From infidelity to insomnia and taxidermy … the funniest gags we have heard so far from this year’s standup shows
Robert Garnham: Insomnia is awful. But on the plus side – only three more sleeps till Christmas.
Dan Antopolski: Centaurs shop at Topman. And Bottomhorse.
Continue ReadingThe Canadian comic may look like she needs ID to get into her own shows, but her Fringe show is her frankest (and funniest) yet
‘I love being gut-wrenchingly honest,” says elfin comic Mae Martin when we meet in an Edinburgh cafe. “It’s so satisfying.” Other standups booked on the same bill as her should consider themselves forewarned. “I find it hard not to say personal things when I’m compering. Like the other night, I was introducing a friend and I told the audience: ‘This guy’s great, we had a threesome once …’ He was, like: ‘What are you doing?’ The crowd heckled him so much. All they wanted to hear about was the threesome.” She gives the sort of bashful, butter-wouldn’t-melt smile that enables her to get away with anything on stage. “I really need to be careful.”
Now may not be the best time to start. The Toronto-born, London-based comedian, who is 30 but would surely need to produce ID to be allowed into one of her own shows, is at the fringe with Dope, her funniest and frankest set to date. It examines addiction in all its forms, from social media to relationships to drugs, and relies for its success on her ability to bring comic effervescence to a heavy subject.
Related: Sara Schaefer: the breakout comic on trashing Trump and bombing on stage
Continue ReadingSix of the best from Edinburgh including Mat Ewins’ barrage of one-liners, a German teacher placement at a secondary school and a transgender journey
Pleasance Courtyard
Building on the success of her 2016 show about sexism in comedy, the no-nonsense Welshwoman delivers a lean and effective set about a year spent volunteering with vulnerable kids. It doesn’t sound funny, but it really is, thanks to her brusque wit and a high quotient of thoughtful, self-lacerating jokes. BL
Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh
The standup provides near-constant laughs in a startlingly honest, high-powered show that spares no one – least of all himself
Can things get any worse for John Robins? At Christmas, he was dumped by his partner of four years, Sara Pascoe. She’s now performing a hit Edinburgh show that’s candid to the point of cruelty about their breakup. I’d fear for the man’s wellbeing were his own show on the subject to be eclipsed by hers. Happy to report, then, that it’s every bit as good. Not only is Robins extremely forthright about his emotional wretchedness post-breakup, he’s also consistently, uproariously funny. The two moods don’t contradict, they complement – which is an impressive feat.
“My flatmate’s left,” is how he kickstarts this standup cri de cœur. The truth hurts, and Robins needs coping mechanisms: calling her “flatmate”, expressing his feelings in a chirpy cockney accent. The first half recounts his new life in “Grief Mansions”, staring, buying bad furniture (because he can) and itemising the trivial pros and crushing cons (“one-all!”) of no longer being Mr Pascoe. Recollecting that relationship’s petty frustrations, he paints a merciless picture of himself as a neurotic, socially maladroit manchild. “I would leave me too,” he announces, at the show’s emotional nadir.
Related: Sara Pascoe: LadsLadsLads review – breakup tales from a woman reborn
Continue ReadingAfter writing gigs on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon, the American standup is heading for the big time via a show at the Edinburgh festival fringe
Losing control of your bladder in a grocery store. Being bullied at school for using men’s deodorant. Getting posture problems as a result of walking with a constant stoop to hide your flat chest. These and other harrowingly embarrassing tales are the stock-in-trade of Sara Schaefer, the latest potential US comedy superstar to head to the Edinburgh festival fringe. In recent years, Trevor Noah and Michael Che both played the fringe as near-unknowns before getting their current jobs at The Daily Show and SNL respectively. Schaefer could well be set for similarly great things.
Related: Laugh a minute: Edinburgh festival’s 2017 comedy lineup
Related: Trevor Noah: ‘It’s easier to be an angry white man than an angry black man’
Continue ReadingSummerhall, Edinburgh
The political comic mixes debate about Britain’s future with confessional memoir in an odd hybrid that solicits contributions from the crowd
Mark Thomas has called this latest fringe outing The Show that Gambles on the Future, which you’d peg as a reference to Britain’s Brexit vote. It isn’t, or not explicitly. The campaigning comic’s new set (he alternates these days between standup and solo theatre shows) is an interactive affair, soliciting audience proposals for what the near-future holds. Thomas then reads out these written submissions, joking about some, canvassing support for others, and peeling off to perform standup about growing up in south London at the heel of a terrifying dad.
