Ava Vidal: Misfit

Chortle
11th August
***

Things don’t look too good for Ava Vidal today. Despite the evening slot, she has only been awake for an hour and the festival sounds like it has truly taken its toll on her throat, meaning that she is croaking her show rather than actually delivering it.

Yet, she has a natural on-stage charm and chatty demeanour that overcomes these obstacles to produce an impressive, if flawed, debut full-length show.

Vidal has always been an outsider, wherever she has lived. Whether growing up in a boarding school in Haywards Heath or living in London in her late teens, she claims to have never been accepted into a larger group of people.

In this show, then, Vidal attempts to examine the layers of preconception that apparently surround her, providing the audience with a commentary through her often difficult life up to this point in time.

The story is an engaging one, taking in a teenage pregnancy, abusive boyfriends and a stint as a prison guard. These clearly do not sound like typical goldmines of comedy, but Vidal has a biting string of sarcasm, often delivered in an innocent fashion, that suggests a strength over adversity which gets the audience instinctively onto her side.

She is frequently seen to be getting one over on those who have previously tried to exclude or oppress her. It’s coupled with a sensibility towards chatty audience participation, as she listens to the replies with seemingly genuine interest, making Vidal all the more likable as a comic.

The main problem with the show is the fashion with which Vidal inserts her jokes. The script is kept at a reasonably high laughter-rate, with nothing that does not lead in some way to a punchline. While that sounds great, as another laugh will never be far away, it means the personal story seems forced and contrived, rather than existing as a natural narrative.

Occasionally, she will begin a topic that seems unrelated to what she had been previously discussing, simply for the purposes of a new set-up. As a result the show sometimes feels incoherent and disjointed.

But this is a common problem with debut full-length shows, and one that is usually corrected with time. For now, Vidal delivers an enjoyable hour that is still well worth a look.

Tom Hughes

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Ava Vidal: Misfit

Three Weeks
11th August
****

People pouring out their problems can often be annoying and embarrassing, but Ava Vidal makes it a comedy art form. After all, few people can make a joke about domestic violence and get away with it. Don't be mislead however, this isn't therapy and tear jerkers, this misfit is full of punchy, risque humour and is certainly no pushover. Although not traversing new comic terrain, with conversational humour focusing on her being black, a stint as a prison officer and her time at public school, her strong personality encourages originality. Talking to you like she's known you for years, Ava, in an anti-heckling move, actually got the audience to hurl compliments at her. Funny, witty and engaging, this is a comedian worth watching.

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Ava Vidal: Misfit

Metro
9th August
***

Eddie Harrison

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Ava Vidal: Misfit

The Stage
8th August

Sit-down comedian Ava Vidal plays her near-unresponsive audience with a grace and inclusiveness that never gets too invasive. Her attitude might not come with a capital A but she has that unspoken authority of someone telling stories to toddlers on a wet Saturday afternoon. She, her body language says, is going to truck no dissent. Like it or not, she will tell her stories for the time allotted to her. But not a minute more.

Vidal’s stories are tall and against herself. Stories with embellishment that ring true enough to be based on experience. And which, although seriously self-effacing, have at their heart a strong and consistent sense of superiority. Being black, being tall, being middle class or being a teenager - but always being rebellious - Vidal extracts the essential comedy juices from her life and runs them through her own prejudices to create a gently undulating series of laughs.

Where it is all going, however, is not clear. Her laid-back style demands intimacy and is signally unsuited to the stark venue, yet she has made no attempt to dress it. Her physical presence is wonderful, yet she just merely sits. A class comic, in clear need of (directorial) attention.

Thom Dibden

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Ava Vidal: Misfit

EdinburghGuide.com
11 August
****

A casual glance at the image of Ava Vidal on the front of the flyer for her show Misfit, may well leave the casual glancer anticipating a show of confrontation and audience humiliation at the hands of a hostile and menacing host. Happily, any such preconceptions are cast aside the moment this immensely warm and likeable comedian takes her seat on the stage.

Vidal is used to defying expectations, she draws her comic inspiration from a life as diverse as it is extraordinary. In the last 29 years she has been a pupil at a series of posh boarding schools, a prison guard and a teenage mum. She relates her experiences in a laid-back, intimate style, as if she has just popped round to your place for a chat and is sitting at your kitchen table nattering away while you wait for the kettle to boil. Not that her subject matter is all undemanding, but she talks about her experiences of vicious racism and domestic violence with the same air of relaxed banter as she does her more light-hearted material. She is also keen to defuse any likely areas of audience dissent before they arise, with potentially inflammatory words such as "rape" having their provocative power speedily neutralised with the accompaniment of comedy "jazz hands" and a beaming smile.

There are plenty of witty one-liners and sharp observations in this hour-long show, but it is the laid-back style and unique persona of this fascinating new talent that ensure she stands out from the rest of the stand-up crowd, without ever leaving her chair.

Ruth Clowes

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Bad Play 3

Guardian
6th August

In 2003 comedy team The Trap wrestled incompentently with sexual politics, homelessness and September 11 in Bad Play. The following year, in Bad Play 2, humanity was on trial for "crimes it may, or may not, have committed". This outing looks to the year 3005, when the world will be covered in water thanks to our disasterous environmental mistakes and, as a result "the human race will have to evolve gills and fingers that don't wrinkle in order to survive." Characterised by pretenious dialogue and wayward props, Bad Play lampoons everything that earnest theatre troupes across Edinburgh are striving to bring to their minimalist stages. So if you found the satire in Annie Griffin's film Festival a little too sharp in places, then try the latest instalment of this protracted bout of friendly teasing. Ironically, it is a welcome return for what is slowly becoming as much an institution as the work it mocks. The script can be a little patchy, but like The Trap themselves, it's reliably offbeat, good humoured and very silly.

Justin Tilbury

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Bad Play 3

The Stage
8th August

The skilfully created illusion of amateur clumsiness is a Fringe staple, rarely done with more polish and elan than in this fast-moving show that only slightly comes down to earth when an ecological moral is tacked on. The three-man company play all the roles in a dystopic science-fiction story of an ecologically ruined future Earth in which men live underground as slaves to robot masters.

The fun comes in the mix of outlandish premises - “Our story begins, as all good stories do, with a robotic hoverwolf” - and the pretence of missed cues, recalcitrant light and sound effects and a growing desperation in actors forced to ad-lib their way through the performance minefield. Set pieces along the way include an all-purpose politician-bot able to mouth platitudes from across the political spectrum with the turn of a switch and a potted history of the large and small disasters facing the Earth in the next thousand years, while the occasional suspicion that a bit of the ‘making it up as they go along’ panic might be real just draws the audience into the collaborative in-joke spirit.

The ecological message is a bit awkwardly dragged in but fortunately is not allowed to interrupt the comic rhythm or spoil the fun.

Gerald Berkowitz

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Bad Play 3

Scotsman
19 August
***

THE year is 3005 and it's all gone pear-shaped.

Earth is a desert of hot water. The tigers and spaniels have died. Human beings are still around, but are slaves to a dictator, and instead of names have serial numbers.

If the Earth's problems are serious, though, they are nothing compared to the problems faced by Jeremy Limb, Paul Litchfield and Dan Mersh, the three stars of this production. The girl on sound and lighting doesn't pay much attention to what's going on stage, and is not afraid to answer back when they criticise her. Props malfunction, costumes are a joke, and they have to deliver some of the worst lines in the history of theatre.

It's all deliberate though. As its title suggests, this is supposed to be a production in which everything that can go wrong does go wrong, and at its best it leads us off down some delightful comic sidestreets. It's a shame, then, that the pace lags in the last 15 minutes, and the grand finale is so drawn out.

Roger Cox

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Chris Neill: Middle Class Misery the Board Game

Three Weeks
week 1
****

Resembling a rather dapper English gentleman, Chris Neill humbly invites you to his quaint festival abode for a spot of afternoon tea. By modifying a well-reknowned property board game, Chris explore the perplexing conundrum that is the rise of the middle class. His articulate and insightful obervations on the make-up of the bourgeois society involving ever increasing debt, family catchphrases and home made jam, had me laughing out loud at the overtly obscure nature of these characteristics. Combining this with our host's ability to captivate and audience with his natural charm and quick-witted analogies, this is an hour of comedy that will have you toasting Chris Neill with a glass of Pimm's in the garden of your countryside retreat.

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Chris Neill: Middle Class Misery the Board Game

The Scotsman
13th August

THIS is a nice, well-mannered show. Neill looks at what it is to be middle class (and some of his definitions are not just funny, but on the nose) and then plays a board game about it. Neill is the epitome of intelligent middle-class camp.

Close your eyes and you get Julian Clary crossed with Kenneth Williams. Open them and you have Sgt Bilko.

Kate Copstick

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Chris Neill: Middle Class Misery the Board Game

Independent on Sunday
14th August

Chris Neill is a Radio 4 producer who should, by rights, be on the air, not behind the scenes. In his latest show he invites audience members to play "Middle Class Misery", a boardgame which is suspiciously similar to Monopoly, except that the winner is ther person who gets into the most debt, and that instead of buying hotels you buy Le Creuset saucepans and therapy sessions. Neill presides over proceedings with the gracious self-assurance of a party host having a chinwag with his guests. Both acidic and disarmingly sweet, he has an immaculate turn of phrase.

Nicholas Barber

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Chris Neill: Middle Class Misery the Board Game

EdinburghGuide.com
6 August
****

Living in Sussex means never having to say you're Surrey. Thus puns Chris Neill. Certainly there's an epidemic of class around at the moment. As one set of TV social theorists trumpets the decline of the gentry or the rise of the chav - so another proclaims the merging of the classes, until one assumes, we end up as one homogenised lump of humanity. It's no wonder the middle classes are having an identity crisis.

In Middle Class Misery Neill, by way of demographic survey, anecdote, dry observation and a giant board game (which we are, ahem, legally obliged to mention bears no resemblance to Monopoly), attempts to put the record straight.

