The best shows at the Edinburgh festival 2018
Plan your schedule with our roundup of top shows, ordered by start time. This page will be updated daily throughout the festival Continue reading…
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Sheeps: Live and Loud Selfie Sex Harry Potter review – sorrowful, silly, utterly sublime
Pleasance Dome, Edinburgh
The comedy trio return in stunning style, weaving rage, hurt and absurdity into one gleefully funny sketch show
Six years ago in the Queen Dome venue – one of Edinburgh’s best for comedy – Pappy’s delivered their never-to-be-forgotten Last Show Ever, a hymn to youthful friendship wrapped in a killer set of sketches. Now Sheeps take to the same stage with something similar, and almost as fine: a gloriously silly show about itself, and about growing up and growing apart, finely stitched into a series of unpredictable, beautifully performed sketches. It left me light-headed with enjoyment.
Maybe that’s because I’m already a fan: if you have seen Sheeps’ earlier work, or are familiar with Liam Williams’ dour persona elsewhere, this show’s razzle-dazzle song-and-dance opener is intensely funny. (“We’re funny,” they sing, in dreadful voices, “and the show is go-o-o-d.”) And so it is, even if it’s constantly interrupted by fall-guy Daran Johnson, harping on the heartache of a recent breakup. As the hour progresses – we visit an east London tech company with an in-house riddler; we meet reactionary thinker du jour Jordan B Peterson – a backstory comes together of how Williams and Al Roberts have been gulled into bringing Sheeps back to Edinburgh.
At Pleasance Dome, Edinburgh, until 27 August.
Read all our Edinburgh festival reviews.
Continue ReadingAd Libido review – taking female pleasure into her own hands
Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh
Fran Bushe’s comedy uses glitter and smart songs to advocate better understanding of sex for women
Fran Bushe wants to fix sex. Armed with glitter, songs and a diagram of her vulva, she’s on a mission to kickstart her own libido and change how we think and talk about female pleasure – and its opposite – in the bedroom. After trying and failing to enjoy sex for 15 years and facing a parade of unhelpful advice from GPs, Bushe is taking matters into her own hands.
Though, of course, it’s not that simple. Bushe wants a quick fix, a happy ending, but much of her solo show is about how life – and sex – don’t work that way. At least not in the sexually unequal society we still live in. Ad Libido is unapologetically personal, to the extent of including intimate snippets from Bushe’s teenage diary, yet it also lightly suggests the external pressures that many women feel when making decisions about sex. Often throughout Bushe’s quest it becomes as much about soothing the feelings of male partners as trying to make sex pleasurable for herself.
Continue ReadingAd Libido review – taking female pleasure into her own hands
Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh
Fran Bushe’s comedy uses glitter and smart songs to advocate better understanding of sex for women
Fran Bushe wants to fix sex. Armed with glitter, songs and a diagram of her vulva, she’s on a mission to kickstart her own libido and change how we think and talk about female pleasure – and its opposite – in the bedroom. After trying and failing to enjoy sex for 15 years and facing a parade of unhelpful advice from GPs, Bushe is taking matters into her own hands.
Though, of course, it’s not that simple. Bushe wants a quick fix, a happy ending, but much of her solo show is about how life – and sex – don’t work that way. At least not in the sexually unequal society we still live in. Ad Libido is unapologetically personal, to the extent of including intimate snippets from Bushe’s teenage diary, yet it also lightly suggests the external pressures that many women feel when making decisions about sex. Often throughout Bushe’s quest it becomes as much about soothing the feelings of male partners as trying to make sex pleasurable for herself.
Continue ReadingThe Tape Face Show review – kohl-eyed comedian comes unstuck
Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh
Sam Wills’ mime and prop-act is a big draw, but his new show ramps up expectations with too little comedy payoff
A new show, with all-new routines, from the erstwhile Boy With Tape on His Face is bound to be a big Edinburgh draw. It was here, before the West End runs and stints on America’s Got Talent, that Sam Wills’ mime and prop-comedy act first made waves. I regret having to report, then, that this is his weakest offering, a series of audience-interactive stunts that trade over and again in the not-so-comic clash between bombastic buildup and underwhelming anticlimax.
Wills’ earlier shows as the kohl-eyed boy with the gaffer-taped mouth mixed household-object visual gags with improbable on-stage games for audience members. Usually, they climaxed in some visual coup that Wills had worked to accomplish. But too often here, there’s no payoff. Whether it’s his paper aeroplane contest with a punter, the walking on broken glass sequence, or the pillow fight opener, invention is at a minimum and the expected flourish seldom comes. Time after time, it’s just hype (lights, loud music, Wills ramping up our expectations), followed by audience members doing something stubbornly unexceptional on stage.
At the Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh, until 26 August.
Read all our Edinburgh festival reviews.
Continue ReadingThe Tape Face Show review – kohl-eyed comedian comes unstuck
Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh
Sam Wills’ mime and prop-act is a big draw, but his new show ramps up expectations with too little comedy payoff
A new show, with all-new routines, from the erstwhile Boy With Tape on His Face is bound to be a big Edinburgh draw. It was here, before the West End runs and stints on America’s Got Talent, that Sam Wills’ mime and prop-comedy act first made waves. I regret having to report, then, that this is his weakest offering, a series of audience-interactive stunts that trade over and again in the not-so-comic clash between bombastic buildup and underwhelming anticlimax.
