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Steen Raskopoulos review – tears flow in emotionally raw comedy

August 20, 2018TheGuardian

Underbelly Cowgate, Edinburgh
The Aussie standup ditches blithe character-comedy for a brave show that is often more sad than funny

No one who’s seen the Aussie act Steen Raskopoulos would associate him with trauma-as-comedy. While Richard Gadd and Hannah Gadsby won awards for their soul-bearing shows about sexual violence, Raskopoulos just kept on supplying blithe character-comedy about mournful horses, bank robberies and interpretive dance. But his latest show, Stay, pulls back the curtain on what we thought we were getting from Raskopoulos: not multi-role solo comedy but ceaseless voices in an unhappy man’s head; not (as per his signature sketch) faux-sentimental scenes about abandoned kids, but cries for help.

The moment in Stay that first implies this is beautifully handled. But I’m not sure Raskopoulos’s sad story has quite completed – or ever will – its transformation into comedy. The latter stages are terribly raw; the 31-year-old ends the show in tears. There’s no seeming catharsis in the telling, or sense of why he’s telling this story now.

Adam Rowe’s jobcentre joke crowned funniest of Edinburgh fringe

August 19, 2018TheGuardian

Liverpool comedian follows in footsteps of Ken Cheng and Tim Vine in winning award

Comedians often strive to find laughter through the tears, and the winner of this year’s funniest joke of the Edinburgh fringe is no exception.

Adam Rowe has taken home the accolade after riffing on the challenges of being sacked. “Working at the jobcentre has to be a tense job,” he pointed out to his audience. “Knowing that if you get fired, you still have to come in the next day.”

Adam Rowe’s jobcentre joke crowned funniest of Edinburgh fringe

August 19, 2018TheGuardian

Liverpool comedian follows in footsteps of Ken Cheng and Tim Vine in winning award

Comedians often strive to find laughter through the tears, and the winner of this year’s funniest joke of the Edinburgh fringe is no exception.

Adam Rowe has taken home the accolade after riffing on the challenges of being sacked. “Working at the jobcentre has to be a tense job,” he pointed out to his audience. “Knowing that if you get fired, you still have to come in the next day.”

Mat Ewins review – hi-tech gags from multimedia noodler extraordinaire

August 19, 2018TheGuardian

Just the Tonic at the Mash House, Edinburgh
Artistry and geekery combine in a set that shows off Ewins’ clever video editing and pranksterish sense of fun

Brexit. #MeToo. Editing a newspaper on Mars. One of those isn’t a popular topic among fringe comics. Indeed, I can imagine only one comedian making a show about it. Step forward, Mat Ewins, 2017 comedy award nominee and multimedia noodler extraordinaire. Last year, he unleashed his fiendish programming and editing skills – and all-conquering sense of fun – on a spoof Indiana Jones epic. Now he ventures deeper into hi-tech tricksiness – but also reveals more of himself – in this tenuous foray into interstellar media.

It’s ceaselessly inventive and daft – and it’s “piffle” (Ewins’ word) too. How else to describe his videos of football matches with the ball removed, or his all-new Martian sport that involves catching cats with a magnetic moustache. The newspaper narrative is only ever a thread from which to hang these techie sketches, and even its denouement is constructed as a video game, in which the audience controls Ewins’ editor character in a high-stakes – and highly-ridiculous – job interview scenario.

Dylan Moran review – superb standup sets out to solve the problem of life

August 19, 2018TheGuardian

Stand Comedy Club, Edinburgh
In his new show Dr Cosmos, Moran ranges across religion, politics, cat personalities and TV ads for shampoo

Elsewhere on the fringe, twentysomething tyros will hurl their “hellzapoppin” comedy in your face, says Dylan Moran. But not here: “This is drive-time, people!” It’s not the first time the Irishman has played premature senescence for comic effect, but now there’s a new development. He’s stopped drinking, he tells us: “That’s why this show is a bit wonky.” Well, if this is wonky, I’d marvel to see Moran on point. Because Dr Cosmos – in its hour-long version before touring in expanded form – is top-drawer standup from this past master of the art form.

