded lifestyle. Both strike comedy gold at Edinburgh fringeAt a festival where everyone’s losing money, and some can’t affor…
Monkey Barrel Comedy, EdinburghThe Mancunian’s sophomore fringe set, addressing his diagnosis of gout, is delivered with feral roars and fine one-linersIn these days of intensely autobiographical comedy, acts often rinse their identities, and empty the…
With a seaside-postcard sensibility, the standup delivers racist and sexist material that jars with the spirit of the fringeAs if we didn’t know to expect old-fashioned from Bobby Davro, the three shows preceding his, in his niche fringe venue, are tri…
Photographer Murdo MacLeod covers Scotland’s annual arts spectacular, from a musical Mexican seance to colourful juggling Continue reading…
Gilded Balloon at the Museum, EdinburghAlan McHugh’s play explores grief and the agony of treatment – but also hope and laughter in the face of adversityWhat a lovely thing to have done. When the great actor Andy Gray was being treated for leukaemia be…
Comedian was in top 10 on three previous occasions – here are this year’s best gags, as voted for by a public panelA joke by Mark Simmons has been declared the funniest of this year’s Edinburgh fringe festival, chosen by a public panel from a shortlist…
Debuts rich in neurodiversity and self-analysis jostle for attention at this year’s festival with a beloved grandma, the Russian elite and a misguided attempt at an apologyWe’ve reached the halfway point at the Edinburgh fringe, where more than a third…
