Scott Capurro, Teddy, Juliet Meyers, Jim Park, compere Vladimir McTavish - The Stand, Edinburgh, 10/04/2008

They say that familiarity breeds contempt, but this was a night that proved that old adage wrong. On the bill there was only one comedian that I had not seen before, and of the others, none I had last seen more than six months ago, two of them twice within that time. In all honesty, I might have given the show a miss if I hadn’t had been taking a visitor along. But in the end I’m glad not to have.

Vladimir McTavish, it has to be said, is a funny man, but is no MC. His curmudgeonly style is not exactly the best way to get an audience warmed up, and his interaction with that audience leaves a bit to be desired. Beyond a cursory introduction, he makes no great attempt to get to know any of their stories, instead content for the most part to cherry-pick from his large store of material and get the laughs going that way. He did a competent job, but I would prefer to see him as an act rather than performing this role in the future.

First on for the night was Juliet Meyers, the one new name for me. A middle-aged, Jewish and a bit of an aging hippie, she was a bundle of enthusiasm and energy from the word go. Again, as an opening act I would say she did what was required, but she isn’t someone I would particularly seek out again. It was something of a workmanlike performance. Very much a gag-teller, she was funny, but her material was mostly quite obvious and the punchlines were often slightly telegraphed.

Jim Park I have reviewed here twice before, and on both occasions I have been less than enthusiastic. So I’m actually quite pleased this time to be able to say that he is growing on me. With new material in the set, he had re-jigged the best of his older lines into a snappy opening few minutes that had a great rhythm and delivered the laughs well, and the new jokes, when they arrived, were equally strong. Meanwhile the air of vague bewilderment with which he performs disarms the audience and makes him easy to warm to.

Teddy, who followed, I had been equally dismissive of in my last review, and again I can only report a change of opinion. Even though he performed, for the most part, the same material, centred on a lengthy shaggy-dog story about a sexual encounter with the woman of his dreams which turned into a bit of a nightmare, he has clearly been busy trimming and honing the performance in the meantime. As a result, some of the more gratuitous crudeness had been stripped away, and the more bizarre and surreal moments had been highlighted making for a set that was not merely improved, but actually sounded fresher on this occasion than on first hearing it.

And talking of gratuitous crudeness, Scott Capurro is the master of that particular art-form. Seeming to get taller and skinnier every time I see him, the camp San Franciscan could read the phone book and make it sound pornographic. There’s a famous quote by George Carlin that the job of a comedian is to find out where the line is and then cross it, and this is something Capurro seems to have taken very much to heart. He is not a comedian for the faint hearted, as he gleefully pushes and pushes his audience to see how far he can bend them before they will break.

Nothing is off-limits in one of Capurro’s shows, as he runs the gamut of racial and sexual stereotypes, but always if you listen close enough it becomes clear that the butt of the joke is actually ourselves and our own highly-strung middle-class attitudes to these subjects. The basis of his humour is always that people want to tell you what it is and is not acceptable to joke about, without first stopping to consider what it is that they find offensive about it. That most people just hear the key-word and say “you can’t say that,” without listening to the context in which the word is being said. Capurro makes you listen and he makes you think, and he makes you laugh at the same time, and that’s really what all good comedy should be about.

Tom Stade, Teddy, Elaine Malcolmson, Keir McAllister, compere Bruce Devlin - The Stand, Edinburgh, 16/01/2008

If there’s one unwritten rule of comedy clubs, it’s “don’t sit in the front row.” Especially if, like me, you are the kind of figure the comedian’s eye is always drawn to. And even more especially if you have a pair of pink haired goth-girls sitting alongside you. But unfortunately, on this night, by the time we arrived it was front row or stand, and I’ve never been one to take the chicken’s way out.

Bruce Devlin certainly wasn’t going to resist, but first he had the little issue of the loud Essex “service delivery” woman out entertaining clients to deal with, particularly her apparent reluctance to explain exactly what service she delivered, as if it was a state secret. But Devlin is an equal opportunities offender, he works his way systematically around the room making sure everyone gets a little bit of the sharp end of his tongue. He’s a natural at the compere role, big, camp and bitchy, he is always ready with an appropriate barb no matter what is thrown his way.

Keir McAllister makes for a good opening act. A young, personable and good looking Dundonian, and those are words I never thought all belonged in the same sentence, he works the room well, mixing prepared material about his own life with some good off-the-cuff moments. In fact you could almost forgive him for having written Kate Lawlor’s act for her “reality TV” foray into stand-up.

Elaine Malcolmson is a new name on the circuit. A diminuitive Irishwoman, she has been doing stand-up for about six months and is still feeling her way. Cleverly, she avoids the pitfalls of potential heckling by performing a highly stylised act. Staring off into mid-distance, never making eye contact with the audience, she mumbles non-sequiters into the microphone as if distracted by something else, like a cross between Stephen Wright and Hattie Hayridge. And if she isn’t, yet, in the same league as either, some of her lines hit home and bode well that, with a bit more experience and a bit of personality development, she could be a decent club comic.

Teddy is a name I’ve heard bandied about, but who I’ve never seen before. I’d heard good things of him, so was quite looking forward to his act. But whether this was an off night, or just not my cup of tea, I found him the most disappointing performer on the bill. His opening material, about how his entire act had been ruined by finding happiness, was amusing. But from there he moved on to a series of gross-out stories which he clearly thought were shocking and cutting-edge, but which were in fact mildly dull. Not one I’m going to be rushing to see again.

The same cannot be said for Tom Stade. He’s been on my “B list” for the last two Edinburgh Fringes, the list of shows that I’d like to “get around to.” But somehow, on neither occasion was it got around to. So this was my first time of seeing him, and while it’s difficult to judge just how good he was on the grounds that he spent half of his stage time making me part of his act (front row, remember,) it certainly seemed to me that he was very, very good indeed.

Much of his act revolved around the fact of getting older, settling down, having kids, and how it all takes you by surprise because it was the last thing you were planning on. This was material which struck home with me, possibly one reason I was singled out as his stooge for the evening. But while this is standard comedy fodder, Stade takes the material in unusual directions, with a sharp incisive mind which analyses every minute aspect and finds most of it wanting. Meanwhile his easy smile and laid-back demeanour lull you into a false sense of security, disguising the often savage way he sticks the knife into his topics and twists just that little bit further than you would expect.

With the likes of Phil Nichol, Glenn Wool and Jason John Whitehead, Canada seems to be a fertile breeding ground for comedy right now, and Stade easily belongs on that list, the equal of any of them. One not to be missed.