Personal stories – of exile, homelessness, illness and existential terror – jostle for hearts and minds with farts and live bread-bakingIt will come as no great shock that much of the Edinburgh fringe is taken up with people talking about themselves, w…
Continue ReadingIt used to be that just wearing a dress and lip-syncing was enough. But now drag is mainstream, the bar for this most creative and transgressive art form has been raisedIt’s Friday night at the Edinburgh fringe. Artists are running all over town, weavi…
Continue ReadingMonkey Barrel Comedy, Edinburgh The standup rails against old-fashioned ideals of femininity, the diet industry and society’s policing of women’s bodies. It’s strong stuff.Who decides what’s womanly? Culture, you might say, or tradition, or the patriar…
Continue ReadingThe singular standup’s new show FaceTime is a delightful, devastating and stealthy account of his domestic woesThe 2004 winner of the Perrier award (as it was known then) pops up every few years with a show that bears no resemblance to the last. Withou…
Continue ReadingPleasance Courtyard, EdinburghWang is back with a new no-messing, harder-nosed attitude, along with excellent jokes including some choice one-linersPhil Wang made a little piece of fringe history this year before the festival even began, when he sold o…
Continue ReadingThe comedian, actor and writer on the things that make him laugh the mostWhen I saw Hans Teeuwen in 2009 I had never seen anything like him. He spent five minutes telling an invisible dog to sit and fed a Mars Bar to a sock. Continue reading…
Continue ReadingMembers of the Hoosiers, Maxïmo Park, Belle & Sebastian and Shed Seven talk about mental health, the pitfalls of the music biz and why they are swapping gigs for theatre audiencesFelix Scoot and Lee Delamere, from one-time chart-toppers Felix &…
Continue ReadingPleasance Courtyard, EdinburghParading her sex life, friendships and militant subjectivity, the triumphantly profane comedian takes a step into the big leagueThe men have gone sensitive, it’s been said of this year’s fringe comedy – while female standu…
Continue ReadingPleasance Courtyard, EdinburghThe standup, who was circumcised as an infant, gets het up in a show where the polemic overshadows the comedyDick jokes are as old as comedy, but few – Richard Herring with docu-comedy Talking Cock excepted – dedicate whol…
Continue ReadingA trio of performances – Daniel Bellus in Beat, Alexander Fox in Snare and Mick Berry’s Keith Moon: The Real Me – put drums centre stage It must be something to do with being at the back all the time, but give a drummer their moment in the spotlight an…
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