Tag: Culture

Assembly George Square, Edinburgh
This pin-sharp satire on self-love doesn’t aspire to comedy so much as ‘connect’ with its audience, yet positively gleams with surprises and smart impro

‘I’m gonna go.” The first words of American comic Kate Berlant’s Edinburgh debut sets the tone. She has entered the stage, read the room – and tonight, it just doesn’t feel right, so “I’m gonna go”. Spoiler alert: she doesn’t – and thank goodness, because what follows is a pin-sharp satire on self-love and self-care, millennial-style. It’s effectively character-comedy, but Berlant is brave, or devious, enough to pretend the character is her.

To what extent she has a prepared set, or whether she’s making it up on the hoof, is hard to tell. She is, the New York Times tells us, “at the forefront of experimental comedy”. Hers is not so much a show as a 60-minute preen. We meet a woman whose self-regard needs its own exclusion zone, who assumes we must be fascinated by her every utterance. She isn’t here to perform comedy – perish the vulgar thought! – but to commentate, moment by moment, on the connection she’s making with her crowd. “I’m interested in the different tonalities of your laughter,” she blathers – and she nails the precious little vainglory of this brittle, self-delighted persona.

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Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh
Sam Wills’ mime and prop-act is a big draw, but his new show ramps up expectations with too little comedy payoff

A new show, with all-new routines, from the erstwhile Boy With Tape on His Face is bound to be a big Edinburgh draw. It was here, before the West End runs and stints on America’s Got Talent, that Sam Wills’ mime and prop-comedy act first made waves. I regret having to report, then, that this is his weakest offering, a series of audience-interactive stunts that trade over and again in the not-so-comic clash between bombastic buildup and underwhelming anticlimax.

Wills’ earlier shows as the kohl-eyed boy with the gaffer-taped mouth mixed household-object visual gags with improbable on-stage games for audience members. Usually, they climaxed in some visual coup that Wills had worked to accomplish. But too often here, there’s no payoff. Whether it’s his paper aeroplane contest with a punter, the walking on broken glass sequence, or the pillow fight opener, invention is at a minimum and the expected flourish seldom comes. Time after time, it’s just hype (lights, loud music, Wills ramping up our expectations), followed by audience members doing something stubbornly unexceptional on stage.

At the Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh, until 26 August.

Read all our Edinburgh festival reviews.

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Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh
Sam Wills’ mime and prop-act is a big draw, but his new show ramps up expectations with too little comedy payoff

A new show, with all-new routines, from the erstwhile Boy With Tape on His Face is bound to be a big Edinburgh draw. It was here, before the West End runs and stints on America’s Got Talent, that Sam Wills’ mime and prop-comedy act first made waves. I regret having to report, then, that this is his weakest offering, a series of audience-interactive stunts that trade over and again in the not-so-comic clash between bombastic buildup and underwhelming anticlimax.

Wills’ earlier shows as the kohl-eyed boy with the gaffer-taped mouth mixed household-object visual gags with improbable on-stage games for audience members. Usually, they climaxed in some visual coup that Wills had worked to accomplish. But too often here, there’s no payoff. Whether it’s his paper aeroplane contest with a punter, the walking on broken glass sequence, or the pillow fight opener, invention is at a minimum and the expected flourish seldom comes. Time after time, it’s just hype (lights, loud music, Wills ramping up our expectations), followed by audience members doing something stubbornly unexceptional on stage.

At the Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh, until 26 August.

Read all our Edinburgh festival reviews.

Continue reading…