The festival is in full swing with audiences crammed into comedy clubs. But is our global pandemic the elephant in the room?Comedian Sam Nicoresti starts his show with an elaborate sanitising ritual. Alex MacKeith kicks off with a number about lockdown…
Continue ReadingWith the fabled comedy showcase running until the end of August, we whittled down gags galore from this year’s standups to pick a dozen of our favouritesMichael Spicer: Why did the chicken cross the road? Because it saw someone from work on a Saturday….
Continue ReadingRoundabout @ Summerhall, EdinburghSamuel Barnett is remarkable in Marcelo Dos Santos’s one-man play which analyses joke-craft and a comedian’s compulsionsTowards the end of this enthralling monologue by Marcelo Dos Santos, the unnamed character played …
Continue ReadingMaking his fringe debut with a show about a troubled standup, the actor explains why he loves solo performance, his issues with The History Boys, and why this government’s days are numbered“It scares me,” laughs Samuel Barnett about doing the Edinburgh…
Continue ReadingThe festival stands at a crossroads, with costs for performers soaring and many younger acts staying away. But it still offers comics a boot camp like no otherAt the last Edinburgh fringe BC (before Covid), more than 3m tickets were sold for 3,841 show…
Continue ReadingComedian says his show ‘is what it is, for those who enjoy it,’ after complaints at Edinburgh fringeThe comedian Jerry Sadowitz has hit back at Edinburgh fringe promoters who cancelled one of his shows, accusing them of “cheapening and simplifying” his…
Continue ReadingJust because a joke works in one country or language doesn’t mean it will in another. Globetrotting standups talk about acts that have bombed – and the changes that saved themWhen Yuriko Kotani moved to the UK, she was confounded by our railway service…
Continue ReadingIt’s a form of comedy that has fallen out of favour with TV, but a trio of fun acts are keeping the sketch flame aliveOne of the pleasures of the fringe is checking in with standups as they first emerge, then break through, then revisit as household na…
Continue ReadingPleasance Courtyard, EdinburghA gang of New Zealand comics and their very special guests become Elvis impersonators, hobbits and chimney sweeps in a fun fringe nightGreat was the excitement on the festival’s opening weekend when Phoebe Waller-Bridge – …
Continue ReadingRoundabout at Summerhall, Edinburgh Sam Ward takes hints from his audience to imagine how their lives could go from here, in a bittersweet contemplation of fateThere is a joke in Waiting for Godot that comes after a rare moment of action. “That passed …
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