Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh Witnessing 9/11 from school as a six-year-old is one of many mental distresses recounted in the New York comic’s often piercingly bleak setWhenever you think trauma-comedy has reached its apogee, along comes a show to mak…
Continue ReadingThere are benefits and perils in talking about your personal experiences – as Richard Gadd found after his TV show went viral. So how are Edinburgh acts handling it this year?‘If you’re not in an OK place, you’re just re-traumatising yourself,” says An…
Continue ReadingPleasance Courtyard, EdinburghThe American standup and sitcom writer delivers a show of ticklish suspense that somersaults with invention and surpriseNot all comedy shows need weighty themes or moments of bare-all vulnerability just before curtain-fall…
Continue ReadingStandup Olga Koch, whose dad was once the deputy prime minister of Russia, is weighing in on the debate about class and wealth in the industry in an unusual way – by addressing it head-onNo Edinburgh fringe is complete without a strident conversation a…
Continue ReadingEnjoy a good one-liner? Here are some of the best rib-ticklers from the annual comedy extravaganzaOlaf Falafel: My desire to spontaneously sing The Lion Sleeps Tonight is always just a whim away.Jack Skipper: I failed RE. Couldn’t believe it when I fou…
Continue ReadingPleasance Courtyard, EdinburghThe straight-talking comic’s debut hour is cheerfully rude and glowing with maternal love, as she describes parenting a son with autismAt a festival with 3,600 shows, some will feel samey. But no other performance is likel…
Continue ReadingOr What’s Left of Us by Sh!t Theatre is a playful and starkly profound hour in which the duo share their bereavements and stir reflections of our ownWhen someone you love dies, the grief can be almost unbearable, but there can also be a sense of someth…
Continue ReadingMonkey Barrel Comedy, Edinburgh Armed with spreadsheets and her usual playfulness, the comic attempts to evaluate the worth of her life so farHas autobiographical comedy reached its apotheosis? You might think so given how Zoë Coombs Marr’s show Every …
Continue ReadingJust the Tonic at the Caves, EdinburghBrown engages in good faith with questions of guilt and remorse, while perceiving bad faith in his critics’ responses to an old routine that included the N-word‘Give me a cheer if you’ve ever experienced remorse!” …
Continue ReadingSatirical musicals are trending at this year’s fringe, but there are plenty of intense one-person shows too, a knockout coming-of-age drama, and the unmissable return of Every Brilliant ThingMy biggest mistake of the Edinburgh fringe wasn’t mixing up i…
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