What a show to end the Fringe on. I saw a WIP of this last November when Ania came to do OPPO, and it was great then, but this has definitely fully come into its own as maybe her best developed show to date. A fantastically personal show about the discomfort in one’s own body around sex, without ever steering into the overly intimate or overly trite. Perfectly balanced (even against the knowledge of the presence of a 15 year old boy in the side front row) at all times. Ania’s such an effortlessly engaging act, practically beckoning you in. A lot of heavy laughs, and my favourite line from the preview has survived even if the - even at the time, only for the OPPO room - topper has not. As thrilled as I am for her success on SNL UK, I really hope she’s able to keep putting this much effort and attention into her stand up work, because what a talent.
Interesting to note that, unlike a lot of touring acts who are off around the country in the autumn after doing a couple of weeks here at the Fringe, Phil Wang’s show isn’t explicitly labelled as WIP. I don’t care to get into the vagaries of what that does or doesn’t mean, but it’s interesting to see this presented as the final product. I’m not sure how much this is cohering at the moment, but maybe that’s the effect of a tour show being condensed down to 60 minutes. Wang is naturally funny, and a lot of individual routines like a dodgy David Bowie song and the two dimensions of a bike are good stuff. It just feels very grab-baggy at the moment. An enjoyable way to spend an hour in the afternoon, but I don’t think I’d be thrilled with it as a tour show.
Mere hours after last night’s Sunday Lates Wario fun, we’re back in MB4 for JLR’s proper show. This year, he’s decided to just do straight stand-up comedy - no gimmicks, concepts, washing machines, etc. And fair play, he’s still very good at it. The same silliness, wordiness, characterisation, and act-outs are there, more part of him than part of any particular show. A very fun piece of gear around psychoanalysis is a big highlight, as is the rippling effects of the early observational material. The whole thing ends up being less straight stand-up, more Kinsey scale 2.5 stand-up, and it’s all the better for it.
Again. the Fringe is nothing without the late night madness. This year we’re taking a break from ACMS, and harking back to our old favourite Terrible Wonderful Adaptations, we’ve instead got John-Luke Roberts doing some nonsense. Tonight, it’s Wario Night! Everyone is doing the opposite of their normal schtick. I’m howling from the off, with JLR - inevitably - in full Wario costume and playfully establishing the theme of the night (including a reprise of one of my favourite jokes of his in the form of “Smiths songs, but the opposite”, specifically “Boyfriend, Up And About”). We get Kate Cheka being glad Nigel Farage won in the Clacton by-election and an incredibly horrible joke involving treating pregnancy as being a landlord; Josh Glanc playing up and down his own usual gimmicks in a twisty kind of way; Max Fulham with some very serious ventriloquism indeed; Alice Fraser as Elon Musk’s sister; Andrew Frost trying to figure out the opposite of card magic with a few different options and getting enjoyably frustrated with the whole endeavour; Bec Hill absolutely perfectly inverting her most famous flipchart; Timmy Niblets gamely finding the opposite to a shtick that no one has even seen yet because his show only starts tomorrow; and finally Spencer Jones being not nice in a Paul Smith crowdwork stylee. Oh it’s all so very silly and so 1am and so MB4 and I love it dearly.
The riskiest comic in the biz is back. We saw a WIP of this last year, and I’ve seen a couple of variations on that in Bristol since, so it’s fun to see what has and hasn’t survive. Structurally very much still intact around a train journey and a croissant, but with a newer twist on the story he’s trying to tell about himself with it. The physicality is heightened compared to previous shows (“I went to see a physiotherapist recently; I shouldn’t need to explain why”), and honestly it’s just captivating to watch. He makes comparatively little of finding a 15 year old kid in the audience, but has a lot of fun with a bunch of students in the front row. I’m barely getting my breath back throughout, and even when you know that it’s safe, the terrifying moments remain electric. One of the best to do it still.