Neill is a great raconteur, possessed of warm personality, sharp brain and occasional welcome caustic tongue. His audience today is (surprise, surprise) 100% middle class, so already in the palm of his hand. In truth this show is less about building a fresh picture of what it means to be middle class, and more about affirming what we already know. If we own more than one brand of olive oil, have children named Saskia or Giles, attend Sunday Farmers' markets or listen to Radiohead (shouldn't that be Radio 4?) then you've guessed it - we're smack, bang in the middle.

However the joy of this show rests with Neill's talent for weaving the obvious, into a fabulous, colourful tapestry depicting the absurdities of the middle-class condition, ensuring we laugh, groan and squirm in equal measure. It's disarming fun. The board game itself is a riotous interactive marathon through middle-classdom. The rules of play are a trifle unclear, though Neill subverts the game very quickly to suit his own Machiavelian purposes. The ensuing confusion in no way affects the overrall enjoyment of the specatcle, so fear not.

Middle Class Misery should satisfy and amuse, should you fall within the target demographic. It's a tongue-in-cheek, narcisistic glance into a fuzzy comedy mirror, reflecting back with relative integrity, whatever you perceive yourself to be. It's a clever construct. The show is well-observed, well-written and above all fun.

Personally I'd love to see Neill tour the Working Man's Clubs with this one. A whole new testbed.

Leanna Rance

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Dan Tetsell: Sins of the Grandfathers

Daily Telegraph
5th August

The Nazi past of Dan Tetsell's grandfather is an abiding obsession - and, he explains, the ideal subject for an Edinburgh comedy show.

"It appears as if slowly, slowly, the Russian offensive will come to an end; and about time, too, as he is getting a bit dangerously near. Let's hope that he will be thrown back soon."

So wrote my grandfather, Kurt Martens, in his last letter home on February 13, 1945, the same day as the bombing of Dresden.

At the time, he was on an officer-training course near Prague. Of course, the Russian advance wasn't stopped and my grandfather was killed when the Red Army captured the city on May 9, 1945. My mother, born a few months later, grew up without a father.

For many years, all I knew about my German grandfather was what I could glean from the only photograph I'd seen of him - in which he wore the uniform of a non-commissioned officer in the Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler: the elite regiment of the Waffen SS.

I could have left it there. Kurt Martens died many years before I was born; his actions have nothing to do with me. They have nothing to do with my mother either, of course. As an unborn baby, there's no way, even unwittingly, she could have endorsed the Nazi regime.

But the presence or absence of war guilt is central to the German experience of the second half of the 20th century, and my family are no exception. Even though my mother married an Englishman and moved to Britain in the Sixties and I am thus, legally and culturally, more British than German, my grandfather's membership of the Waffen SS has been an abiding obsession of mine.

Ever since I first really took in the magnitude of the Holocaust at about the age of nine or 10, I have been aware that, like it or not (and I don't) I am a direct descendant of a Nazi. His "racially pure" blood - that ideological engine oil of the Third Reich - flows in my veins.

Partly because of that, and partly because Kurt Martens died a loyal SS man, I've always felt that maybe it has come down to me to try to make amends.

And yet, the unfortunate truth is that this story hasn't fallen in the hands of a poet or a novelist or a philosopher - it has fallen into my hands, the hands of a comedian. The hands that used to write jokes for Ronnie Barker and Basil Brush, the hands usually to be found tapping a Biro on my teeth as I try to think of a funny angle on the week's news.

This month, my hands and I shall be risking financial ruin and critical apathy in Edinburgh with my one-man comedy show, Sins of the Grandfathers. But is a comedy show the right framework within which to discuss serious subjects? As a comedian, have I brought a metaphorical knife to a philosophical gunfight?

Many people have a low opinion of comedy at the Edinburgh Festival. If the stories are to be believed, August in the Athens of the North is a Rabelasian Golgotha where the great and the good of the comedy world (as well as the weak and the bad) go to feed their raging egos and their equally raging alcoholic and sexual thirsts. Ask anyone who has attended the explosion of free drink, envy and groping that is the Perrier Award party.

But if Edinburgh shows the comedy industry at its swaggering worst, it also shows it at its best. The Fringe has been criticised for being a soulless trade show where fame-hungry hacks prostitute themselves for the chance to appear on Channel 4, but it remains the only place where a comedian can try to be truly ambitious.

For every stand-up with five minutes of material and 45 minutes of padding, there are dozens of shows attempting to stretch the boundaries of what is possible in the 50-odd minutes of an Edinburgh show. If comedy is to have any real worth it has, on occasion, to tackle grand themes.

As far as I'm concerned, themes don't come much grander than the Faustian pact that the German people entered into in the last century. How did it happen? It's a question that has been asked time and again. All I can hope to do is find an answer that makes sense to me. My experience is hardly unique.

Thousands of people have similar stories to tell about grandparents, in Germany, in Britain, and all over the world. This week, it was reported that more than 7,000 Ukranian members of the SS were allowed to live in Britain after the war, to protect them from persecution if they returned to their own country.

Who knows, maybe there's an Argentine farmer somewhere who talks fondly of his Grandpa Adolf. In telling Kurt Martens's story, all I can do is be honest and hope my perspective chimes with an audience.

Growing up half-German has had its drawbacks. I'm marked out by my Germanic pronunciation of marzipan, for giving two syllables to Porsche and an F and a V to Volkswagen. Children in the late Seventies and early Eighties, raised on Bank Holiday war films and comic book heroics, seemed unable to grasp the idea that Britain was no longer at war with Germany. In playground games of soldiers, I was always the Nazi hordes.

But behind all this lay my family's very real involvement in the events these games mimicked. Until I began really researching the subject, my mother and I never really talked about my grandfather. It wasn't so much a taboo subject as an unpleasant one.

One of my earliest memories is of my mother being reduced to tears after a BBC adaptation of The Diary of Anne Frank. But it wasn't her tears that affected me most, it was the question she kept asking: "Oh, God, what did we do?" That "we" has stayed with me, a deep-felt acceptance of inherited guilt.

To me, the story of Kurt Martens is one of a grandfather I never met; to her, it's the story of a father who never came back from the war. The pain that caused her is, more than anything, why it has taken my family 60 years to come to terms with who and what Kurt Martens was.

In another letter, he wrote: "Every single minute has to be snatched to write you a few lines. I take it that your heart, like mine, feels somewhat lonely. Because hardly had they found each other truly again, then the soft hand of fate came and parted us. Now once more, like for so long and so often, we have to give each other a little support in writing."

From his tender if clumsy letters home, and his boyish enthusiasm for swimming and sports, my grandfather comes across as a normal, loving family man. But again and again one is pulled up sharp by the image of this family man wearing a murderer's uniform.

I have no evidence that Kurt Martens was a war criminal - he certainly was never a camp guard or part of the Einsatzgruppen death squads - but he was involved, even if only driving a truck and turning a blind eye. When my aunt was born in 1943, my grandparents received a one-off payment of 150 Reichsmarks.

The paperwork for this payment still exists, a routine piece of red tape until you see where the document was processed. To them, Dachau was an SS administrative centre; to us, it has very different connotations. It doesn't take much to smear a life with guilt - sometimes you only have to cash a cheque.

Somewhere in between loving letters home and a death's head cap badge, lies my grandfather. I never knew him, but it seems I spend a lot of time trying to understand him, a normal man who did abnormal things. It's stories like this that make one grateful for laughter.

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Dan Tetsell: Sins of the Grandfathers

Guardian
11th August
****

Dan Tetsell's grandfather was born at the end of the first world war and died at the end of the second. "I never met him," says the thirtysomething Tetsell. "I never dandled on his knee. He never got the chance to give me the German equivalent of a Werther's Original."

More importantly, he never got the chance to tell little Dan what he did in the war. Grandad was a Nazi, an officer in the Waffen SS who won the Iron Cross on the eastern front. He was either directly involved in atrocities or, at the very least, complicit. "There were good Germans," Tetsell says, "but my grandfather wasn't one of them."

This honest, thoughtful show is an attempt to place grandad somewhere on the scale of good and evil, and to explore Tetsell's own multifaceted sense of guilt. He's a comedian, he muses, and he's so hard up for material that he's "bragging about being connected to a possible war criminal".

It doesn't sound like a barrel of laughs, does it? Even when it's spiced up with family snapshots, love letters, and a toy monkey dressed as Hitler. But, although there are more wry chuckles than belly-laughs, this is a gripping, unmissable event.

Tom Hughes

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Dan Tetsell: Sins of the Grandfathers

Three Weeks

***

Can anybody ever be as evil as Hitler was? Dan Tetsell doesn’t think so - even if his grandfather was a Nazi. He attempts to rid himself of his genetic guilt through his show. But is a comedy show about the death of 60 million people an acceptable way to go about it? Using authentic photographs, heartfelt letters and sinister war contracts, Tetsell explores how a relative became part of such an extremist regime. With sharp wit and impeccable comic timing this show does manage to make you laugh about the holocaust - as much as your conscious may try and hold back, it is funny. This bizarre mix of the personal, political and historical is more easily appreciated by a niche audience.

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Dan Tetsell: Sins of the Grandfathers

The List
11-18 Aug
****

A comic monologue about the Nazis that opens with archive footage of raised arms and goose-stepping sounds like the result of a drunken bet in the pub. Or else - perish the thought - a live version of 'Allo 'Allo. But, no, Dan Tetsell has bravely delved into his family history to create a compelling and, actually, very funny hour's entertainment. The show is based around the fact that Tetsell's maternal grandfather was a fully paid up member of Hitler's SS. That he was also, by many accounts, a thoroughly decent chap who loved his old mum has led Tetsell to raise questions about the nature of evil.

In less competent hands, this premise would have been very tricky to pull off, not simply due to the controversial subject matter, but because personal histories don't always make the most hilarious or riveting of comedy shows. Happily, it is with tongue firmly in cheek that hour host posits such questions as "Do we British secretly find Nazis cool?" While Tetsell's tale is occasionally a little rambling, he's a confident and engaging raconteur, who wisely never allows his material to meander into territory that is overly sentimental or earnest.

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Dan Tetsell: Sins of the Grandfathers

Metro
16 August
***

Most families have a skeleton in their closet but few can beat Dan Tetsell, whose grandfather was a member of Hitler's SS During World War II.

