Fringe Review - Jason John Whitehead: The Joker, Belly Laugh at the Underbelly, 09/08/2008

Canadian comic Jason John Whitehead is so laid back there are points during his set you wonder if he's about to fall asleep. But his easy smile and stoner demeanour work well in his favour, because as an audience you find yourself almost willing him to succeed.

He has, sadly, been landed with one of the very worst venues in the Fringe. The Belly Laugh is essentially a long narrow tube, far too long to use end on so instead it has been rotated ninety degrees and is now simply ridiculously wide and shallow. Add to this the tendency towards front row avoidance in the average Fringe audience and the result is an audience scattered so widely it makes it difficult for the comic to address them all directly and results in his having to move the focus of his attention on a regular basis to keep everyone involved.

Whitehead has, in the past, wisely eschewed the Edinburgh propensity towards themed shows, preferring instead to simply range randomly through any subjects that take his fancy. But this year, after a decade in the comedy business, he has chosen instead to take a step back and look at what made him want to take up the comic lifestyle, and the choices he has had to make to maintain it. Or, to put it in his own rather more simple way, it's a show about being a comedian.

Whitehead takes us from his early years at a dolphinarium in South Carolina, to his arrival in Edinburgh ten years earlier and his search for a job to fund his stand-up fixation, an end only achieved when he ceased trying, and through some of the drink and drug excesses of his years since.

All of this is narrated in an easy, unhurried and non-threatening way, and most of it is very entertaining, but there is never really a wow factor with Whitehead. He never seems to hit that killer punchline that has you doubled up in your seat or draws a spontaneous round of applause. And maybe it's the fault of the room, but in the end, he is something like the old comedy cliche of the Chinese meal, he leaves you vaguely satisfied, but in half an hour you'll be wanting something more.

Fringe Review - Liam Mullone: In a Dead Man's Hat, Billiard Room at the Gilded Balloon, 09/08/2008

Towards the beginning of this show Liam Mullone informs his audience that this is going to be more of a storytelling experience than straight stand-up. What follows is essentially a series of reminiscences, framed by the tale of a potentially life-altering experience during a trip to the United States.

For various complicated reasons, Mullone found himself, some while ago, having to survive for six weeks in a dilapidated van in a dry ravine in the Nevada Desert with only a big bag of pork chops and the world's worst paperback for company. Like a cut-price Jesus Christ, he endured forty days and forty nights in the wilderness, and came away from it wiser, but probably not ready to form his own religion just yet.

Despite his Irish sounding name, Mullone is a big shambling Englishman, the product of an upper-middle class family from Leicestershire who spent some of his childhood in Hong Kong. Tales from that childhood, and of family life in general, are intersperced into the main narrative giving a sense of a man re-evaluating his life during the long hours of loneliness.

It's an entertaining and engaging tale, and if not often laugh-out-loud funny, it contains enough humour along the way to hold the attention. Mullone holds his audience with an easy charm, and makes good use of lighting and the various areas of the stage to suggest different modes of rememberance. As an early evening show, it works very well, and for anyone planning a full evening on the Fringe, it will serve as a very nice appetiser.

Fringe Review - Richard Herring: The Headmaster's Son, White Belly at the Underbelly, 08/08/2008

It has almost become a tradition now. This is the fifth year in succession I've been to see Richard Herring's solo show in the Fringe, and he seems to get better year on year. I am happy to report that this year is no exception.

For the past few years his shows have been straight, vaguely themed stand-up, as opposed to the rigidly structured shows that went before. This year he's moved back towards those older shows, but the theme remains broadly the same as the one that seems to have obsessed him for a while now, namely that of why he is moving into middle-age without ever having seemed to grow up.

Herring is 41 now, never married, no children, sexually promiscuous, and still seemingly trying to act like a teenager. And he has recognised that a great many people who act inappropriately in their advancing years blame all their problems on their childhood. It has become something of a trend these days to blame your parents for almost anything you do which society frowns on. So he decided to examine whether his parents could be responsible for his behaviour, particularly his father, and his experience of growing up in a school where his dad was also his headmaster.