Sketch shows are - statistically, at least - probably under-represented in our Edinburgh schedules. For good reason, mostly. But I remember loving the 5 minutes I saw of Britney a few years ago when teching a disastrous Party in 2022, and have been waiting for their return ever since. So here we are. For a sketch show, it’s a pretty good hit rate; no major misses, and some strong highlights. The best sketches are filled with a happy combination of on point jokes and worn-in character moments from the get go - women in STEM being a strong example.. Even in the less strong ones, there’s usually something setting it apart - an elaborate prop in the courtroom sketch, sheer dedication to the bit in the Gillette sketch. Charly Clive and Ellen Robertson are both fantastic performers. The patter may hew a little too closely to the stereotypical fringe sketch show interludes, but hey, it’s a trope for a reason. There’s a lot of care in and for the room, which really does set them apart. A big fan of the whole thing.
Another debut hour! Fittingly for Anna Thomas’s personality, this is a show that is bounding with ideas, throwing a lot of them at the wall and seeing what sticks. To her credit, a lot of it does! The banjo is sadly underutilised (never quote me on that), and the floor is littered with remmants of single-use punchlines, but sometimes there’s a reveal of something that can’t help but pause the show as everyone else catches up, and this will be beautifully underplayed. It’s a show as full of punchlines as it is potential for punchlines, angles that could be mined much deeper but still couldn’t have come from anyone else. I can’t wait to see how she develops this in future shows, and it’s a strong start here.
Incredibly fun to start a show with this level of wrong-footing from an act. Even before that particular instance, one of the first things to happen on stage is a conversation with a woman in the front row about her botox usage, which is such a hilariously overconfident way to start a show that it completely works. Hull is a whipsmart writer and performer - there are some absolutely gorgeous joke-shaped jokes in here (still dying at the Fawlty Towers one), and she’s nailed the ability to be engaging and likeable whilst being exceptionally mean. The whole thing absolutely does not feel like a lunch time show in MB1, which is testament to her.
My new take this year is that no room with a balcony should be allowed to be a Fringe venue. Especially not for a show like The Bench, which really does require the audience to buy in and cohere together. Instead, it’s too easy for those behind me in the balcony to tune out and just start talking to each other, in a way that simply wouldn’t happen in, I don’t know, MB4. Still, we are where we are, and for the most part the audience are on board with The Bench. I’ve seen this in WIP form two or three times (it’s easy to lose track) over the last couple of years, and it’s a thrill to see it in broadly final form. An ever spiralling web of distractions and tangents that combine to paint a slightly charming picture of the parochial life. This kind of thing is, of course, laser targeted to Wozniak’s style - bumbling but clinical in manner and phrasing. So much fantastic comedic world building, and a pleasure to exist in it for an hour.
Having been a consistent favourite over the last few Fringes (and OPPO seasons, and elsewhere), I’m fully willing to back the idea that Fat Tom Cruise is the best thing Olga’s done. Beyond anything else, it’s easily my favourite staging of a show I’ve seen this year, a set of white blocks redefined by projector, used for simple jokes, exposition, broader staging, and a heartbreaking finale. Olga’s both a natural storyteller and joke writer, with an incredible gag delivery rate and hit rate (more jokes should have the punchline “suck it, Milosevic”), and there’s some fascinating formal work here. Model UN, Comic Sans, various references to the Chilcot inquiry, and more abound, but always in service of the larger story she’s trying to tell, and the multiple soundtracks which are required to truly tell it. I left in awe on multiple counts. Surely a nom? (Side note - I’ve met Olga in various personal and professional settings on many occasions, and I absolutely maintain that she has no idea who I am and would insist that she’s never met me before in her life. I can’t say I’m offended by this - I do find it funny - and I don’t blame her, but still. I believe this to be true. Fair play to her)
There’s little more ennervating than watching Adam Riches looming at the back of Cow Cafe as the audience files in for another free roaming audience interaction show. Is it best to avert one’s gaze or to match his energy? Rasping his way through a Scottish accent (I dread to think how his voice will be holding up by the end of the run), Riches makes an alternatingly silly and sincere case against the comedy review ecosystem. It is at this point that I wish to restate 1000 Tiny Birds’ purpose, namely to capture my thoughts and recollections of the things I experience, not to review them. I do generally see a difference there. No stars given, no appeal to authority, no expectation that anyone should really care about my opinion or offer it any weight. The audience interaction feels slightly tamer than previous shows - I partly wonder if this is the influence of him doing more in the way of one man shows outside of this space, and partly if it’s a reaction today specifically after accidentally spilling a drink over an audience member within the first three minutes. Riches has a delectable way with turns of phrase that feel both him and true to whichever character he’s playing in any given show. Here, it works wonders to portray an admittedly thin portrait of comedy reviewers, but it’s hard not to understand why by the end. I remained unpicked on throughout, which to be fair does heighten my enjoyment of it. Four stars.