Tetsell uses this show to examin his inherited guilt over this fact, examining the life of his grandfather and comparing it with his own.

There is a surprising amount of comedy in this and some of Tetsell's material is fantastic. He is, however, a comedy writer first and a performer second, and the delivery of the material doesn't quite match the content. Tetsell doesn't quite have the necessary stage persona to carry off such a tricky balance between comedy and pathos.

Despite such shortcomings, this is an adventurous and ambitious show which succeeds more than it fails. It's certainly a cut above your average stand-up - with some honing of techique, it could be a real belter.

Doug Johnstone

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Dan Tetsell: Sins of the Grandfathers

Observer
21 August

There is a rule in pub arguments that the first person to mention the Nazis loses, presumably because they are so incomparable in the league table of evil that it is lazy and unimaginative to use them as an illustration of anything. I would add that as a subject for comedy, the Nazis are best avoided, but will make an exception for Dan Tetsell, who has created the most thought-provoking and original Third Reich-based comedy you are likely to see (though he is, by his admission, competing largely with 'Allo, 'Allo! in this field).

Tetsell's maternal grandfather, Kurt Martens, was a Nazi ('a real one, not in the sense that most grandparents are a little bit racist') and he uses the scraps of biography he knows of Martens, spliced with Kenny Rogers's 'Coward of the County', to explore moral courage. Is a Nazi who goes to his death out of loyalty to an ideal a better person than an apathetic comedian exploiting his relationship to a possible war criminal for entertainment?

It's a good question and gives rise to some good lines - 'I don't know why my grandfather joined the Hitler Youth; perhaps he was hoping to become Pope' - but the obvious difficulty is that it's fairly short on laughs. This is not the fault of Tetsell's likably wry delivery, but inherent in the subject. Whatever his conclusions, this was a brave show and has certainly avoided the trap of mass appeal.

Stephanie Merritt

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Dan Tetsell: Sins of the Grandfathers

The Stage
17 August 2005

Dan Tetsell’s German grandfather was a Nazi, and Dan has made a comedy show about it. Yes, he knows that this is in questionable taste and deflects criticism by making jokes about his audacity in making jokes about the Third Reich. He also takes his presentation into more serious territory, leaving his audience with some questions they may well not have expected to be asking themselves after a comedy show.

Tetsell never knew his grandfather, who evidently died on the Eastern Front, but he has photographs of the man, standing proudly in his SS uniform or joking with friends, and some loving letters to his wife. Indeed, all available evidence indicates a man of no special evil, leading Tetsell to wonder if he himself would have refused the opportunity as a child to join the Hitler Youth (if only to become Pope), or whether his other grandfather, a cruel and violent person, must be considered the better man just because he was not a Nazi.

In safer comic territory, sprinkling a few graphs among his projected photos inspires some digs at chart-loving Dave Gorman, while a monkey doll in a Nazi uniform requires an account of how he explained it to the shopgirl. Still, the major impression one must carry from the show is that Tetsell was not defeated by the material, rather than that he triumphed over or through it.

Gerald Berkowitz

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Dan Tetsell: Sins of the Grandfathers

The Times
21 August
***

Stephen Armstrong

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Howard Read: 2005 Comeback Special

The Scotsman
13th August
***

In his solo 2005 Comeback Special, or Howard Read Unplugged as he likes to call it, the comic spends rather too long on his reasons for doing straight stand-up, but once he settles into his stride, this is an entertaining hour. Material about the toilets on Virgin trains is none too groundbreaking and he can't resist using pre-recorded Dictaphone messages to dig himself out of occasional cul-de-sacs.

But, on personal material, such as getting married and being burgled, he is consistently funny, a ukulele plea to the thief offering a brilliantly twisted love song. Elsewhere, he switches easily between the London bombings and Tyrannosaurus Rex impressions.

Read is good enough now to be a lot more confident as a stand-up and can obviously hold his own without Little Howard holding his hand.

Jay Richardson

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Howard Read: 2005 Comeback Special

Metro
25th August 2005
****

It is arguable that these days Howard Read isn't as well known as his cartoon creation, Little Howard. But before the props, computer wizardry and interactive, animated, six-year-old sidekick, Read did straight-up stand-up.

OK, not straight-up; there were some odd songs about vegetables. one of which, about an aubergine and played on a ukulele (comedy instrument of the moment), kicks off this Comeback Special. This is Howard Read unplugged.

Read is an overgrown kid who doesn't live in the real world, and he makes no bones about it. He wants to talk about reality, he explains, but isn't quite sure he's got the credentials to do so.

It doesn't matter. his stand-up is endearing and engaging, as he natters easily and amusingly about everything from his plans for his forthcoming wedding, to British nationalism, trains, planes, automobiles and the comic cat Garfield.

Read knows how to read the crowd and does it wonderfully, eliciting wry chuckles, belly-laughs and knowing smiles, and never once losing the pace. And there are some wicked T-Rex impressions to enjoy. Amazing what you can do with just two fingers, isn't it?

Mickey Noonan

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Howard Read: The Little Howard Appeal

Fest
10th August
****

Little Howard may be an animated character but he's in a coma and only your laughter will bring him back. The question is, are we going to laugh hard enough and do we want Little Howard to wake up anyway?

Howard Read is the man behind Little Howard. He literally pushes the buttons and Little Howard appears and performs on a big screen behind him. Perhaps the first thing to say is that this is really clever stuff, incredibly well put together with a keen eye for detail and an acute appreciation of multimedia.

It is quite right to say that all of this lifts the show from good to very good because really, this high tech stuff is the show. And it's the material too. What makes The Little Howard Appeal special and not just a gimmick is the total absorbtion of a new medium.

It could so easily have been half-baked and half-arsed. It could also have been stilted and unspontaneous but Read, who is a charming host, as written and directed it with great care, generously giving most of the best material to his onscreen partners.

It is funny too and, alongside its child-friendly showtime, is genuinely written for all ages. Maybe not coma breaking stuff, but more than enough to keep you out of one.

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Howard Read: The Little Howard Appeal

The Scotsman
13th August
****

IN THE Little Howard Appeal, with his six-year-old cartoon sidekick, Howard Read has produced his best and most ambitious animation show yet. Little Howard has slipped into a coma and only by experimenting with different forms of comedy and maintaining the laughter can the comic prevent him from flatlining.

Assisted only by the pair's belligerent manager, Roger the Pigeon, and the misguided robot H-bot 2000, plus, strangely, Little Howard himself, who in this performance was allegedly played by Jason Byrne, it's really just an excuse for Read and his creations to bludgeon a series of comedic set-ups.

As ever, the tension between childish and adult humour is the main charm, but there's a curiosity, too, in seeing whether Read can overcome the technical challenges he's set himself.

There were several gremlins at the performance I witnessed, but unlike the increasing number of comics who use projections, laptops and all manner of multimedia, Read is adroit enough to adapt and turn the problems to his advantage.

Jay Richardson

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Howard Read: The Little Howard Appeal

The Stage
12th August

As if the wonders of technology and a chance to converse with an animation weren’t quite enough, Howard Read and his entourage - this time also featuring Chris Addison as the voice of Little Howard - have come up with an interesting ruse. Little Howard is in a coma and only laughter (and good reviews!) can save him. In Hollywood terms, that’s your ‘ticking clock’ set. And for the sake of varying the pace and keeping up the suspense, Read throws in a couple of crises requiring a resort to the ‘one-liner defibulator’.

We still get quite a lot of Little Howard, in sketches that have been ‘pre-recorded’, but with so many stories-within-stories to follow, it is all a bit complicated - not least considering that some of the stories actually feature such wonders of imagination as matador grannies, men with heads made of cars and pyjamas made of bees. Big Howard himself is inevitably completely upstaged by his own creation in a show that is a guaranteed crowd-pleaser. Worry not about the wiz-kid Read, however. With a parallel low-tech but high-voltage stand up routine on the go in an evening slot, he can rest on his laurels until after the next year’s Comic Relief.

Duska Radosavljevic

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Howard Read: The Little Howard Appeal

Metro
15th August
****

Credit where it's due; being a comedian is a tough job. Being a comedian in control of complicated technology and an interactive, animated six year old sidekick is surely just masochism, in which case, thank God for Howard Read's issues.

Last year's Big Howard Little Howard show was a bit lacklustre: this year's is dazzling. The script is tighter; the gags more abundant and funnier: the technical hiccups are at a minimum and there's much more Roger The Pigeon, a bird so foul and funny he makes Jo Brand look like Mother Teresa.

Little Howard is in a coma, his condition constantly monitored on the inspired 'comacam'. The only thing that can wake him up is laughter. Cue a series of sketches, songs, audience play and a splat of satire that can't possibly fail.

Read is an out-and-out whizz-kid and deserves much recognition for his unique teist on the stnas-up genre. There are a just a few moments when the pace dips too much; otherwise The Little Howard Appeal would be a no-hesitation five-star review.

Oh, and there's a nifty use of Pudsey Bear and Mr T - who would no doubt pity the fool who misses this.

Mickey Noonan

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Howard Read: The Little Howard Appeal

EdinburghGuide.com
13 August
****

Perrier nominated Howard Read is ten minutes late starting today's show, due to 'technical issues'. We nod sagely. We've all been there. And besides, we accept that without technology we wouldn't have the star of today's proceedings, Little Howard.

The Little Howard Appeal is Big Howard/Little Howard's third outing - it's almost becoming a Fringe institution. Read's animated co-conspirator and double act partner consistently engages hearts and minds across all ages and demographics - this afternoon a bespectacled Harry Potter lookalike chortles with glee from the front row.

It is interesting to note that the same innovative use of technology that turned the Perrier judges' heads in 2003, still feels as innovative three years on. This is perhaps as much testament to Read's showmanship, writing skills and creative vision, as to the nuts and bolts of the technology itself. The show has become darker over the years, but has been carefully pitched to appeal and entertain at adult level, whilst succeeding in not alientating any potential junior contingent of a Little Howard audience. It's a clever balancing act, and it works well.