Of course, he instantly recognises the absurdity of claiming to have suffered psychological trauma from what was, essentially, a nice, happy, middle-class upbringing in the picturesque Somerset town of Cheddar. But he still manages to get easily his hour's worth of mileage out of the situation, often brilliantly, especially the section in which he reads excerpts from his teenage diaries, pricking the pomposity of his former self, and culminating in a conversation between his 16 and 41 year-old selves discussing the way his life has gone against the way he expected it to be.

It's a more rigid and rehearsed performance than we've been used to from Herring of late, and this caused some problems on the night as he had to battle against a large group of Portuguese schoolgirls who sat right at the front, didn't speak much English, and insisted on talking to each other all the way through. But if he was thrown off his stride at all, it didn't show, and the rest of the room seemed to lap up his verbal dexterity and intricate wordplay. It may not be the show that finally breaks him through into the big-time, but if not then it can't be far away.

Fringe Review - Jason Byrne: Cats Under Mats Having Chats With Bats, Assembly Hall, 07/08/2008

At this point in his career, it appears, Jason Byrne has given up any pretence at having a theme to his shows, thus the nonsensical titles which grace each year's offering, (last year it was "Pigs With Wigs Hiding in the Twigs.) This is a good thing, because the only thing you are guaranteed with Byrne is that on any given night there is no telling what he will decide to talk about.

By all accounts, there are nights when he ad-libs entire shows, and this is probably a good thing as generally his rehearsed material is the weakest part of his performance. But this year he seems to have upped his game a little in this respect, and tales of moving his family to the countryside or fixing a television bracket in his son's bedroom are well worked out and often pant-wettingly funny.

As usual, his long-suffering wife is the butt of much of his humour as he prowls the stage screaming in frustrated rage at this impossible harridan. But of course the audience is always in on the joke, well aware that in reality she is most likely a nice and normal woman merely driven demented by years of having to live with him.

But of course it is in the audience interaction that Byrne really shines. It is his ability to think on his feet which moves him out of the category of competent comedian and into the super-league of comics able to sell out huge venues.

Tonight he has plenty to work with. There is the couple who have brought their twelve year-old son and sat in the front row. "There goes half the show," he says, "you're going to learn a lot tonight kid!" Then there was the man trapped somewhere inside the middle of his body, the doctor who makes models out of poo, and the man who, on being asked questions, merely shouts out random words.

Byrne makes great play with all of them, continually returning to them as characters in a narrative he is constructing in his head. Everything seems to be clicking in this year's show. Even his closing set piece, often a disappointment after what has gone before, is this year suitably barking mad to provide a fitting climax to the show.

Brilliant and possibly borderline insane, it's always a banker at any Fringe that Jason Byrne is going to give value for money.

Fringe Review - Pete Firman: Flim Flam, Belly Button at the Underbelly, 06/08/2008

Magic, like so many other forms of entertainment, has undergone a radical rethink over the years. Like so many things before, it has been referred to as the "new Rock and Roll." So if Paul Daniels was the Val Doonican of the genre, we moved on to the Manilowesque gloss and glamour of David Copperfield, to arrive at the Kurt Cobain grunge of David Blaine. Pete Firman would clearly like to associate himself more closely with the latter of this trio, but it has to be said that underneath the surface appearances he has more in common with the first.

He starts well, employing shock tactics to get the audience squirming in their seats, hammering a nail into his own face and doing something with a maggot which defies description. But that seems to be a mistake, because he has nothing much to back it up, and for the rest of the set falls back on the old staples of making objects appear and disappear and appearing to predict the results of various "random" set-ups.

Even his big finale trick, in which he tries to present himself as being in great danger, is so obvious it is hard to believe that any audience member could not have been aware of how it was being done. And when he follows that up with a final "flourish" performing cutting the rope tricks that we all learned how to do at school, you can't really prevent your eyes starting to roll.

All that said, the tricks may be old and obvious, but the showmanship is quite definitely all present and correct. His banter is amusing, the little twists he puts on his stage equipment are fun, and the silly spoof tricks he performs to blind-side the audience are all pulled off well.

But in the end, it's just a magic show, and one that, the first ten minutes aside, offers very little that's new, and that is a problem. Firman is clearly a talented man, and he has had some television success recently and maybe he's just resting on his laurels a bit here. Flim Flam will keep you entertained for the hour you are watching it, but will probably leave you with a vague lack of satisfaction afterwards. Must try harder.