The first show this Fringe to decidedly grapple with AI as a concept - although whether that’s selection bias on my part or not is a separate question. It’s hard not for AI, AI, Oh… to sound like Adamsdale is endorsing to some degree using AI for writing comedy (to be clear, not for this show itself, but for a sitcom pitch/scripts he wrote a couple of years ago), and if there is anti-AI sentiment in other areas of the show, the two don’t exactly balance out. Beyond the principles of the thing, though, it’s a show that feels somewhat underbaked. Adamsdale is engaging, the skeleton of the storytelling show underneath this is interesting, and there are a couple of nice set pieces around a tape recorder, but it does awfully feel like a lot of “add joke here” annotations never came to pass. I think there’s a version of this show which works better than this, and even if Will isn’t working on that, I hope he’s got this out of his system here.
A slightly delayed start to this one, not helped by Hazel fainting on the way in. Still, all good things are worth the wait. Michael Caine announces early on that his guests for this masterclass include Christopher Nolan (Nish Kumar), Liam Neeson (Phil Wang), and one of the students from the audience (an initial moment of panic before realising it’s a delightfully planted Lorna Rose Treen). After a brief interview with Nolan and Neeson, the fun really begins as Wang’s accent immediately falls apart, Nish struggles to direct the others in various scenes, and Laws and Treen take every opportunity to accentuate those struggles, not least Laws accidentally fully hitting Phil Wang in the head with a lamp. Chairs ill-advisedly become IMAX cameras, stuffed toys become Bane masks, and Stuart Laws becomes very late for his 11.30pm show at Monkey Barrel. I am breathless with laughter throughout (with the occasional pause for concern for Hazel - who was not dead - allayed by noting that they made it in at the back just before the show started). Proper late night Fringe madness - it’s so good to be back.
Over to the Pleasance Dome for Demi Adejuyigbe. I want to impress clearly early doors that I had a very good time with this show, but only in service of being honest that the opening song made me very apprehensive with a blatant and unironic use of a lot of AI-generated artwork. Disappointing and at odds with a show about not creatively selling out. Beyond that, though, a lot to love. It’s a “throw stuff at the wall” kind of show (rather than a tightly controlled narrative), but feels light on its feet. The songs are good and varied (Dracula At The Beach is going to be stuck in my head all fringe), the sponsorship conceit works quite nicely, and Lockheed Martin’s ROBBY the robot comedians is surely destined to be one of my favourite set pieces of the season. Bemused to leave and find that the others are mostly discussing how the magic trick might have worked. Proper nerd sniping.
