TheGuardian – Page 238 – ComedyNews.Org :: Comedy News Organization

‘Why did the lefty cross the road?’ How liberal Edinburgh comics are panning PC

August 25, 2017TheGuardian

A new wave of comedians probing faults in leftwing politics provoke a crucial debate, but does their exaggerated antagonism hamper the cause?

Identity politics has gone too far. PC has gone mad. These aren’t unfashionable opinions: they’re practically mainstream. What’s new in fringe comedy is that we’re now hearing it from leftwing comics. That’s both a fascinating phenomenon, and a troublesome one. Fascinating because there may be some truth in these propositions, and the left needs to interrogate them. Troublesome because standup doesn’t always favour nuance and fine margins, and one or two of these leftwing comedians – whether they’re mocking champagne socialists, rehabilitating slavery or defending the Iraq war – can start to sound (accidentally or on purpose) pretty rightwing.

Fin Taylor is pre-eminent among them – a rising star whose 2016 show Whitey McWhiteface made hay with white identity and privilege. It was an excellent show, as is its follow-up Lefty Tighty Righty Loosey, with which he again lays siege to the complacency of his (presumed to be) white, leftwing audience.

Spencer Jones review – dorky clown lobs gags in gleefully madcap comedy

August 25, 2017TheGuardian

Heroes @ Monkey Barrel, Edinburgh
The laughs keep coming in The Audition, a ramshackle tale of Steven Spielberg, talking robots and a bank-robbing fish

There aren’t many ways that a Spencer Jones show resembles the work of Anton Chekhov. But you can be sure that when he mentions in passing that he has accidentally purchased 250 tennis balls, the principle of Chekhov’s gun will hold: those tennis balls are coming for us, probably in the form of one of the unlikely prop gags with which dorky clown Jones is fast making his name.

In his previous two shows, performed in character (sort of) as his alter ego The Herbert, Jones’s ramshackle brand of comedy has supplied big laughs but minimal structure or coherence. Here, no longer sure whether he’s in character or not, he delivers his richest show yet. Its story, about Jones being invited to audition for a Steven Spielberg robot movie, furnishes it with a stronger backbone, while our host has dialled down the childlike dorkiness a notch.

Spencer Jones review – dorky clown lobs gags in gleefully madcap comedy

August 25, 2017TheGuardian

Heroes @ Monkey Barrel, Edinburgh
The laughs keep coming in The Audition, a ramshackle tale of Steven Spielberg, talking robots and a bank-robbing fish

There aren’t many ways that a Spencer Jones show resembles the work of Anton Chekhov. But you can be sure that when he mentions in passing that he has accidentally purchased 250 tennis balls, the principle of Chekhov’s gun will hold: those tennis balls are coming for us, probably in the form of one of the unlikely prop gags with which dorky clown Jones is fast making his name.

In his previous two shows, performed in character (sort of) as his alter ego The Herbert, Jones’s ramshackle brand of comedy has supplied big laughs but minimal structure or coherence. Here, no longer sure whether he’s in character or not, he delivers his richest show yet. Its story, about Jones being invited to audition for a Steven Spielberg robot movie, furnishes it with a stronger backbone, while our host has dialled down the childlike dorkiness a notch.

Elf Lyons review – daffy take on Swan Lake delivered in Franglais

August 25, 2017TheGuardian

Underbelly Med Quad, Edinburgh
With a parrot costume, Jacques Brel songs and silly set pieces, Lyons dreams up an almost aggressively winsome hour of complete nonsense

Is it comedy, or a spirited child let loose on a dressing-up box? In Elf Lyons’ Swan, it is not always easy to tell. The show – a one-woman-plus-puppets rehash of Swan Lake – is almost aggressively winsome. A graduate of Philippe Gaulier’s clown school, Lyons delivers it all in wide-eyed Franglais, while dressed in a party-shop parrot costume. “Quoi?” as she might say. “Quoi not?” You could parse the show for satire on the gender politics of ballet, or for its supposed insights into Lyons’ mental health (“I’m on Prozac!”). But in fact this is dottiness for the sake of celebratory dottiness, an hour of our time (and many more of hers) dedicated to complete nonsense – which Lyons just about justifies.

Tears of clowns: who are the saddest of TV’s sad comedians?