Fringe Review - Tom Wrigglesworth: I'm Struggling To See How That's Helping, Pleasance Below, 03/08/2008

Hardly a household name, despite having won So You Think You're Funny five years ago, Tom Wrigglesworth is a lanky Yorkshireman with wildly unlikely hair who adopts the always popular style of the slightly befuddled Englishman nonplussed by the world around him.

Wrigglesworth greets his audience from the stage, already there seated on a stool, noodling away on a guitar while making wryly sardonic comments about those coming in. On this particular day he seems to have an obsession with umbrellas, having spotted a large and burly man carrying a particularly effeminate-looking example of said article, and this acts as a good way to get the audience warmed up and ready for comedy by the time they are in their seats.

The broad theme of the show, as can probably be surmised from the title, is the little things in life which seem designed to baffle us. But Wrigglesworth himself admits very early on that this is merely a device to allow him to paint on a wide-ranging canvas by being deliberately vague about the actual focus. It is admissions of this kind that help him to make the show seem like an inclusive experience, a kind of "we're all in this together" attitude which you can't help finding yourself warming to.

Many of his themes during the show are broad, a number of them are the usual popular targets, and he includes a routine on Facebook which seems to be becoming this year's ever-present topic, and while nothing he does is exactly ground-breaking most of his routines are funny, find original things to say, and hit their mark.

Meanwhile his audience banter is very good, and he finds particular fun in having a French girl in the front row whose boyfriend frequently has to explain points of reference to her.

Overall this is one of those shows that you often come across in the Fringe, that are not going to be troubling any of the awards panels, but nonetheless prove a highly enjoyable way of whiling away an hour and send you back onto the street with a broad smile on your face.

Fringe Review - Tim Minchin: Ready For This?, Pleasance Grand, 01/08/2008

The title of Perrier Best Newcomer is not always a guarantee of great things to come. One or two of the recipients have gone on to great things, but some have fallen by the wayside and most simply went on to be jobbing comedians. Few, surely, have ended up, just three years later, filling one of the largest regular venues on the Fringe.

Such is Tim Minchin’s talent that it is hard to believe that it can only have been three years. But so meteoric has been his rise that, with this, his third Fringe show, with a documentary film about his life already under his belt, this is beyond doubt one of the hot tickets of the year.

Which is a lot of pressure to put on someone so, relatively speaking, inexperienced. And as a musical comedian, it must be equally difficult to leave behind songs that have served him long and well, especially with loyal fans who would have been just as happy with another outing of Inflatable You and Canvas Bag.

But this is an all new show. Nothing borrowed from earlier shows, nothing recycled. And once again, Minchin has come up trumps with a set of songs which range from the silly and fun to the complex and thought-provoking. If there is a disappointment in the show it is maybe that the opening “Ready For This” song is a little too reminiscent of the previous “So Rock” from his last show, with a similar “pretend instrument” theme to it.

But that’s just a niggle, a minor blip in another all-round triumph which can only enhance Minchin’s reputation. It’s a show in which he appears to be airing a few general grievances, working through some of the things that bug him in life, whether it be religious fundementalists trying to tell him how to be a good person, new age hippie idealism and the rejection of science, or just intolerance that he is subjected to on a more, shall we say, hirsute level.

Minchin is really a comic who entertains on every level. His show combines superb physical comedy and slapstic with amazing verbal dexterity and virtuoso musicianship, and even some risk taking as there are few who would have the guts to hand over nine whole minutes of their hour long show to a beat poem which is, in essence, just a single extended joke.

But it works, and does so superbly, blending with all the other elements to create what would, if I were the kind of reviewer to give out stars, be the first this year to receive all five of them. Minchin is unmissable, and long may he remain so. It will take something special if I am going to see another show this year as good as this one.

Fringe Envy

For those of us not fortunate enough to make it to Edinburgh this year, we still have the opportunity to live vicariously through others...

Chortle are posting daily video clips, giving a taste of a different act each time, http://chortle.blip.tv.

Ewen Spence is back for the 4th season offering a very good Edinburgh Fringe podcast that contains interviews, news and reviews, http://edinburghfringe.thepodcastnetwork.com.