Related: Edinburgh festival 2017: the shows we recommend
Continue ReadingScott Gibson returns to the fringe after winning the best newcomer award in 2016. Can Scotland’s comedians triumph again this time?
Fringe history was made last year when, for the first time, Scottish performers walked off with both major comedy awards: best show and best newcomer. Native talent had seldom bothered the shortlists previously, and some hope this double whammy might inspire emerging acts to follow where – over the last decade – Frankie Boyle, Susan Calman and Kevin Bridges have sporadically led. Others, better versed in local comedians’ vexed relationship with their home-turf festival, sound a note of caution. “There’ll be comics in Scotland who heard the result and went, ‘Brilliant!’,” said 2016 best newcomer Scott Gibson. “And there’ll be others who say, ‘Well, that’s us for another 25 years!’ That’s how we think, and it’s stupid.”
Related: Laugh a minute: Edinburgh festival’s 2017 comedy lineup
Continue ReadingPleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh
The trio play depressed, maladroit losers with absolutely straight faces, and give an object lesson in offbeat humour
Making a virtue out of necessity, I’d call it – except that there’s nothing virtuous about Gein’s Family Giftshop, a sketch group who’ve cornered the market in dark, offbeat humour. Usually a trio on stage (Gein number four, the standup Kiri Pritchard-McLean, directs), they’re down a permanent member this year, after James Meehan pulled out on the eve of the fringe. What others might consider an obstacle, Gein’s exploit as an opportunity for more bad-taste humour, as the last two standing, Ed Easton and Kath Hughes, send up their own isolation and kick bitchily downwards at the ringer they’ve brought in to deputise for their absent friend.
Related: Gein’s Family Giftshop: the new League of Gentlemen?
Related: Edinburgh festival 2017: the shows we recommend
Continue ReadingAssembly Rooms, Edinburgh
The former first minister of Scotland and ex-MP promises a political kiss and tell, but while a convivial host, fails to deliver the goods
When the former first minister of Scotland and now ex-MP Alex Salmond announced this last-minute fringe run, it sold out faster than you can say “independence in Europe”. Perhaps punters were seduced by the promise of (as the title runs) “Alex Salmond … Unleashed”. He’s been promising to kiss and tell, hinting on the Today programme at a story involving – of all things – sado-masochism and Kirsty Wark. Sure enough, the show begins (after a rousing reception from the crowd) with Salmond theatrically removing his tie. He’s buttoned up no more, and we buckle up for juicy gossip from behind the scenes of Scottish and UK politics.
But that’s not what we get. Instead, Unleashed is an hour of music, clubbable chat with a special guest, and some reflections on Scotland’s historical ties to Europe. (Each show will have a different theme.) Today’s visitor, greeted with surprise by the crowd, is the “Brexit bulldog”, David Davis – to whom we have to be nice, Salmond instructs us, because they’re pals. If we hadn’t been told, we’d guess from the chummy conversation that follows. Two old guys, two upholstered leather armchairs: think gentleman’s club and you wouldn’t be wide of the mark.
Continue ReadingHeroes @ The Hive, Edinburgh
Running against the prevailing trend for sincerity in comedy, Mat Ewins’ Indiana Jones-inspired show is a paean to daftness, fabrication and windups, with a terrific gag rate
“You might as well call it the Edinburgh whinge festival,” says Mat Ewins, towards the end of his new show. Sincerity and self-disclosure are the new comedy virtues, he protests – whither now the incorrigible joker, committed not to truth-telling, but windups, pranks and silly jokes? Well, Ewins’ show Adventureman 7 (don’t ask) might just be good enough to propel sheer idiocy back into fashion. It’s an absolute hoot, a DIY Indiana Jones spoof constructed from digital animations, good-natured crowd interaction and a droopy stick-on moustache. Oh, and the most brilliant wool-over-the-audience’s-eyes moment we’re likely to experience anywhere at this year’s festival.
From the venue (a subterranean bunker with bad sightlines) to the gimcrack videos, the show could hardly be more homespun. Ewins, runs the subtext, is a doofus with time on his hands, and he’s used it to imagine an alter ego for himself, a novice treasure-hunter charged with retrieving a lost amulet, and thereby saving his museum workplace from closure. Along the way, Ewins resists not one opportunity to detour up unexpected byways, whether that’s leading us in a shanty singalong with very unlikely lyrics, conducting a hazard perception test with a homicidal motorist in the audience, or promoting his new compound crockery product, “the Cuplate”.
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