Comedian claims satirists are pulling their punches, teen comedy actor turns on the show that made him a star and Brian Conley Gets Out of thereFrankie Boyle is back in the headlines, after …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:52AMLiquid Room, EdinburghAn interactive golden-age detective movie is created on stage with Deanna Fleysher’s alter-ego Kapinski leaning heavily on the audience for laughsA gumshoe in a mac a…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 10:07AMComedians rarely repeat material by their peers. But plenty of comics are referencing each other at this year’s fringe – for good and illComedy has no equivalent to the cover version; co…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 12:30PMPleasance Courtyard, EdinburghThe Australian comedian’s experiences of anxiety, depression and irritable bowel syndrome are turned to fine comic use in this confident, fast-paced show“I …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 10:25AMVoodoo Rooms, EdinburghHodgson draws on youthful memories, the rise and fall of Lance Armstrong and northern characters for plentiful laughs and bittersweet sentimentJust do it, cyclist Lanc…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 09:18AMAssembly Roxy, EdinburghThe US duo deliver several very funny moments but their show that is let down by its disjointed characters and hard-to-follow plotlineShenoah Allen has created many a…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:18PMPleasance Grand, EdinburghTwenty standups and wrestlers clamber into the ring and smack down in Max and Ivan’s spectacular sporting-panto free-for-all “Comedians. Wrestlers. Blood.” It…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 09:01AMThe perception of the festival crowd as entirely middle-class leads standups such as Sarah Callaghan and Kevin J to package their working-class backgrounds as exoticIt’s a cliche that the …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:34AMPleasance Courtyard, EdinburghBulletproof set-pieces exploring the theme of cultural identity confirm this Bostonian as a talent to watchAlex Edelman won the best newcomer gong at last year�…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:34AMSummerhall, EdinburghIt may not by very funny, but the standup and activist’s vehement, animated piece about the privatisation of public spaces certainly has a lot of convictionPicking up …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:30AMGilded Balloon, EdinburghOptimistic and less militant than in the past, the standup makes a welcome return to the fringe. Unfortunately, it’s with raw, under-rehearsed material“I was emo…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:08AMA Desert Island Discs spoof, brooding circus performers who strip naked and a Yoko Ono-inspired love-fest … our critics choose their hot tickets at this year’s fringeO No!In less skilled…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 02:49AMComedian Sam Simmons’s rant against ‘relatable’ comics in his Edinburgh show does both him and the festival a disserviceAussie absurdist Sam Simmons is one of the best-loved comedians …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:42PMGilded Balloon, EdinburghNo stage frippery required – this comedy trio are strong enough to stand on their own, with sharp writing and some fine skewering of middle-class moresIt takes con…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 09:07AMAssembly George Square, EdinburghWith its explorations of identity, Mark Steel’s account of how he traced his birth parents is astonishingWhen the story is extraordinary and the comic’s …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:31AMPleasance Courtyard, EdinburghIn Lolly, her first fringe solo show, the up-and-coming comedian introduces many personas with varying degrees of success, but is never short of charismaFrom Ca…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:31AMLaughing Horse @ The Free Sisters, EdinburghThe Man Down star delivers a neurotic, convoluted tale of a stowaway cat that channels the Basil Fawlty archetype of the beleaguered EnglishmanTwo…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 10:37AMBanshee Labyrinth, EdinburghWaiting for Gaddot, which enlists Ben Target and Ian Smith in the tale of a love rivalry amid a collapsing gig, could be the underground comedy hit of the fringeI…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:30AMFrom the attractively impish Matt Winning to the pitch-perfect puerility of Gein’s Family Giftshop, here are seven festival sets I haven’t managed to write about yetOne week down, two to…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 12:37PMPleasance Courtyard, EdinburghThere’s no one better at constructing a show than Acaster – and half the fun is how emphatically he addresses vanishingly small subjectsSerial award-nominee…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 09:20AMSneaky Pete’s, EdinburghThe audience are treated for head lice and a grandad plays chicken with his life-support machine in a show that explores a whole spectrum of strangeEcole Philippe G…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:09AMThe festival’s comedians were historically young, gifted and white. Now, shows by black and minority ethnic acts are popular, diverse and nothing to do with skin colour“Diversity in the …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 12:55PMGilded Balloon, EdinburghBea is an energetic storyteller with charm to spare but she’s going through the motions a bit with these observations about shame and confidenceMost comics perform…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 10:58AMThe Stand, EdinburghRyan excels at the barbed comedy of supercilious abuse in a disjointed set that riffs on the Taylor Swift/Nicki Minaj row and has a standout section on Bill CosbyReported…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:25AMWherever you look at the festival, comedians are unselfconsciously rocking the mic. Critic Brian Logan joins the party …Cue hip-hop beat. Middle-aged, middle-class, white comedy critic try…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:37PMPleasance Courtyard, EdinburghPart musical comedy, part doomed romance and part Desert Island Discs, this is an eccentric, subversive work about the soundtrack to a life Joseph Morpurgo migh…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 09:09AMPleasance Courtyard, EdinburghKumar directs his intelligence and moral fury toward race, privatisation and oppressed capitalists – and comes out triumphantAnother day, another article in a…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:00AMStandups relish language and forms of communication, so it’s no wonder emojis are a feature of so many shows this year. But how much can you really say with yellow symbols?The Edinburgh fr…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:01PMThe Stand, EdinburghThe fringe superstar returns with a mostly uproarious, sometimes sobering set in response to social injustices of every hueIs it a show? Is it a book launch? Fringe super…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 10:30AMThe Tron, EdinburghThe anarchic member of sketch trio Pappy’s lets loose in an irrepressible and mischievous – but non-trivial – celebration of fancy dress and funFans of the sketch tr…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:24AMUnderbelly Cowgate, EdinburghThe comedian is impressive as her sexist alter ego Dave, but the brand of chauvinist comedy depicted makes for a fairly soft target“I mostly hang out with come…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 12:44PM