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John Robins review – painfully funny account of breaking up with Sara Pascoe

August 15, 2017TheGuardian

Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh
The standup provides near-constant laughs in a startlingly honest, high-powered show that spares no one – least of all himself

Sara Pascoe: LadsLadsLads review – breakup tales from a woman reborn

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.

Mark Thomas review – comic gambles on his audience in a lively show

August 14, 2017TheGuardian

Summerhall, 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.

Rowdy, rude and darkly funny: Scottish standups at the Edinburgh festival

August 14, 2017TheGuardian

Scott 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.”

Gein’s Family Giftshop review – purist sketch group’s most memorable show yet

August 14, 2017TheGuardian

Pleasance 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.

Alex Salmond … Unleashed review – Edinburgh show is all bark and no bite

August 13, 2017TheGuardian

Assembly 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.

Mat Ewins review – declaration of independence from seriousness

August 13, 2017TheGuardian

Heroes @ 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”.

Steen Raskopoulos review – fruitful but uneasy audience participation

August 13, 2017TheGuardian

Underbelly Cowgate, Edinburgh
Not every audience member press-ganged into taking part in the Australian’s sketches has the confidence to keep up with a stellar performer

Tricky business, this audience participation. A whole genre of comedy has bloomed over the last few years, propelling this most awkward element of live entertainment centre-stage. Adam Riches is its most notorious exponent; Aussie act Steen Raskopoulos is closing in and returns (after a best newcomer nomination in 2014) with another neatly constructed set in which the audience play key roles. It’s good fun, at least in proportion to the enthusiasm of Raskopoulos’s volunteers (and I use that word loosely). But tonight, they’re not always happy, which made me uneasy in turn – voyeur to the public discomfort of others being itself an uncomfortable role in which to be cast.

There is, I think, a disingenuousness at the heart of the enterprise. “I wouldn’t ask you to do anything I personally wouldn’t do,” Raskopoulos tells us. But he’s a professional extrovert; his audience, presumably, aren’t. His show unfolds a series of sketches that resolve into a story. A bereaved horse grieves his slain stablemate. A naive kid (returning from previous Raskopoulos sets) celebrates his birthday alone. A driving lesson handbrake-turns into a bank robbery.

Trumped out: why the fringe can’t keep up with 2017

August 13, 2017TheGuardian

From Trumpageddon to Brexit: The Musical, many would-be topical crowdpleasers at this year’s fringe can’t match the manic pace of real-life news events

This would be a bad time to try to hire a blond fright wig from a theatrical costumier. The ones that aren’t being worn, combed forward, by actors playing satirical versions of Donald Trump are, hand-brushed upwards, on the heads of performers sending up Boris Johnson.

With thousands of shows on offer at the Edinburgh fringe, audiences are inevitably drawn – before the reviews and prizes come in – to productions with easily graspable themes that can be spread to the like-minded through social media.

Phoebe Walsh: ‘We’ve all spent five minutes looking for the right emoji’

August 12, 2017TheGuardian

She self-eviscerates in the style of tragic Instagram feeds and harvests jokes from unsent tweets. But comedian Phoebe Walsh’s twitchy social-media spin is revitalising singleton standup at Edinburgh this year

During her debut solo show, I’ll Have What She’s Having, comic Phoebe Walsh rattles off an onslaught of self-eviscerating one-liners in the style of a pointy-fingered club comic. She is the “sassy best-friend character in her own life story”. She is “Pocahontas on the streets, Grandmother Willow from Pocahontas between the sheets”. She is, quite simply, “Miss Selfridge”.

Much of Walsh’s set taps into the online trend for self-absorption and self-deprecation. It recalls popular social-media accounts that trade in the bleak realities of being a gross, lonely human on the internet, the antithesis of the humourless humble-bragging endemic. She channels the essence of So Sad Today, Expectation v Reality, Girl With No Job, The Fat Jewish and your vacant reflection in the black screen between Netflix episodes. Such is her zeitgeisty and somewhat unhinged take on the single-girl-in-the-big-city schtick, she is also probably not for everyone. “You’ll either relate to what she’s saying or feel glad that you don’t,” reads the show’s blurb.

It’s uncool to take about how much we are on our iPhones, but the internet is always the elephant in the room

Kiri Pritchard-McLean review – thorny issue tackled with sharp wit

August 11, 2017TheGuardian

Pleasance Courtyard
Voluntary work with vulnerable children is an unlikely subject for comedy but this show is packed with plenty of insights – and laughs

Even at a festival where comedians routinely tackle thorny subjects, the matter of Kiri Pritchard-McLean’s new show feels unlikely: Appropriate Adult is about her volunteer work with vulnerable children.

It chronicles her mentoring relationship with one 15-year-old girl, including reflections on her own maternal instinct and the millennial generation’s refusal to reproduce. Pritchard-McLean has form in tackling uncomfortable topics: her 2016 fringe debut addressed the vexed question of sexism in comedy. That show was good; this one’s better. Pritchard-McLean’s confidence and craft and has come on in bounds, and her new set is packed with laughs and not short of narrative incident.

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