This time around Little Howard has lapsed into a coma (possibly Asian bird flu caught from Roger the pigeon), and through the power of laughter, jokes and audience participation, we are tasked with bringing the little lad back to the land of the living. It is smart, unifying fun, as we lurch from the disgusting (snot, ladybird licking) through to Read's sharper, subtler observations and asides. There is music, there is mayhem and yes - there is a happy ending.

And oh the satisfaction, of being able to take the occasional tongue-in-cheek swipe, "you said Flight of the Conchords were a bunch of wankers, Big Howard..." via such a disingenuous, cute mouthpiece. Having a 2D partner in crime means never having to say you're sorry.

Leanna Rance

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Howard Read: The Little Howard Appeal

The Guardian
23 August
***

Comedians seem increasingly reluctant to just go on stage and yap. There's so much multimedia at this year's festival, it should be sponsored by Dell.

Few acts, though, have taken things quite so far as Howard Read. For the past few years, he has been part of a virtual double act, performing opposite a cartoon version of himself at the age of six. Little Howard, as we're to call him, may only be an image on a screen, but he walks, talks and does everything flesh and blood can, except throw custard pies.

Things have come unstuck in the new show, however. Little Howard has caught Asian bird flu and is lying in a coma in the St Bart's Ward for Cartoon Children. "Our best chance of getting Little Howard out of it," Big Howard announces, "is laughter." After this appeal to our better natures, he begins a benefit show both for and with Little Howard, who was allegedy "recorded" before he fell ill. It relies heavily on Little H's childish charm and Big H's fear of being upstaged, plus some gee-whizz human-cartoon interaction. At one point Big H even takes a tissue and blows Little H's nose for him. Little Howard turns out to have a lot of animated friends, including H-Bot 2000, "the funny robot from the future", a foul-mouthed Pudsey the Bear, a pigeon called Roger - and George Bush, who announces, to the audience's delight, "I don't mind people saying I'm dumb, because if they're saying I'm dumb they haven't realised I'm evil."

It's technically impressive, as is an interlude in which Little Howard, manipulated by Read, chats with the audience. Punter: "I'm an actor." Little Howard: "Which restaurant do you act in?" But the whole thing's rather baggy, and it feels as if more effort has gone into programming than into writing the script. Little Howard is also prone to a tiny but perceptible delay in his responses, which doesn't help with comic timing.

A damn good gimmick, but a gimmick none the less.

Phil Daoust

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Jeremy Lion: What's the Time, Mr Lion?

Observer
7th August

One performer who will never need to worry about drunk hecklers is the adorable Jeremy Lion, children's entertainer; they could never hope to match him for either inebriation or offensiveness. The failing, sozzled entertainer is one of comedy's oldest cliche's - but the formidable talent (and stomach capacity) of Justin Edwards have made this consistently one of the best character acts on the fringe for the past three years.

This year, Jeremy Lion is putting on a little children's play, aided by his keyboardist, Leslie. There's a Roald Dahl-esque cautionary tale in the shape of a teddy bear's picnic, in which all the teddies have scissors in their eyes, plastic bags over their heads or missing limbs; an educational song, the lyrics and performance of which would have Tom Lehrer gasping in admiration, and Mr Lion's old puppet theatre.

'Sadly I've had to sell the puppets,' he explains, pulling out of the case a can of Special Brew and several quarter bottles of different spirits, which he then employs to play fairytale characters while drinking from each of them. Rarely will you see apparent anarchy and carefully scripted comedy so happily married.

Stephanie Merritt

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Jeremy Lion: What's the Time, Mr Lion?

Three Weeks
7th August
****

Like my old headmaster that got drunk and thumped a lap dancer, Jeremy Lion is the perfect example of a children's entertainer. His impressive drinking ability is interspersed with hilarious sketches, which cover a wide range ofsubjects from the naughty bears at the teddy bears picnic, to Beef Richards the talking cow plus Jeremy and his keyboard playing friend Leslie treat us to some amusing songs. This is a real treat, and a drunken, mumbling Jeremy Lion is a character deserving television fame. Three Weeks.

Stephanie Merritt

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Jeremy Lion: What's the Time, Mr Lion?

The Times
11th August
****

WEARING a mortarboard, playing a banjo, Jeremy Lion is performing a jaunty song about grammar. “If you split your infinitives everyone will laugh,” he sings. “If you split your colon you’d better have a bath.” Somehow, you think, What’s the Time, Mr Lion? is not the sort of show that has been rewritten to address the recent terrorist attacks. And so it proves: Justin Edwards’s third outing as the drunken children’s entertainer is a deliciously mad mockery of an old-fashioned kids’ show — here in the form of a play about an average day, written and narrated (on tape) by Jeremy’s late father, Uncle Lion.

It’s just the gimmick this character needs to offer more of the same — belching, outlandish onstage boozing, gruesome puppetry — without the sense of déjà vu that cramped last year’s show. So as Lion swaps a Special Brew for a glass of milk at school break time — “I ’m lactose-intolerant” — or takes us to a teddy bears’ picnic filled with grizzly crippled toys, he and his subdued accompanist Leslie (George Cockerill) kick against the strictures of their format with relish.

This town has plenty of half-rate shows that trade on mocking bad showbusiness. But Edwards makes his character almost heroic as he battles against treacherous props, memories of his abusive dad and a raging thirst for everything up to and including Listerine (but not Bailey’s — he is lactose-intolerant, after all). Never mind the apparent shambles, this rollicking frolic is constructed with care. Lion’s previous Fringe visits were well received but unremunerative — “I might as well have put £8,000 in the bin,” he growls. This could be the one that repays its investment.

Dominic Maxwell

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Jeremy Lion: What's the Time, Mr Lion?

Evening News
11th August
****

On television at least, character-based comedy is best played on subtleties - from Kath and Kim to Ricky Gervais.

But on the Fringe stage, intricate details are easily lost so a different approach is required. The answer? Get some stupid costumes, catchy music and a larger-than-life caricature who the audience can really buy into.

If you really want to see how it's done, see Jeremy Lion.

Here's the set-up: Lion is an alcoholic children's entertainer whose stories, songs and well-intentioned children's play revolve around the moral and educational sensibilities of the 1950s - a legacy of his late father, Uncle Lion.

Lion starts the show belching and semi-drunk and gradually completes the job via an increasing tendency to neck cans of Special Brew and dip into poorly-concealed bottles of Whyte & Mackay.

The basic principle may sound a little obvious, but it's the angle of approach, the quality of the writing and the performance that really lifts this show above the Fringe norm.

Catch him now before he's snapped up for Balamory.

Jason Hall

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Jeremy Lion: What's the Time, Mr Lion?

The Guardian
11th August
****

Jeremy Lion is the children's entertainer to end all children's entertainers - but not in a good way. Entrust your little darlings to him and they'll return traumatised and/or intoxicated. He sings, he dances, he prances around in animal costumes, but most of all he drinks: Special Brew, Buckfast, Amaretto, scotch, gin, vodka, Malibu ... every alcoholic beverage under the sun except Baileys, and that's only because he's lactose-intolerant. Just breathing near him is enough to make your head swim.

Somewhere in the middle of this awesome binge, between the incessant belching and the descent into coma, Lion (real name Justin Edwards) and his gormless assistant Leslie (George Cockerill) stage a shambolic play about a teddy bears' picnic, followed by an incoherent puppet show where the marionettes have been replaced by fast-emptying bottles. There's some bloody butchery, too, as stuffed toys suffer horrible fates, from scissors in the eyes to flaying and tanning.

It's enough to drive the audience to drink - but fortunately Lion is a generous host and hands out plentiful supplies of the hard stuff. Perhaps it's the liquor talking, but by the end of the show we all agree: he's our besht mate and we'll fight anyone who says different.

Phil Daoust

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Jeremy Lion: What's the Time, Mr Lion?

The Stage
12th August

The Jeremy Lion drinkathon has become one of the high points of the fringe over the past three years.

The immensely gifted Justin Edwards - who made his name as the leading light in The Consultants - threw everything into the latest of his series of soused adventures with his children’s entertainer character, who is aided by simple sidekick Leslie (George Cockerill).

The audience are treated to a ‘play’ loosely based on the Teddy Bears’ Picnic, crossed with a disturbing insight into Mr Lion’s troubled past. It involved stripping a cow, Beef Richard, of its meat, passing five bottles of whisky round the audience until the punters were tipsy, and Mr Lion himself quaffing huge quantities of spirits, wine and Special Brew.

The songs were hilarious. The patter was perfectly timed and the costumes sickly inspired. And Cockerill superbly bungled his lines as Leslie in the shopkeeper sketch. By the finale, Mr Lion had collapsed and the audience was incapacitated with laughter.

“I have never seen anything as funny in my life,” one fan remarked afterwards. It was indeed character comedy at its finest.

Chris Wilson

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Jeremy Lion: What's the Time, Mr Lion?

Metro
17th August
****

While the idea of an unsuitable, dipsomaniac children's entertainer is hardly an original one - the notion of the drunk and dissolute clown is older than Methuselah, after all - Jeremy Lion manages to draw wonders from an ostensibly hackneyed concept.

A hulking, gangling wardrobe of a man, Lion is a woozily dignified hybrid of Johhny Vegas and Freddie Jones in The Elephant Man, a tired yet dogged performer intent on entertaining his boys and girls even while he stares hangdog into the ruddy-cheeked face of despair.

It's a fantastic comedy creation, immaculately realised by its creator Justin Edwards, who imbues the character with towering pathos.

This year, Lion has decided to revive a show once performed by his late father, a man in whose shadow he clearly cowers.

A shambling pile of tat about a teddy bears picnic (illustrated by a harrowing safety rhyme featuring stuffed teds with scissors in their eyes and plastic bags on their heads), it takes all Lion's willpower to get through it, abetted throughout by copious amounts of stashed lager and Whisky.

He is generous with the latter though, handing out bottles to the audience. Yes it's real booze and one wonders how drunk Lions/Edwards is. But his performance is never less than masterful. Character comedy at it's besht.

Paul Whitelaw

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Jeremy Lion: What's the Time, Mr Lion?

Chortle

****

Justin Edwards’ dipsomaniac children’s entertainer is one of the most riotously funny comedy creations in recent years. As Jeremy Lion stumbles, slurs and belches his way through an hour of wholly inappropriate activities, the uncontrollable, visceral laughs come thick and fast.