We’re back at the Fringe! 10 years (calendar) of this nonsense. Couldn’t be happier starting this year with a debut hour I’ve been hotly anticipating for a while now, from Abbie Edwards. I first saw Abbie a couple of years ago at Party in Bristol (RIP [to Party, not the city of Bristol]), and Alasdair and I were instantly smitten with an immediately defined comedic voice and natural off the wall instincts (spending, for example, most of her set insisting she’d been Big-ged a la Tom Hanks in Big). Knee Touch is a very fun debut hour, where her personality shines through beautifully in an ode to yearning and the awfulness of liking someone. There are theatrical monologues, a lot of Messenger screenshots (what luck, what horror, for this generation to have easy access to every nascent bit of relationship development), and even some life drawing artwork that drew a huge laugh from me. She bonded with Hazel over the indignity of forgetting to put one’s retainer in, and prompted Andy to provide a meaningful definition of the distinction between kissing and snogging. My only disappointment was to not see as much of the comic invention I’d seen of Abbie before, this being a somewhat straighter stand-up than I was hoping for, but I’m confident this will come in time. God it sounds like a school report. Still, an exciting talent to keep an eye on.
I have a fun bit of unemployment and Phoebe has half term, so we’re making the most of the novelty of a mid-week West End matinee. £25 limited view tickets for Teeth ‘N’ Smiles was the conclusion. They weren’t kidding, we did lose a good third of the stage, which to be fair was mostly inconsequential until it wasn’t. It’s hard now, a few hours later, to recount the plot instead of the premise. I’m not sure all that much of any real consequence happens in this. The premise is that a punk-ish rock band gets hired to play a Cambridge college end of year ball, and while some things then happen, nothing really… evolves, narratively, thematically, plotwise. And it’s not quite got a strong enough cast to carry it as an ensemble piece of enjoying spending time with the characters. The curse of needing your actors to also play instruments means that they’re not necessarily the best at either, so Rebecca Lucy Taylor does stand out as a result. The rest, by contrast, does have a little bit of a sixth form drama vibe. The music is good (although oddly balanced across the two acts - 2 songs in the first half, 6 in the second), but not quite committed too enough to carry the whole. I didn’t have a bad time, but not my favourite.
With the matinee of Dracula cancelled at the last minute, I am a bit more refreshed for a nap in time to head into London later than expected for Romeo and Juliet. This one fits into a weird limbo zone, in that there is to some degree stunt casting (Noah Jupe and Sadie Sink respectively) but that’s not why I’m here (I like Jupe enough, but can’t say I made a beeline here for him, and I’ve never watched Stranger Things, so…). So really I’m just here because I want to see Romeo and Juliet. I broadly get that? I’m not fully sold on the whole thing, but didn’t hate it. Most of the cast are saying the words but not really imbuing them with meaning - it feels like recitation more than performance. The revelation, though, is Sadie Sink, sitting somewhere between Emma Stone in Easy A and Emma Stone in La La Land (it’s not just the red hair, honest). “Wherefore art thou [etc.]” is delivered with such heart and angst, it’s a joy to behold. The staging is minimal but effective - the use of implied space in creating a nightclub scene is a lot of fun. There are two end-of-act needle drops, one horribly on the nose (“I Don’t Like Mondays” indeed), but Adrienne Lenker’s “not a lot just forever” is done to great effect at the end of the play (the hard cut on “so I bash around the house and the poison stains my mouth”, divine). The most baffling element is the introduction in the first half of a strobe-light time reversal effect, detailing how else scenes could have played out. It’s not very well integrated into the rest of the staging, and in a play whose finale lives and dies on the idea of the tragedy of what else could have been, this effect is utterly wasted by the end. Deeply confusing. I enjoyed it with reservations, but at least it’s something to think about.
Hard to tell on this one, really. The audience were such that it’s hard to gauge how good Ferguson actually was, or what my impression of the whole thing was. We’ll start with them - I was surrounded by chippers-in, of all varieties: the “oh no!“s and “no way!“s; the repeating the punchline; the filling in the gap of the implied punchline lest anyone not understand they got it. And, in the least snobby way possible, laughing in the wrong way. My memory of Ferguson’s late night show was one of gleeful absurdism, earnestness, and empathy - think of his discussion of therapy, his interview with Desmond Tutu, his monologue going against the grain of talk show hosts making jabs at Britney Spear’s mental health. This is not the level the audience is engaging on, and so it’s hard to tell whether, in the absence of that, if Ferguson himself is operating on that level. Jokes that might be read a different way seem harsher in the light of that laughter. Is he playing with the idea of “you can’t say anything these days”, or is he steering into it? Beyond that, it’s a subtly structured show, with some off-the-cuff callbacks added in, and performed with great bonhomie. He does make it seem effortless. Still. A lot to ponder.
