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.

Jason Cook, Stu and Garry, Vladimir McTavish, Antony Murray, compere Ro Campbell - The Stand, Edinburgh, 12/03/2008

A charity show is always a difficult one to review, because you are aware that the acts on the bill are all giving their time for free to raise money for a good cause. Obviously this is a laudable act, and thus any criticism of them makes you feel like you are kicking a puppy just a little bit. However, like any comedy night, this benefit on behalf of the First Step Community Project, a group who provide support to children growing up in difficult circumstances, had its good moments and some not so good.

Compere Ro Campbell is an excitable and slightly brash Australian for whom, it has to be said, the role doesn’t show him in his best light. He does the job sufficiently, but doesn’t show the spark that the best MC’s display. He runs through the usual “where are you from, what do you do” routine, but never manages to extract the comedy gold. On the other hand, when he moves on to parts of his set material, he begins to shine, and there are a few moments of brilliance, especially while recounting tales of his days as “the man who holds the Golf Sale sign.”

First up for the night was Antony Murray, a tall and slightly geeky Scotsman whose set is mostly based around perceived social inadequacy and intellectual unhipness. He does a decent job, but is something of a slow burn comic and as such probably isn’t right for the opening spot which really needs someone who is going to hit the stage and make an impact.

Vladimir McTavish follows him, and it is interesting to see someone who would normally be the headline act performing in a short early bill spot. Much of his set was familiar from seeing him only a few weeks before, but there was a bit of new stuff thrown in, suggesting he is starting to road test new material ready for the summer. Either way, he is always a solid and popular performer and he set up the rest of the night well.

Stu and Garry are the Stand’s resident improvisational double act, and have been working together so long that they are totally comfortable with each other and the situation. Complementing each other well, the tall skinny Garry Dobson with long hair and improbably long chin beard is the flighty, slightly weird one, while short and stocky Stuart Murphy is the cheeky overgrown schoolboy. They run through a series of familiar “Whose Line Is It Anyway” type games, creating bizarre situations from audience suggestions, which results in such unlikely situations as a row in a gay partnership performed as an opera.

Top of the bill, Jason Cook until recently would have been better known as one half of the novelty German Electronic Industrial Rock send-up act Die Clattershenkenfietermaus. But in the past year he has been making a name for himself with his excellent “My Confessions” show, which he had actually been performing in the Glasgow Comedy Festival earlier that evening before rushing over to the capital to put in his appearance. His set was a mixture of material from that show, which I saw last summer, together with some new observations, mostly based around the idea that he is his own worst enemy and the inner voices that most of us try not to listen to usually get the better of him. With the more poignant moments removed, the material doesn’t have the same emotional impact as the full Confessions show, but Cook still retains the Geordie charm that allows him to get away with telling horrible stories about himself and yet remaining somehow loveable.

Vladimir McTavish, Joe Heenan, Padraig Hyland, Jack Whitehall, compere Susan Morrison – The Stand, Edinburgh, 22/02/2008

One of the impressive things about The Stand is that they don’t merely put on good comedy nights, they also work hard to develop the local comedy scene. It’s an important service in an industry which is so focussed on London that comics in other parts of the country can often be isolated and find it difficult to get exposure. This night featured three comics who had come through the ranks to become regulars at the club, and have been able to use that as a springboard to bookings nationwide.

Fast talking Glaswegian Susan Morrison is a regular MC at the club, and it’s a role she has learned to fill superbly well. On this night, with the entire front row occupied by a stag party, she had plenty of material to work with, and unlike some comperes she doesn’t pussyfoot around but jumps straight in with both feet. Brash, brassy and bottle-blonde may just be the perfect combination for a female host, her patter is bold and innuendo-laden but she never loses control of her audience.

The importance of a good MC is highlighted when one of the acts is below par, and I’m going to give Padraig Hyland the benefit of the doubt here, he has a good reputation and has reached a certain level of success but he would probably be the first to admit that his performance on this night was not good. It didn’t help that a heckle within the first minute provided a punchline to a joke that was funnier than the one Hyland himself eventually produced. He never seemed to recover from that moment and, despite a good line here or there, for most of his set he seemed to be struggling to remember his lines and frequently losing his thread, and some parts of his set were notable only for an embarrassed silence.

No such problems for Jack Whitehall however. The standard setup for a weekend night at The Stand sees a headliner, two established comics and someone new, young and fairly unknown in the ten minute try out spot. It is rare that the occupant of that ten minute spot turns out to be the best act of the night. I don’t think I’d be sticking my neck out very far in predicting that within a few years Whitehall will be coming back to headline nights like these. His opening disclaimer about his middle-class upbringing worried me for a moment, when a comic opens with an apology it is often a sign he isn’t confident in his own material. But within a minute all such worries had fallen away as he demonstrated a superb command of the English Language and a talent for brilliant social mimicry.

Joe Heenan has become very much a Stand regular, and the probably the most apt word to apply to him is “dependable.” Very much a blokish comic, he looks and sounds like someone you could enjoy a pint with, and he is adept at very quickly bringing an audience onto his side. Moreover, you get the impression from watching him that his act is not meticulously planned in advance, rather that he has a wealth of material to draw on and an ability to think fast on his feet and tailor the set to the particular audience he is faced with. Whether the case or not, his was a safe pair of hands to keep the momentum of the night going.

Vladimir McTavish is a brash, straight-talking Glaswegian schemie who is the comic invention of Paul Sneddon, a comedian also responsible for the drunken football pundit Bob Doolally. Originally created to present an alternative Scottish history lesson, McTavish has now become pretty much Sneddon’s main business and he tours extensively under the name. His humour is from the streets, often coarse and presented in an aggressive style. Most of his set is based around the Scottish experience, from Burns suppers to the smoking ban and hatred of the English, and in truth he mainly picks easy targets. It was an entertaining enough end to the night, but maybe slightly disappointing as a headline act having failed to surpass the two acts which preceded him.