It’s not clever or obtuse, just brilliantly silly. It’s carried by Edwards’ emphatic, tour-de-force performance as an inept man on the brink of alcohol-fuelled collapse, finding opportunities for a drink at every turn.

After staging a birthday party and a Christmas party at the previous two Fringes (‘I might as well have put £8,000 in a bin,’ he grumbles bitterly), Lion has now decided to change tack and stage a full children’s play – an hour-by-hour journey through the day of school, teddy bears’ picnic and bedtime story. ‘Well that’s the plan,’ he says. I think we all know that won’t be what actually transpires.

The show actually follows pretty much the pattern of the previous one – which is understandable, as it has proved an unfailing winning formula. As well as Lion’s increasing inebriation, the wonderfully chaotic show includes disturbingly gruesome, nightmare-inducing toys and shabby, though extravagant, costumes.

The scale of the ambition is huge, no low-budget show in the festival can surely have so many intricate props. After an hilariously shambolic hour, the stage is littered with them – not to mention a sea of crumpled Special Brew cans.

It’s remnants of a hour that introduces us to the birds and the bees, tells us where meat comes from, retells a confused story that mangles all fairy tales into one as he downs the contents of a minibar. There’s songs, dance, a bit of ventriloquism – although ingenuity is needed to cover the fact Lion hasn’t quite mastered the art, and shots of whisky for the audience. There is a lot packed in here.

But the show’s joy does not all come from the inherent comedy of drunkenness or the visual humour of the big-scale set pieces that sear their ridiculous imprints on your brain. The script, too, is fizzing with great lines, with a wealth of throwaway asides that really nail the show as something special and show Edwards to be as gifted a writer as he is a powerhouse of a comic performer.

It’s an unfathomable mystery why this modern-day WC Fields is still playing such a relatively small room, but it does suit his character, as Lion would never be successful enough to play a theatre. But this show will be a guaranteed highlight of the festival for everyone who sees it, whatever their comedy tastes.

Steve Bennett

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Jeremy Lion: What's the Time, Mr Lion?

Independent
19 August
****

If a show or a film gives me one really good laugh throughout its duration I can usually forgive its creators if the rest of it turns out only to be average. For example, as a teen watching Coming to America, I dined out on the line "The royal penis is clean, your highness" for weeks. In What's the Time, Mr Lion? there was one killer visual gag, masquerading as a child's puzzle, that will linger in my mind in the same way. Unlike Eddie Murphy's film, however, Lion's show is above average and much more outrageous.

Justin Edwards's alcoholic children's-entertainer character has been in Festival business since 2003, while a year earlier he was one third of the Consultants, the Perrier Newcomer-winning act with whom he still collaborates. Lion, too, is steeped in showbusiness; in this show he acts out a kids' play narrated (on tape) by his late father, known as "Uncle Lion" in his heyday. Among the set pieces that he belches his way through is his father's "puppet show" version of Goldilocks and the Three Bears - or rather, as it turns out, Buckfast and the Three Beers (not to mention the vodka, gin and red wine), all of which are genuinely slurped on stage. Also in the mix are comedy songs about unfortunate teddy bears: "through education/ he's learnt the pain of asphyxiation".

The Lion act is most definitely not available for children's parties - but for the Fringe, the adult version of one, he is a must-see.

Julian Hall

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Jeremy Lion: What's the Time, Mr Lion?

The Times
21 August
****

Stephen Armstrong

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Natalie Haynes: Run or Die

Evening News
9th August
***

REMEMBER It's a Knockout? It was an insanely popular game show in the 70s featuring otherwise normal people - invariably dressed as a giant and made to look like a foolish caricature - who completed meaningless tasks, much to the amusement of the hosts.

The commentary was breathless and the hosts would often be unable to contain their delight at things that couldn't possibly be as hysterical as they seemed to believe. The audience, meanwhile, struggled to keep up with this chaos, but was generally entertained by the good humour in which it was all conducted.

And that, in one over-sized nutshell, is what it's like to watch Natalie Haynes. For someone who takes apostrophes very seriously - as she reveals in her show - Haynes is in serious need of some well-placed punctuation. For just over an hour she simply does not stop for breath, vocalising every thought she's ever had - good, bad and occasionally twisted - in one long unbroken sentence. This is no stream of consciousness - it's a tsunami. She crashes through her material and the audience has no choice but to swim with the tide, although there are moments when this takes a bit more effort than some people might be willing to put in.

Those willing to keep up with the pace, however, will be rewarded with a set that eschews the more obvious comedian's reference points in favour of a refreshingly obscure range of subjects - from geometry to the etymology of swearing - with everyday characters that are presented as being every bit as foolish as those It's a Knockout giants. Throughout it all, Haynes remains incredibly engaging and disarmingly smiley, to the point where she even charms you into thinking that her material about Nazi death camps and posting an aborted foetus is perfectly harmless fun. And that's no mean feat.

Jason Hall

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Natalie Haynes: Run or Die

The List
11-18 Aug
***

Natalie Haynes has just turned 30 and is very excited about ut though it it has lead to an obsession with '70's sci-fi flick Logan's Run where those that clock up three decades are killed. Hayne's talks so fast it's the comedy equivilent of a two for one offer; blink and you'll miss the quick wit and sharp asides her show is littered with.

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Natalie Haynes: Run or Die

Independent

***

What can you say about Natalie Haynes? Whatever you do say, you'd be hard pushed to say it as fast as she could. To put it bluntly, the 30-year-old comedian is like a brunette Hattie Hayridge on speed. With her lightning mind and winning smile, Haynes is a unique character, but one who can elicit a strong dislike.

The cult film Logan's Run is the arbitrary hook on which she has hung her self-conscious, aside-assisted material that encapsulates, well, everything. She roams from the Women's Institute ("They get naked like supermodels and make jam - what more can you ask?"), to the Ikea founder Ingvar Kamprad overtaking Bill Gates as the richest man on Earth because of the strength of the dollar ("by accident rather than by design, then, which is ironic").

There are definite pearls of both wisdom and mirth in this show, but sometimes Haynes's momentum threatens to override them. However, she isn't going to stop for anybody, even the rather ignorant group who, on the night I saw her, were chattering at the start. I would have preferred to see the former classics teacher embrace her new profession and use them as a comic opportunity rather than chasten them like errant students. As it turned out, a detention would have been the only way they would have stayed to digest her show, deciding as they did to bunk off early.

Julian Hall

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Natalie Haynes: Run or Die

Scotsman.com
10th August
***

Natalie Haynes deserves to be on much later in the evening; a younger, drunker audience would get more out of her show than the handful in the Pleasance Upstairs early last evening. It might also spare poor Natalie the embarrassment of throwing out underage punters and their unhappy mother at the beginning of the show. But, as Natalie explained, she does a fair amount of swearing. And yes, it is big and it is clever. In fact, it's downright educational.

Haynes delivers her broad-ranging act with a kindly smile and rattles through her set like she's left the iron on at home. In among the quips about macroeconomics, bad science and parrots she includes some wonderfully crude material including why a triangle is better than a sheath (the educational bit) and how to communicate with anti-abortionists.

She's got keen sense of intelligent, dark comedy and Run or Die would be improved with a slightly edgier delivery to a bawdier audience. As it is, some of her material seems a little at odds with her pleasant demeanour, which is a shame. It shouldn’t be wrong to be a nice person with a lovely smile, but in this case it's not quite right.

But with the price of Fringe tickets these days, Ms Haynes does seem something of a bargain at £8.50. OK she's on one of the smaller Pleasance stages which can get a lttle suffocating and foetid in warm weather, but she's certainly worth a punt. Just don’t bring the kids.

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Natalie Haynes: Run or Die

The Guardian
13th August
***

Natalie Haynes doesn't like children. Either listening to her stand-up routine - there are too many short words that begin with "f" or "c" - or anywhere else. She's not keen on foetuses, either, or babies. "I don't consider myself so much pro-choice as anti-life," she says. Adults are OK, so long as they don't hunt, teach creationism as if it were science rather than mumbo-jumbo, pretend to be vegetarians when they eat fish, force-feed geese, take trivial cases to the European Court of Human Rights or dislike parrots. Yet she has a soft spot for media psychiatrist Raj Persaud, which suggests she's definitely not right in her head. She's rather pleased when someone walks out of her show.

The thing about kids we can put down to her former career as a teacher. But the rest? Perhaps it's her age. This show is largely about Haynes coming to terms with being 30 - which she considers "middle-aged", as she plans to kill herself at 60. Her 200-words-a-minute delivery suggests she has got a lot of bile to get out of her system in the next three decades. Fun, but you wouldn't want to sit next to her on a bus.

Phil Daoust

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Natalie Haynes: Run or Die

The Telegraph
12th August

My, what a lot of brain-boxes there are engaged in the difficult business of making people laugh these days.

At the Assembly Rooms, Chris Addison, comedy's favourite smart-alec, is broaching with breathless excitement the subject of mankind's relationship with the universe. Over at the Pleasance, the ferociously intelligent Natalie Haynes demolishes creationism and discusses the etymological root of the c-word, among other things. Not to be outdone, Alex Horne is waging a concertedly silly campaign to re-establish the love and learning of Latin.

Whatever happened to the sort of comedians who fell into the job having spent their school years larking around at the back of the classroom? Shouldn't Addison, Haynes and Horne be shaping government policy on climate change, or reforming the education system?

No, on reflection, they've got their métier right; while stand-up's new overeducated middle-class tendency needs to be monitored, you have to admire those crusading on behalf of unabashed intelligence.

Addison, a Perrier Award nominee last year, and a rising star thanks to his prominent role in the excellent BBC satire The Thick of It, is the best of the bunch, having got his cod-lectures down to a fine science. If there's a criticism, it's that he digresses too often.

Haynes, whose ostensible subject is turning 30, can lose you in her gabbling delivery, and irritate you with her smiley-smugness. Just when you think it's all getting a bit too swotty, though, she'll come out with something bracingly vile: a great hater of children, she argues: "Until you can walk, talk, and eat of your own volition, you're not a human being, you're an unusually developed tumour."