There’s a moment when Mulaney first walks on stage that is slightly disarming - a sense that this is somewhat not as slick as it might have been before. Maybe that’s a function of an earlier conversation with Alasdair about how for American comedians, the tour is not the artefact, the special is, so maybe there’s more of a WIP feel to it; maybe it’s the ruffled shirt and rolled up sleeves, a sharp contrast to the sharp suits of before; maybe it’s that, bafflingly, John Mulaney is performing at the Bristol Beacon. I still can’t quite conceive it. It’s a lot of fun, some good local material up front (“I love the Bristol accent. No notes for five thousand years”) and the show itself is looser, if still classic Mulaney. A long routine about his custom party bags and his insistence that he’s not updating his references for the UK are perfect. The personal stuff about his Vietnamese family is a masterclass in tightrope walking. The turns of phrase (unfair to quote here in the spirit of the no phones policy) are immaculate. We are dweebs and go wait by stage door, where he is a consumate professional in how genuinely happy he is to meet us but how smoothly he moves people along once their time is done. He is thrilled that I think The Sack Lunch Bunch is the best thing he’s done, and he takes an actually lovely selfie of the three of us. He is tired enough to accidentally sign my vinyl addressed to himself, and I find that very funny. The supports - Mandal and Andrea Jin - are both very American in their own ways, but I enjoy both of them more than the supports the last time I saw Mulaney in London.
Big year for my favourite authors inexplicably coming to Bristol! This time, it’s Ben Lerner, author of The Topeka School amongst others, here to discuss his new (as yet unread by me) novel Transcription. Inasmuch as he gets the chance to. Olivia Sudjic, another favourite author of mine, is the moderator for this, and whilst she is an excellent writer (do read Sympathy!) and I have a lovely conversation with her after the event, book talk moderation is not amongst her skills. A little more conversation, a little less opining, please. But fighting his way through the jet lag, Lerner is insightful in his own laconic way about the way he writes and it makes me all the more excited for Transcription.
Putting a bow on the anniversary weekend is taking Alasdair to see the most heartwarming thing you can possibly see in London, the stage adaptation of My Neighbour Totoro. I saw it when it was first staged at the Barbican, and they’ve had to do some adapting of the staging to fit the stage at the Gillian Lynn. It remains as magical as ever, fully captivated from the first puppet. Alasdair revealed to me about 5 minutes before it started that he’d never even seen the film (which, yes, we’ll remedy), and even he was enchanted. It’s also a lot of fun how much the puppeteers are keying the children in the audience in to how this all works, when they are and are not meant to be visible on stage, and trusting that it all works. It’s just great theatre!
Galling to sit through a play written 6 months before you were born and realise that at least two or three ideas for scripts you had have been done here. Ah well. This is the kernel of our anniversary weekend, its last day of performances aligning nicely and being something that Alasdair really wanted to go to see. I’m a huge convert. Intricately written in both plot and dialogue, grasping at the big things without ever being polemical, and in this production some excellent staging and acting, with Isis Hainsworth as Thomasina being a real highlight. I think it got a little muddied in the last act, as Stoppard became too attached to his characters to end it when it narratively and thematically made most sense to, but I melted in the final 10 seconds because I’m a sucker for that kind of thing, so it’s a moot point really.