The Guardian will also be providing their own podcast offering, hosted by Miles Jupp, http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/series/comedypodcast.

The BBC will be recording two shows at the fringe, hosted by Sean Lock and containing performances by a number of Edinburgh favourites and new comers, http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio2/comedy/edinburgh2008.shtml.

E4 also have a podcast, which will be hosted by different people throughout the fringe run, http://www.e4.com/edinburgh/podcast-listen.html.

There will also be radio shows, more videos, podcasts and articles cropping up all over the place, and we will be updating this list as we find them. If you see anything that we haven't, let us know!

Fringe Preview - Nick Revell: Sleepless, Wee Room at the Gilded Baloon Teviot, 01/08/2008

Although he emerged as one of the alternative comedy crowd of the early eighties, doing his apprenticeship at the Comedy Store and on Friday Night Live, Nick Revell was never really an angry young man of comedy, more his thoughtful intellectual cousin. And now, quarter of a century later, it is that thoughtfulness which keeps him from being just another of the grumpy old men generation. He may be grumpy, but his concerns, for the most part, are by no means trite.

It was quite a surprise to me to see this elder statesman of the alternative scene in such a small room at such an early hour. But maybe today's audiences don't know their history so well, because while the comedy literate will be well aware of the huge influence he has had on British comedy, he has never been much of a one for pushing himself into the public eye, content to make his home in Radio 4 satire rather than BBC2 panel shows.

Revell begins by explaining the title, saying that the theme of the show is things that keep him awake at night. But like so many Fringe shows, it's a theme he almost entirely forgets about from the moment the words leave his lips. Apart from the occasional mention along the way, what the theme really is, is simply things that bug him. And we're not talking things like loud music or not getting a seat on the bus, Revell's concerns are of a serious bent, world politics, global warming and why the world seems to care more about the cult of celebrity than genocide in Darfur.

These are tricky subjects to tackle, but Revell does so with eloquence and intelligence, and while very little of his set is bust-a-gut funny, nonetheless he never loses your attention. And that attention is adequately rewarded by the few occasions when he does let loose with a killer punchline.

So perhaps the early evening slot is a blessing after all. This is comedy that should not be viewed through the bleary eyes of excessive alcohol consumption, even thought that too is a topic covered along the way. This is smart and clever and you'll want your wits about you to appreciate it properly. So perhaps not a show to go to if you just want a bunch of giggles with your mates. But for the more discerning viewer, a thoroughly enjoyable experience nonetheless.

Fringe Preview - Reginald D Hunter: No Country for Grown Men, Pleasance Grand, 30/07/2008

Is Reg Hunter mellowing in his old age? After courting controversy with show titles such as "Pride and Prejudice and Niggas" and "A Mystery Wrapped in a Nigga", and last year responding to the furore with a show called "Fuck You in an Age of Consequence," this year's strapline seems positively tame. It does, however, succinctly sum up the idea that Reg is trying to put across.

The theme of the show is the way in which, in modern life, we are not trusted to be grown-ups, even in a matter such as choosing what to do when you find there is no paper in the pub toilet. His beef is that men are not being allowed to act like men any more, but this isn't a macho thing, just a question of disposing of the "rules" and letting us get back to using our basic common sense.

Hunter has some great routines and a few killer lines in here, but this being a preview show, it has to be said that it was yet to really gel into a coherent whole. There were a few points where it was clear that he was struggling to remember what he had planned to talk about next, and one or two of the topics seemed a little random and scattered.

But that's what previews are for, and it was equally clear that there was enough good stuff in here that, once he's up and firing on all cylinders, it will live up to the quality we have come to expect.

And of course Hunter always has the main weapon in his arsenal, that deep-voiced warm soothing southern drawl that you could listen to all day. Combined with the baffled grin with which he punctuates his most salient points, it makes him an extraordinarily charismatic performer, which gives him the freedom to draw the audience to him rather than reaching for laughs and punchlines.

As more of an initial overview than a finished product, it is difficult to say, but I'm not sure this show is ever going to reach the heights of some of his previous outings, but nonetheless it maintains a very high standard, and in its late night slot could make an excellent end to a packed Fringe day.