Horne's show utilises the deadpan assistance of Tim Keys and much audience participation. We're guided through a computer-crafted maze of questions which is nominally located in Sheffield "on account of it having seven hills - unlike Rome, though, Sheffield was built in a day". I want him to be able to win this year's Perrier just so he can say: "Veni, vidi, vici."

Dominic Cavendish

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Robin Ince is as Dumb as You

Independent on Sunday
7th August

Anyone who bought Ricky Gervais's last stand-up DVD, Politics, will remember Robin Ince, the glum, bespectacled figures who serves as Gervais's warm-up man and whipping boy. But the video doesn't do him justice. In the flesh Ince is an assured comic in his own right, his stewart Lee-influenced precision sarcasm enlivened by the cheery curiosity of the bloke in the pub who spends too much time looking up trivia on the internet.

What's especially bracing is that Ince makes beefburgers of some of today's most sacred holy cows, scoffing at all thing superstitious and anti-rational - chiefly religion, people who claim to be psychic, and The Daily Mail - with such anger and enthusiasm that his fact-packed show is like a stand-up version of Francis Wheen's How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered The World. It takes a bold comedian to suggest that Maxine Carr might not be Evil incarnate, and that political correctness isn't neccessarily a terrible thing, but Ince does so with infectious heartiness. And he does a mean John Peel impersonation, too.

Nicholas Barber

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Robin Ince is as Dumb as You

Scotsman
12th August
***

WHETHER hosting his Book Club or performing his solo show, Robin Ince sweeps you along on a tide of trivia. Prostrating himself before the printed word, his quality control may be tongue-in-cheek, but his clever balance of artless enthusiasm and cynicism is infectious.

It certainly needs to be for the Club, where, like his namesake Paul, he's the guv'nor, only less bullheaded. It's a bit on the short side, but this kind of ramshackle get-up, stand-up parade of performers is ideal for an afternoon on which you're uncertain what to see later on.

It's variety in every sense, featuring a string of very different performers doing quick skits, interspersed with Ince reading from Syd Little's biography, Little by Little, and other works of not-so-great literature. While it's very easy to mock D-List celebrity memoirs and terrible airport novels, Ince gets great mileage out of trying to find subtexts - non-existent in the Mills and Boon, all too evident in a faded TV star's barely disguised score-settling.<.p>

The "spirit of the Fringe" quality to the show that Ince kept emphasising was embodied by the best act on display, Australian country troubadour Wilson Dixon, not even appearing at the Fringe but hilarious in his homespun philosophising; while snatches of the oddball Josie Long demonstrated her continued evolvement into a unique voice.

Ince also relies on others' contributions for his solo stand-up, principally hysterical headlines from the Daily Mail and the fatuous arguments of the stupid, who, no matter how much he likes to pretend, are certainly dumber than he is. He's a great writer and a shrewd analyst of the media and political spin, but his delivery doesn't always match the high standards his material demands. Nevertheless, he's wise and witty yet prepared to play stupid if the situation requires, so he deserves some credit for that.

Jay Richardson

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Robin Ince is as Dumb as You

Three Weeks
21 August
****

If you are over the age of 21 and still know what your favourite kind of otter and owl are, then this maybe your perfect show. Robin Ince asks where our zest for learning and poses the question: Are we, as a nation getting stupider? Or are the stupid people amongst us just becoming more prominent? He’s studied the tabloids and “You Are What You Eat” and come to his own conclusions. It’s an interesting show as well as being hilarious. Although it can be just a little bit scary when you look at the tripe we are actually being spoon fed by the media. Eloquent and spontaneous, this is definitely worth seeing.

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Robin Ince is as Dumb as You

Chortle
22 August
***

It is very unlikely Robin Ince is as dumb as you. He is almost certainly better read; as proven by a show that swoops impressively around all manner of diverse topics. Where else will you hear about an otters' killing capacity, Railway Children author E Nesbitt and cannibalism all in a few short minutes?

He is a human equivalent of the Tell Me Why? children’s book he brings onstage (one of a number of reference sources that illustrate his show, from internet printout to newspaper cuttings); full of useless but entertaining information.

Ince uses all this book learning to advance the idea that the world is becoming more stupid. There’s certainly evidence in the way Britain seems to be in thrall to a new generation of charlatans and snake-oil salesmen like homeopaths, nutritionist Gillian McKeith – whose programme You Are What You Eat he ridicules mercilessly - and stage psychics, whose lies and deception are an easy target for any comic.

Ince is a man clearly aware of the state of the world, and pulls in all manner of opinions and snippets of information, often obliquely, to support his convincing cause. His writing is stylish, intelligent and economical – it has to be, there’s a hell of a lot of ground he wants to cover. Even so, at times it feels like you’re learning more than your laughing.

Ince wears his wisdom lightly, he’s charming and amiable in his delivery, but showing a polite restraint which stops his liberal passions getting the better of him, even when confronted by something as bizarrely racist as a story portraying Martin Luther King as a savage cannibal. But such self-control restricts Ince from really letting rip and realising the full comic potential of his witty, insightful writing.

Nonetheless, this is proper comedy for grown-ups. You never feel patronised, or that Ince is pulling a cheap trick to get a laugh, choosing instead to deliver a wry, intelligent analysis of the state of the nation with a quiet charm.

Steve Bennett

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Robin Ince is as Dumb as You

The Stage

Anyone who opens their show with a recording of a Smiths song in Ukrainian is going to get a good review.

Mind you, that sweeping statement feels a little hard to fulfil at the start of Robin Ince’s set, which was still in its early stages at the time of review.

Although typically full of energy, leaping about the stage, flitting from one subject to the next, Ince initially lacks direction or purpose. After confessing to being a science geek he asks a lot of a questions but fails to take the topics opened anywhere. It is as if Johnny Ball was unable to think of a number.

Then, as if by magic, it all comes together. He asks, are people more stupid today, or is it that the dumb have a greater number of platforms upon which to appear? Are our obsessions with psychics, quack medicines and the Daily Mail symptoms of our gullibility? - a gullibility that was excusable 200 years ago but should not be today.

There is something eminently likeable and watchable about Ince - he is like your favourite English teacher. He has a unique voice - somewhere between the social commentary of Mark Thomas, the cheekily inappropriate comments of Ricky Gervais, and geeky outsider nature of Daniel Kitson. It is just a question ultimately of what he manages to say with it.

Jeremy Austin

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The Book Club

Three Weeks

***

Mills and Boon sales will sky rocket as Robin Ince educates and informs in his shortened version of the 4 ½ hour ‘Book Club’ that’s been gathering rave reviews in London. Rushed and manic, with a few technical glitches that merely added to the humour, Robin invites local favourites and out-of-towners to regale us with songs, Q & A’s and picture board stories to a generally appreciative audience. Consistency was an issue - the ukulele wielding Howard Reed and quirky Josie Long shone far brighter than the poorer acts on show. Certainly the performance has the feel of an open mic night, and all the unpredictability that comes with it, but it is a perfect opportunity to see an eclectic mix of comedy.

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The Book Club

EdinburghGuide.com

***

If Robin Ince isn't careful, he may well become something of a comedy institution. Affable, engaging and confident, he has happened upon a format in The Book Club which works beautifully. In London, the night is a success - a four hour marathon of variety acts, stand up and music, punctuated by readings from some of the wrongest books ever to have been published.

In a 60 minute afternoon slot at The Underbelly, however, everything seems a little rushed. Ince has rounded up a gaggle of talented acts to perform in the new, downsized Book Club, but he simply has too many of them. I counted seven acts, each performing excerpts from their own Fringe shows, and five readings - a comic sprint to finish on time. There is something rather charming, however, about the sheer amount of sweat Ince manages to generate in 60 minutes. Dashing between the stage and the audience (and, at one point, another show in the same venue to introduce a friend's act), Ince is trying to keep a lot of balls in the air.

Like any compilation show, however, The Book Club is only as good as the acts it hosts. A different bill is promised every day, but the show I saw featured everything from Peter Buckley Hill singing a song about death, to an anecdote about lamb brains, via a singing tumour in the shape of Tom Jones. The result is a confusing blur. None of the comedians featured had the time to build any kind of rapport with the audience. Instead attending The Book Club felt a little like watching the audition scene from Bugsy Malone. Although it remains a great (and cost effective) way of seeing a range of talents, The Book Club left my head spinning.

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The Bubonic Play

Camden New Journal
28th July 2005

LAUGH YOURSELF TO DEATH

I ADMIT, from their write-up on the Etcetera Theatre’s website, I didn’t expect much from this play. “Three actor-pigs compete for your attention in this hilarious tale of sex and death.” Knowing that it was only an hour-long made me go. The hysterical writing, brilliant acting and ingenious use of both props and audience in this play directed by Cal McCrystal made me stay. The story – buxom wench chooses between handsome medieval lord and wandering minstrel with all three facing the Black Death – is handled like Mel Brooks’ Robin Hood: Men in Tights, but with tighter writing, and a much wittier faster feel. There’s a Punch & Judy show with sex toys, and a rubber masked doctor who sounds like Yoda. The three actors (Clare Thomson, Mat Baynton and Jamie Glassman) are gifted comics and wry commentators on the thespian world, sending up the Rada/RSC “received” delivery with aplomb. Other highlights included the “journey” to Leamington Spa, which was suggested by remote control wagon trundling around the stage floor, and the spectacular choice of underwear by all three actors. Go and see this; you’ll laugh yourself to death.

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The Bubonic Play

Chortle
5th August
***

Set in a time of feudal lords, coquettish wenches and wandering minstrels with pudding-basin haircuts, Bubonic Plague is, historically at least, firmly in Monty Python And The Holy Grail territory.

But stylistically, it’s in that fast-expanding sub-genre of Edinburgh shows, the overblown spoof: mocking its own cheap production values and reveling in the deadpan bad acting as much as getting laughs from what’s written on the page.

It’s a brand of humour that director Cal McCrystal has made his own with previous productions from Spymonkey, Peepolykus and Population:3 – and with this troupe, Piggy Nero, he’s found another talented trio to share his comedy outlook.