Wills’ earlier shows as the kohl-eyed boy with the gaffer-taped mouth mixed household-object visual gags with improbable on-stage games for audience members. Usually, they climaxed in some visual coup that Wills had worked to accomplish. But too often here, there’s no payoff. Whether it’s his paper aeroplane contest with a punter, the walking on broken glass sequence, or the pillow fight opener, invention is at a minimum and the expected flourish seldom comes. Time after time, it’s just hype (lights, loud music, Wills ramping up our expectations), followed by audience members doing something stubbornly unexceptional on stage.
At the Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh, until 26 August.
Read all our Edinburgh festival reviews.
Continue ReadingFin Taylor: When Harassy Met Sally review – white-hot takes on #MeToo
Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh
Amid the garish sex comedy, the standup provocateur makes a striking effort to embrace the complexity of gender politics
Those who shoot from the hip can easily shoot themselves in the foot, but Fin Taylor seems happy to take that risk. Taylor is one of those (straight, male) provocateur comics whose fearless plain speaking can shade into shock-jockery. But he’s a lively watch and often worth listening to – in recent years on the subjects of race and leftwing tribalism, and now – hold on to your hats! – on post-#MeToo gender politics.
When Harassy Met Sally isn’t a delicate take on our current moment, but alongside the missteps and highly debatable claims, there is some worthwhile thinking. And – in lieu, perhaps, of trigger warnings – Taylor has devised an amusing way to signal when his hot takes are about to get hotter to handle.
Related: ‘Why did the lefty cross the road?’ How liberal Edinburgh comics are panning PC
Continue ReadingNatalie Palamides review – big, uneasy laughs in fearless Time’s Up comedy
Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh
Palamides’ goofy interactive comedy about a macho ‘douchebag’ has a confrontational sting in its tale
You could piece together Natalie Palamides’ remarkable new show, Nate, by splicing some of the great fringe comedies of the last half-decade. Adam Riches’ rowdy burlesques on alpha masculinity are in there, as is Zoë Coombs Marr’s cross-dressing satire on sexism, Dave. It’s hard not to recall Adrienne Truscott’s game-changing show about rape jokes, Asking for It. Then there’s Palamides’ own Laid, which won her the best newcomer title last year and whose eccentric, silly-but-suggestive atmosphere is recreated here.
It is a potent cocktail: a goofy interactive comedy about a macho “douchebag”, with a confrontational sting in its tale. Nate starts superbly, as Palamides – disguised under a lumberjack coat, biker boots, shaggy moustache and marker-pen chest hair – motorbikes on stage to a cock-rock soundtrack. She is chugging cans, toting fake phalluses and flaunting her 2D masculinity.
Continue ReadingLost Voice Guy review – self-lacerating comedy with something to say
Gilded Balloon, Edinburgh
Britain’s Got Talent winner Lee Ridley combines the political and personal with razor-sharp observations about disability
‘If you expect me to be that sweet and innocent tonight, you’re in a for a big surprise.” And so Lee Ridley greets his audience – those wooed by his winning stint as Lost Voice Guy on the recent run of Britain’s Got Talent – in a tiny garret room at the Edinburgh fringe, booked before fame came calling. His new show, Inspiration Porn, is more political – and more vulnerable – than anything you would expect to see on the same TV programme as Simon Cowell. It is a distinctive mix of barbed disability comedy and the kind of self-mocking humour that Hannah Gadsby, with her Netflix hit Nanette, has recast in a troubling new light.
There were times, in other words, that I felt saddened by how ruthless Ridley is with himself onstage – his disability (Ridley has cerebral palsy and is unable to speak), supposed unattractiveness and low self-esteem. But that is his prerogative, and certainly fits with his show’s rejection of the inspirational rhetoric that surrounds high-achieving disabled people. In the “posh old man” tones of his voice synthesiser – the unorthodox comic timing takes some adjusting to – he contrasts inspirational quotes and “yes we can” Paralympic mottos with the realities of his own life: lazy, lonely, he tells us, and “shit at everything”.
Continue ReadingLost Voice Guy review – self-lacerating comedy with something to say
Gilded Balloon, Edinburgh
Britain’s Got Talent winner Lee Ridley combines the political and personal with razor-sharp observations about disability
‘If you expect me to be that sweet and innocent tonight, you’re in a for a big surprise.” And so Lee Ridley greets his audience – those wooed by his winning stint as Lost Voice Guy on the recent run of Britain’s Got Talent – in a tiny garret room at the Edinburgh fringe, booked before fame came calling. His new show, Inspiration Porn, is more political – and more vulnerable – than anything you would expect to see on the same TV programme as Simon Cowell. It is a distinctive mix of barbed disability comedy and the kind of self-mocking humour that Hannah Gadsby, with her Netflix hit Nanette, has recast in a troubling new light.
There were times, in other words, that I felt saddened by how ruthless Ridley is with himself onstage – his disability (Ridley has cerebral palsy and is unable to speak), supposed unattractiveness and low self-esteem. But that is his prerogative, and certainly fits with his show’s rejection of the inspirational rhetoric that surrounds high-achieving disabled people. In the “posh old man” tones of his voice synthesiser – the unorthodox comic timing takes some adjusting to – he contrasts inspirational quotes and “yes we can” Paralympic mottos with the realities of his own life: lazy, lonely, he tells us, and “shit at everything”.
Continue Reading