August 25, 2017TheGuardian

Television shows built around standup comics have taken a turn for the despairing. Louis CK has a lot to answer for

“Are you havin’ a laugh?”

Not recently, no.

Jordan Brookes review – wildly entertaining standup demolishes conventions of comedy

August 24, 2017TheGuardian

Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh
You seldom know exactly what’s happening in this set as our host prowls the room, eyeballs the audience and wreaks confusion

Is the comedy world big enough for another Hans Teeuwen? The influence of that great Dutch disturbist is unmissable in Jordan Brookes’ new show, Body of Work, which transferred from the Free Fringe to the Pleasance and has been nominated for the Edinburgh comedy award. Like Teeuwen, Brookes is here to wreak confusion and instability – not as a substitute for laughs but as an alternative route. You seldom know exactly what’s happening. You can’t take a thing he says seriously, or can you? The register – from sweet to unruly and all points in between – changes on a dime. It’s a precipitous experience, and Brookes’ boldness and talent ensures he’s never dwarfed by the comparison to the Amsterdam man.

Mae Martin: Dope review – hair-raising comedy about romance and rehab

August 24, 2017TheGuardian

Laughing Horse @ City Cafe, Edinburgh
In a likable and thoughtful set, the Canadian standup revisits her adolescence and explores the affinities between relationships and recreational drugs

You might think Mae Martin’s appearance on this week’s Edinburgh Comedy award shortlist crowns the emergence of an exciting new talent. Scratch the “new”: now 30, the Canadian has been doing this for more than 15 years. Her show Dope takes us back to the standup apprenticeship she served as a misfit adolescent in Toronto. The way she tells it, comedy was an entry drug to, er, drugs. Teenage Martin went on the stage, off the rails and into rehab. Half a lifetime on, she explores that period, and her own obsessive personality, in a likable and thoughtful set from a performer who’s made the overlap between personal revelation and social/anthropological commentary her own.

Edinburgh comedy awards: the nominees in full

August 23, 2017TheGuardian

Female comics dominate the nine-strong shortlist for the ‘Oscars of live comedy’, as shows about a breakup, a goodbye and class consciousness make the cut

• Plan your trip: the Edinburgh 2017 shows we recommend

The Edinburgh comedy award shortlist has been announced, and it features more female comics than ever before. The nine-strong shortlist – the longest in the history of the prize – includes four women, one of whom (Elf Lyons) dresses as a parrot, and another of whom has promised never to perform standup again. The latter, Hannah Gadsby, won the prestigious Barry award at the Melbourne comedy festival and has been hotly tipped for its Edinburgh equivalent, with her hard-hitting show about gender violence and the limits of comedy. The winner will be announced on 26 August by the League of Gentlemen, who won the award in 1997.

Sophie Willan review – cheery standup skewers lazy labels

August 23, 2017TheGuardian

Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh
In a cracking show, Branded, Willan has an easy rapport with the audience as she interrogates her identity as a northern, female, working-class comedian

Northern, female, working-class. When Sophie Willan made her comedy debut last year, the industry pounced on her – she tells us – because of who she was, rather than what she did. “I never expected my identity to be more sellable than my talent,” she says now, introducing a cracking sophomore hour, Branded, that strains against those and other pigeonholes. It’s complex, broadly comic and thoughtful, never stinting on Willan’s trademark blunt and gossipy good cheer.

To begin, she interrogates those three identifying terms. Northern? Shorthand for nostalgic ideas about whippets and salt-of-the-earth values, against which Willan interposes modern Manchester and its love of hummus. Female? Cue dating stories, including a bathetic account of why you shouldn’t go green at a “traffic light party”. Working-class? A label whose hip-again status Willan gleefully mocks, before complicating the picture of her own background – not just the abandoned daughter of a drug-addicted mother, but also a Bolton-to-Bristol exile teased by her friends for returning home posh.

Edinburgh fringe’s funniest jokes, from 2012 to 2017 – video

August 22, 2017TheGuardian

Chuckle at officially the best gags from the Edinburgh fringe festival in recent years. From Stewart Francis’s 2012 one-liner to Ken Cheng’s 2017 triumph, all were voted winner of the Dave funniest joke of the fringe award

Ken Cheng’s pound coin gag voted Edinburgh fringe’s funniest joke

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