Like Les Dawson’s piano playing, slightly bad acting takes a lot of skill to pull off successfully, and Mat Baynton, Jamie Glassman and Clare Thomson get their emphasis, timing and emotions just perfectly wrong; wringing the most funny they can from a sprightly script. They can sing a fair bit, too.

The jolly writing is, at times, a joy, sprinkled with wonderful touches - a neat line here, an original idea there, a slow-burning callback – that provide the show with a good half-dozen moments of genuine hilarity, played out with verve by all three of the actors.

Their zest to throw themselves wholeheartedly into the nonsense is appealing. And Thomson, especially, often seems to teeter on the precipice of corpsing, her attempts to stifle the instinct proving funny in itself.

They mock, of course, the conventions of the over-serious costume-drama genre they’re parodying. At times it’s the Spinal Tap of medieval folk madrigals, even if the targets are easy – and there is only so much medieval folk a man can take.

The plot is flypaper-thin; a simple love triangle between our three simple stereotypes only slightly complicated by their falling victim to the pestilence that ravages the nation. Will they find salvation in Leaminton Spa?

That simplicity is something of a downfall – this story could be told, with all of its best jokes – in little over half the time, rather than being diluted to fill the obligatory Edinburgh hour.

But the best moments are priceless, and the good nature of the joshing is – if you’ll excuse the obvious plague-related metaphor – infectious.

Steve Bennett

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The Bubonic Play

fringereport.com
5th August

The Bubonic Play is a farce set in 14th Century England. There's a cast of three (2M, 1F). It runs for 55 minutes.

Lord George of Ponsonby (Jamie Glassman) eyes his busty ward Mathilde (Clare Thomson), now she's 18. But she's in love with a banjo-playing Minstrel (Mat Baynton). The bubonic plague threatens them all. Action moves from Ponsonby Hall to its climax in Leamington Spa. En route, no knob gag is missed, no sexual position unsimulated. And no breasts remain unshaken.

The Bubonic Play has an extremely filthy script, bristling with very funny gags. But most of the humour is from the individual and combined talents of the remarkable cast.

Jamie Glassman's Lord George does unusual things with his face, and speech - and uses his handsomely ample body for some gross and funny physical comedy. Jamie Glassman's roguish performance delights throughout.

Clare Thomson's Mathilde shakes bosoms charmingly. Mathilde takes fake coyness to its extreem - tousling her hair into a frenzy, lifting her skirt, showing her pants back and front (there are no half-measures in The Bubonic Play). All with a wonderful smile. Clare Thomson brings grace, elegance, fine dance moves, depth of characterisation, and subtlety, to a part that is deceptively complex.

Mat Baynton's Minstrel carries an extra-large penis in tight costume, and strums excellently on his petite mandolin. The Minstrel is impish, overtly sexual, and poignant. Mat Baynton delights with his warm and endearing performance.

The Bubonic Play has elements of pantomime, with Mathilde as Cinderella, Minstrel as Buttons, Lord George as Baron Hardup. It has the same cartoon-like quality, and flashes of gentle audience participation. There's the mixture of script, physical theatre, songs - and films and puppetry. But it creates its own genre - and is very definitely an adult show.

The Punch & Judy puppet sequence is a pure gem of original comedy. Severed body-parts litter the stage. It incorporates a feminist debunking of penis-boasting in a hilarious routine of domestic violence from both participants - that defines new territory of bad taste.

Costumes by Rosa Cienfuegos make an immense contribution to the production. Mathilde's gorgeous red dress and hat; Minstrel's extra-tight motley; Lord George's almost-Arabian green robe and head-dress.

Cal McCrystal's direction is light, springy, subtle, and superbly gross. There's a grace and cleverness to every detail of the production that can only come from tight union of director and cast, and a constant eye for the potential comedy of each moment.

Songs include Françoise Hardy's All Over The World, the traditional Whistling Gypsy; Colours Of My Life. Each of the actors has a fine voice. The songs are directed (by Eamonn Dougan) to use their voices skilfully in solo and chorus.

Designer Lucy Bradridge creates an exotic and atmospheric set - from simple components - that adds immeasurably to the production.

John Park

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The Bubonic Play

scottishtheatre.co.uk
11th August
***

When you think of the plague what springs to mind? Disease? Death? Possibly even Monty Pythons “bring out your dead” sketch. Not if you happen to be Piggy Nero who have chosen one of the grimmest periods in history as a back drop to none other than a love story – with scabs no less.

The story itself is a rather basic one which we have all seen countless times before. Two men compete for the love and affection of one woman, in this case Mathilde (Clare Thomson) one man Lord George Ponsenby (Jamie Glassman) a wealth landowner, the other a poor travelling minstrel (Mat Baynton). What follows is a madcap story involving a rush to get to Leamington Spa to find a cure for the plague which they are all dying from. Along the way we witness some rather hilarious and quite rude sex scenes, Mr Punch getting his tackle cut off by Mrs Punch and many other toilet humour based jokes, which had the audience wiping a tear from its eye. The writing is akin to Mel Brooks doing Hamlet with some wonderfully mispronounced words sending up the world of classical theatre.

Director Cal McCrystal has shaped a highly inventive show full of quirky segments including some risky involvement of the audience, which proved to be one of the highlights of the show on the evening I attended.

The Bubonic Play has the makings of a great piece of theatre, familiar to us all but with a great ability to surprise and make an audience laugh out loud at some childish humour we pretend to have left behind in adolescence. This production is a fun fast paced show and don't forget it comes with scabs!

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The Bubonic Play

The Stage
11th August

All right, this might appear to be a parodic take on 14th century England and its mores - Chaucerian euphemisms and affectation of chastity included - but it is a comedy so much at the service of its audience that not a tiniest gag or a quip will be allowed to slip past unnoticed.

Wide-eyed and thoroughly disarming, the threesome punctuate every sentence with child-like stares into the auditorium, thus managing to get away with just about anything, from utter cheesiness to glimpses of genius.

Their story - concerning a love triangle between a lord, his maid and a travelling minstrel infected by the plague - has one of the most bizarre endings in the world of comedy (read ‘death has come inside me’ in its contemporary mode). However, Piggy Nero and its director Cal McCrystal cast a whole new light on the notion that it is not what you tell but how you tell it. So, what starts out as a parody of medieval England journeys through an entire history of folk entertainment, featuring songs with trills, jigs, masks, Punch and Judy, video and mirror balls. Just sit back and enjoy!

Duska Radosavljevic

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The Bubonic Play

Three Weeks
12th August
***

Shakespeare and Chaucer were not meant to be high literature: they are supposed to be done like this play. It's panto for grownups with farce and bad sex. A beautiful maiden (with wobbly thighs), her rich Lord and master (who just wants to be loved) and a handsome minstrel (with dubious singing ability) all in a mad love triangle with a very dodgy STI. Some of the songs could easily be cut and the puppet show in the middle lowers the tone a bit further than necessary butthere are excellent performances and a script with an great sense of ridiculousness It is vulgar and funny and generally bawdy - a great show for peasants and gentry alike.

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The Bubonic Play

Scotsman
17th August
***

POOR George of Ponsonby. Having watched his ward, Mathilde, grow up to become a beautiful, buxom wench, he plucks up the courage to reveal his true feelings, only to have her snatched from under his nose by a doe-eyed wand'ring minstrel, who may or may not be infected with the bubonic plague. Instead of simply accepting his fate as a cuckold, Ponsonby sets out to track down the young lovers and take revenge, even if it means journeying all the way to Leamington Spa.

Writer-director Cal McCrystal has created a riotous send-up of medieval clichés here, and the cast - Mathew Baynton as the Minstrel, Clare Thomson as Mathilde and Jamie Glassman as Ponsonby - turn in energetic performances. But the tone of the show is so unremittingly over-the-top that it becomes wearing. The deliberately hammy acting and innuendos are all part of the fun, but the play could do with some subtle moments, just to provide a little respite from all the screeching camp. If you like Carry On Films, you'll probably love this.

Roger Cox

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The Congress Of Oddities

fringereport.com
27 July

Congress of Oddities is a 1-hour cabaret show from a cast of three (3F). It features characters Calamine and Chlamydia Lloyd-Haemhorrage, and a Biscuit-Eyed Lady.

It is presented as a hold-over from live performance in the Victorian era. The show may not be historically accurate in every detail, but no-one knows the real thing anyway. It was apparently a bawdy era (it’s a show that loves to be filthy), and the entertainers specialise in freak shows (guess which one is the freak). In fact, they are all freaks, they would have believe, as Calamine and Chlamydia are a pair of famous ‘Siamese Twins’, though separated. Each was left with half a brain - and it’s clear which one got short-changed.

They deliver a fast-moving performance based on ‘slapstick, deformity, and racial dances’, lots of amazing magic tricks referred to as ‘Necromancy!’, and even demonstrations of ‘mentalism’ and palmistry. There is also a short play and a morality tale.

All this creative energy comes from Calamine and Chlamydia being on a mission. They are fomenting the New Victorian Revolution (after the New Romantics - why not?) They attempt to show what some entertainment formats from the present day might be like if transposed to the Victorian age. For example - telephone sex before telephones. Or a stand-up who tells jokes about child prostitutes and Zulu Wars. They also show Victorian entertainers might be like cracking jokes about present-day B-celebrities - especially good is the Satirical Impressions section.

Chlamydia and Calamine really are freaks. They’re a variation on a traditional theme a half-wit and exploiting sharpie. There are enough mentions of Whitechapel, Jack The Ripper, and prostitutes that a message of wretchedness soaks through. It is a tale of rejection and despair, and ultimate redemption. Zoë Gardner’s Calamine carries the burden of the melodramatic work as the wretch. But Margaret Cabourn-Smith’s Chlamydia can no more reject her than today’s society can reject its filthy Victorian roots. It’s highly original writing, and very entertaining.

Brad Hall

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The Congress Of Oddities

EdinburghGuide
8 August
****

There is nothing quite like - okay, nothing at all like - The Congress of Oddities. Basically an obscene deconstruction of Victorian music hall, Margaret Cabourn-Smith and Zoe Gardner are 'the most successful Siamese twins of all time'. Their act is thoroughly and unashamedly blue. (No, this is no family show - unless your family name is Addams.)