There’s no theme, save Moran’s bold promise to offer “all the answers” to the problem of life. With a crib sheet for assistance (he says teetotalism has affected his memory), he ranges across politics, religion, dinner parties and – he’s not always au courant – Findus crispy pancakes. It’s “not even jazz”, he says of the show’s modus operandi. “Jazz is too organised. It’s just -zz.” Certainly, the show derives some of its charge from its free-form nature. The impression, rightly or wrongly, is of a man plucking jokes and extemporised riffs from a head teeming with comedy. Few fringe shows come as well stuffed with sparkling material, or suggest that the act could probably keep operating at a high, if scattershot, level for hours.

Punchlines, power plays and Pussy Riot: Edinburgh fringe – in pictures

August 18, 2018TheGuardian

The original jukebox musical, a survey of the world’s ills, and defying the Russian authorities to appear at Edinburgh. All photography by Murdo MacLeod

Alex Edelman review – a Jewish comic walks into a Nazi meeting …

August 17, 2018TheGuardian

Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh
In Just for Us, the smooth-talking and apparently fearless Bostonian standup recounts gatecrashing a white supremacist gathering in New York

A young Jewish guy goes to a Nazi meeting assuming he’ll be OK … it’s the definition of white privilege, the Bostonian comic Alex Edelman’s friend tells him. Edelman, a best newcomer winner at Edinburgh four years ago, has always been upfront about his advantages in life – though it has not stopped a certain complacency creeping into his work now and then. But in his new show, he pitches himself squarely into a world in which privilege offers him little protection. Just for Us is built around a visit Edelman made to a white nationalist gathering in New York City. He did so on a whim, motivated only by curiosity and the likelihood, one assumes, that it would make for an eye-opening hour of standup.

Rosie Jones: ‘People feel awkward about disability so I always have jokes in my back pocket’

August 17, 2018TheGuardian

The Bridlington-born standup is at Edinburgh with her debut show. She talks about surprising audiences, her sitcom and how her cerebral palsy lets her push boundaries

How would you describe your sense of humour?

I’m very cheeky. Because of my disability, I know how to push things and I know where the line is. I can probably push that line further than a lot of able-bodied comics. I enjoy playing with what is comfortable, and trying to make people be more open and more willing to see past the disability.

Rosie Jones: ‘People feel awkward about disability so I always have jokes in my back pocket’

August 17, 2018TheGuardian

The Bridlington-born standup is at Edinburgh with her debut show. She talks about surprising audiences, her sitcom and how her cerebral palsy lets her push boundaries

How would you describe your sense of humour?

I’m very cheeky. Because of my disability, I know how to push things and I know where the line is. I can probably push that line further than a lot of able-bodied comics. I enjoy playing with what is comfortable, and trying to make people be more open and more willing to see past the disability.

The Pin review – one of Edinburgh’s most dazzling comedy shows

August 16, 2018TheGuardian

Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh
Terrific skits and inventive gags mean the laughs come thick and fast in a delightful new hour from the sketch duo

Cleverness comes as standard from sketch duo the Pin. In the past, they have never quite shaken the suspicion of smugness and a sense, perhaps, that we’re buying all that flamboyant invention at the expense of warmth. No such danger with their new show, Backstage, which is simultaneously one of the most dazzling comedy shows in Edinburgh and a complete hoot. It’s probably no coincidence that here, more pronounced than before, Alex Owen and Ben Ashenden embrace the straight man/funny man dichotomy they have hitherto resisted.

The conceit is that the Pin play second fiddle to another double act, Philip and Robin. After their support slot, Owen and Ashenden repair backstage to practise their sketches, snark about the audience and fantasise about taking over at the top of the bill. What follows is a giddy slice of Noises Off-style knockabout, overlaid with the Pin’s signature meta-comedy, as Owen, Ashenden, Philip and Robin chase one another on stage and off, identities get scrambled and a chair on the stage miraculously reappears – and vanishes from – behind the scenes.

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