Tuesday, August 25, 2015
Voodoo Rooms This show's bracing lack of sentiment finds a new and compelling angle on the 'dead dad' comedy tropeThe "dead dad" comedy show is now much mocked: it's seen as a cliche, and a …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:16AM[SHARE]Monday, August 24, 2015
Pleasance Dome, EdinburghThe droll meta-comedy duo explain what a funny sketch is " and have plenty of appealing examples of their ownMeta-comedy double act the Pin impressed on last year's …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:03AM[SHARE]The world's biggest comedy festival is an awkward place for Scottish comics to perform. I wish they'd give us more material tailored to their local audienceIs the fringe a Scottish festival?…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 06:57AM[SHARE]Sunday, August 23, 2015
Pleasance Courtyard, EdinburghLycett's scrapbook set of stories and pranks is consistently amusing and greatly enhanced by his playful, laidback mannerOnly on the fringe do you see the same …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 04:02PM[SHARE]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 07:52AM[SHARE]Friday, August 21, 2015
Liquid 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 and…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 10:07AM[SHARE]Thursday, August 20, 2015
Comedians 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; comics…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 12:30PM[SHARE]Pleasance 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 love…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 10:25AM[SHARE]Voodoo 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 09:18AM[SHARE]Wednesday, August 19, 2015
Assembly 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 01:18PM[SHARE]Pleasance 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's a p…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 09:01AM[SHARE]The 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 Ed…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:34AM[SHARE]Pleasance 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 07:34AM[SHARE]Tuesday, August 18, 2015
Summerhall, 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 wh…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:30AM[SHARE]Gilded 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 emotion…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:08AM[SHARE]A 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 h…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 02:49AM[SHARE]Monday, August 17, 2015
Comedian 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 on the…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:42PM[SHARE]Gilded 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 confi…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 09:07AM[SHARE]Sunday, August 16, 2015
Assembly 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 main…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:31AM[SHARE]Pleasance 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 08:31AM[SHARE]Saturday, August 15, 2015
Laughing 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 10:37AM[SHARE]Banshee 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 08:30AM[SHARE]Friday, August 14, 2015
From 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 go.…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 12:37PM[SHARE]Pleasance 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 Jam…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 09:20AM[SHARE]Sneaky 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 Gau…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:09AM[SHARE]Thursday, August 13, 2015
The 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 arts…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 12:55PM[SHARE]Gilded 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 h…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 10:58AM[SHARE]The 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 08:25AM[SHARE]Wednesday, August 12, 2015
Wherever 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 01:37PM[SHARE]Pleasance 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 09:09AM[SHARE]Pleasance Courtyard, EdinburghKumar directs his intelligence and moral fury toward race, privatisation and oppressed capitalists " and comes out triumphantAnother day, another article in a r…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:00AM[SHARE] 