They start by whipping the audience into a (mock!) patriotic frenzy, and with nicely choreographed moves rush us into some highly intelligent absurdist sketches, where it helps to know that 'a Prince Albert' isn't just a reference to Queen Victoria's dead husband. Other scenes involve telegram sex. No instant orgasms here.

There is song and dance, a biscuit-eyed lady, low repartee with the audience, and Margaret's killer gurning. This act creates a quirky and often hilarious world. It's a million miles away from Ben Elton in a shiny suit, telling shiny jokes. This is manic and absurd, high-octane and wildly alive. Good for them!

Ritchie Smith

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The Congress Of Oddities

The List
17-25 August
***

Against a backdrop of aged British finery, Calamine and Chlamydia work their jolly hockey sticks and gormless tart characters well, providing comical bawdry and creepy mute antics courtesy of the biscuit-eyed lady.

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The Congress Of Oddities

The Stage
1 September 2005

There is something genuinely original, yet reassuringly familiar about The Congress of Oddities. Writer/performers Margaret Cabourn-Smith and Zoe Gardner’s hilarious and infectiously daft comedy hybrid of Edwardian music hall and Victorian sideshow combines a Vivian Stanshall-esque joy at silly names and wordplay with a strong whiff of Vic and Bob-style absurdity.

Yet Cabourn-Smith and Gardner, as Chlamydia and Calamine Lloyd-Haemorrhage, Britain’s first successfully separated Siamese twins, also possess a comedy style all of their own. This is probably down to the fact that, beneath the rubbish feats of telepathy, cautionary songs and satirical topical impressions - of the likes of George Eliot, Jack the Ripper and, bizarrely, Jack Straw - there are two very good comic actresses at work, particularly Cabourn-Smith as the potty-mouthed, Mary Poppins-like Chlamydia. Plus their well-tuned ear for the speech patterns of the period lends a rare air of authenticity to the silliness.

When their world is so well defined it is shame that they break the spell by drawing attention to the fact that we’re in the 21st century. They also overplay their trump card, Leisa Rea’s appearances as the mute Biscuit-Eyed Lady. But those blips aside, this is probably the most fully formed, unabashedly silly and enjoyable Fringe comedy since the glory days of The Mighty Boosh.

Chris Bartlett

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The Trap

The List
11-18 Aug
***

This three man sketch troupe were critically lauded at the festival last year and they return with a very cleverly put together show which is heavy on the self-reference. Their skits parody the comedic writing process, and there are comedy songs that are pure nonsense and routines told backwards. And at the end of it all, loose ends are tied up for the most satisfactory of a conclusion.

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The Trap

The Stage
18th August

The best thing about The Trap is the fact that it is a show of comedy rather than comedians. The three-piece act takes it in turns to conduct what is essentially a series of spoofs of the entire comedy scene, with fun for all the family and a couple of self-critical songs thrown in as special effects.

The juggling of solos and double act numbers makes the show generally faster, less predictable and blissfully chaotic at times. Plus, the format allows for a broad range of material, from infantile knockabout with Blu-Tack and excrement to an inventive palindromic double act (funnier backwards) and an ingenius wrap up routine which brings together the world of pub quiz and comedy in a way never to be seen again without recalling this one. You may not remember Dan, Paul and Jeremy’s last names in five years time, but you will certainly remember the three hilarious guys bringing you the fun show called The Trap.

Duska Radosavljevic

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Toulson & Harvey

Independent on Sunday
7th August

Also promising are Toulson and Harvey a frighteningly well-rehearsed pin-striped double act, whose non-stop media lampoonery is like The Day Today with Alistair McGowan guest-starring. Featuring some exquisite news-speak - "Keep those texts coming in, because we want you to feel that your opinion really does count" - they're smart in more sense than one.

Nicholas Barber

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Toulson & Harvey

Independent
11th August
***

I liked Luke Toulson and Stephen Harvey's show, maybe not always for the right reasons. During the lulls in the proceedings I distracted myself by counting the influences. Wrapped around the premise of a news programme were refrains from Chris Morris, The Fast Show, Rory Bremner, Jim Carrey. These are good people to borrow from, and it showed in welcome flashes of quality from two solid comic actors. News anchor Alistair McAllister and his co-host Sally Isaman are having an extra-marital affair. Their relationship is acted out off and on screen while the big story of the day - a reality TV celebrity threatening to jump from a bridge - plays itself out.

The story is broken into sketches, with guest appearances from, for example, Evil Blair, who kidnapped the real Tony Blair in 1997 ("people will notice" exclaims the real Blair. "Yes, you'd have thought," comes the crisply delivered reply). Also appearing is the political commentator Roger Righteous-Self, whose catchphrase is the delightful "my opinions count, yours do not", although his fey Yorkshire delivery didn't quite work for me.

The reality TV celebrity jumps. Not soon enough for one audience member, who protested afterwards: "I can't bear to hear another joke about B-list celebs." Really? Then maybe we should stop creating them.

Julian Hall

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Toulson & Harvey

Chortle
12th August
****

Virtual unknowns Luke Toulson and Stephen Harvey haven’t made life easy for themselves with their first Edinburgh show.

This broad media spoof is a frenetic cavalcade of characters: fast-talking wise-cracking cartoons that demand considerable vocal dexterity and a punchy, energetic delivery. And they pull it off with style.

Poking fun at the vacuity of news programmes or the Heat-magazine celebrity culture may be a familiar comic target, but this never feels derivative, thanks to its pacy style and sparkling script. The lads’ primary aim is not to score satirical points, but to bring our laughs – yet the message still gets through.

Everything’s hung on three days of flagship news broadcasts, a brief timeframe in which a B-list celebrity threatens to leap off a bridge, the newsreader’s off-screen relationship with his co-anchor falls apart and – worst of all – the programme’s start time is put back because of the darts.

This gives structure and form to the brisk parade of sketches and exaggerated, thinly veiled caricatures such as the arrogant Kilroyesque Roger Righteous-Self or the randy, dry-humping Parkinson clone.

It’s a great cast of bizarre over-the-top figures, funny because of their extremes. But these sweeping spoofs are also supported by some keen detail, with a smart script peppered with subtle asides and delicious non-sequiteurs laying down a rich comic texture. Even when proceedings seem to settle into a formula, the duo never lose the capacity to surprise.

It’s a very verbal-based show - there’s little in the way of props or visuals other than two chairs with their jackets draped over the back – and as such feels like an audacious bid for a radio show. Shame, then, that Radio 4 tends to shy away from media parodies –a sensible policy given that commissioners must be deluged with the things, although few, I’d venture, are as entertaining as this.

With this impressive debut, Toulson and Harvey have easily proved themselves a talented, charismatic duo with an incredible instinct for timing and pace. They are sure to find a way of escaping their virtual anonymity soon – maybe then they can be in Heat magazine themselves.

Steve Bennett

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Toulson & Harvey

Fest
17th August
*****

Having spent the last fe years trudging the boards on the acting curcuit, Luke Toulson and Stephen Harvey return to Edinburgh with a new direction and their first venutre into comedy. Though they've picked a format that is notoriously difficult to do live, the pair's debut sketch show is one of th best that Edinburgh's seen recently, endlessly inventive and achingly clever. Centred loosly on the daily pridcution of a TV new programme, the two men snap crisply from diversion to tangent, their links verging on smart arsery, but all the funnier for it.

Their targets are reasonably familiar - Tony Blair, idiotic, Coldplay-esque pop stars and the silliness of showbiz culture amongst them - but what makes Toulson and Harvey almost unique is that their satire is so freshingly clear-sighted, merciless where no quarter should be given, but rarely gratuitous and never just routine mockery of fashionable demons. It is simply a playful comic knifing of everything the pair find ridiculous about society, just as satirical sketch comedy should be.

Although never less than amusing, and frequently hilarious, the show's greatest charm is the sheer quality of the writing and performance. Occassionally just whimsical, the scriptis crisp, witty and intelligent, written with a great flair for comic rhythmn and performed with verve, style and a superb sense of timing. A handful of jokes fall flat, but the relentless energy if the show bounces everyone along with scarcely a pause, in face very few sketch show are quite as laugh-out-loud-funny.

It's nothing life-affirming or particularly profound - it is ultimately just amusing sketches - but it is great entertainment and a treat to watch, especially if you appreciate clever comedy and sharp writing. Toulson and Harvey deserve better than a Portakabin at the back of the Pleasance, so catch them before they're filling the Assembly Rooms. Then boast to your mates that you saw them first.

Tom Milner

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Toulson & Harvey

EdinburghGuide.com
18 August
*****

Their targets, broadly speaking the fatuousness of much of today’s TV news and the torrid nature of Britain’s obsession with celebrity, may be familiar to fans of The Day Today and BrassEye, but there is a freshness of approach that propels Luke Toulson and Stephen Harvey’s new show into a different league from most of its contemporaries. It revolves around a daily news programme presided over by the oleaginous Alistair McCallister and his suspiciously masculine co-presenter Susan, and the observations of the genre are note perfect. Everything is conducted at twice the normal volume and speed, and the news itself plays constant second fiddle to mindless onscreen banter and pointless interactive surveys.

The format allows the seamless introduction of numerous hilarious grotesques, including political pundit Roger Righteous-Self, a geriatric Gangsta-rapping Tory MP, an over emotional weathergirl Gail Fawcett (think about it) and the irrepressible Yorkshire talk show host Pervinson. The jokes may not always be subtle, and the characters often all too recognisable, but such is the pace of the script, never less than frantic, that they easily get away with such barefaced lampoonery.

As McCallister’s show collapses around him, the show often seems in danger of spiralling out of control, but Toulson and Harvey manage to keep a confident grip on proceedings throughout. It’s an onslaught, and it’s exhausting - the main gags come laced with so many subtle asides that by the end the audience is literally breathless with laughter. My face certainly hurt after fifty minutes, and so bad are the laughter lines this morning that I may yet have to consider Botox. They’re confined to a Portakabin round the back of the Pleasance this year, but this surely cannot last. See them now, it’ll be much more expensive next time.

Guy Woodward

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