I’ll happily make a trip to Oxford on a Friday evening to see John Finnemore do one of his “Among Other” shows, and so what convenience that I had to do that. Joined by Margaret Cabourn-Smith to perform, in the first half, various (mostly) two-hander sketches from across the breadth of the Souvenir Programme back catalogue and, in the second half, one of his Double Act two-handers. Being a connoisseur of the former and a novice at the latter, they were equally fun in different ways. A delightful selection of sketches including the Wheels On The Bus (which did sadly make me aware of something worse than people singing along badly at gigs, which is people live-quoting a comedy sketch at a gig), the Gnu song, and my old favourite about hotel towels. The Double Act was “A Flock Of Tigers”, which was honestly quite touching in a lot of ways, whilst still being very funny. A surprise encore of a Since You Ask Me transformed one of my least favourite editions into a less-least-favourite edition. And, if I’m honest, I enjoyed a moment of schadenfreude of a child’s nascent attempt at living with main character syndrome being quietly dismissed out of hand. Parent better!
Alasdair’s Valentine’s Day present to me (cunningly hidden in our shared calendar as brunch with a friend of ours, but disappointing when I realised we weren’t getting to have that brunch with that friend - the perils of loving deception), a truffle making workshop at my favourite place. I opted to make vegan ones - it seemed churlish to not let Alasdair at least sample some of them - with a peppermint touch and a variety of coatings. Helen was an excellent tutor, and fair play, I left with 14 truffles, 8 pralines, and a large slab of chocolate as well, so absolutely not short-changed. A wonderful way to spend a morning, and we’ll see if I ever make them again at home.
Much like the Christmas preview evening last year, this is a wonderful opportunity to have a glass of fizz, sample some chocolates (and indeed some hot cross bun ice cream, a thrill to the taste buds), and support one of my favourite local businesses. We don’t stay long, but it’s nice to pop in.
Frankie briefly mentions at dinner a few weeks ago that he’s got his circus showcase coming up, and Matt and I are thrilled to indulge. I know Frankie’s been doing these classes for some time now (and has suffered the injuries accordingly), but never been able to see him in action. He’s very good at this! So much so that he’s in two different routines tonight, one solo and one group (the latter to the tune of La Bamba, of course). I think that makes him the only repeat performer, which says something. It’s sometimes hard to tell what is and isn’t impressive, but the routines that stand out to me are the ones where there’s some kind of concept to it. The monks that end the first half a prime example of that. An excellent way to spend a Sunday evening.
Oh my word. What an evening. Kearns - whose cogs you can hear turning when trying to riff at the best of times - gets thrown off about 20 minutes in by a barely intelligble heckler airing a many years old grievance about an interaction at a previous show about making fridge magnets. It’s beautifully defused in a very clever way of redirecting the anger at someone who can take it, but also heightens future potential interruptions. The show itself is classic Kearns, remarkably dense and emerging from such a rich persona. The comparison of the shared calendar to a chessboard, chef’s kiss. He’s one of the best we’ve got, and very happy to chat afterwards. Pat Cahill is a phenomenal support act, both in general and for Kearns, letting the audience know what to tonally expect while being completely different. A touch of Harry Hill, a glint of Sean Lock, but something quite different altogether.
At this point, I think if asked I would still name Ali Smith as my favourite author, and I am delighted that Christie has managed to nab her for a book talk. Smith is an easy raconteur, clearly happy to be talking to and at people, her mind making the connections and drawing the deeply held fragments of knowledge out of nowhere that characterise her writing - it’s just her, it really is. Insightful as to how she approaches writing, the way the seeds grow. I also get to meet her briefly and talk to her about using Boy Meets Girl to woo Alasdair, and she seems genuinely touched to be told that and we have a nice little conversation about the Greek myths.
Fair play to the Slapstick Festival, they’ve pulled a blinder here, convening Armando Ianucci, Rebecca Front, and Chris Addison to talk about the history of The Thick Of It. They’re all in good form and full of anecdotes (including, fatefully, Front trying to convince Lawrence Fox he shouldn’t join Twitter).
Even if it’s no longer quite at its peak, Not Going Out remains close to my heart as a sitcom. At its best, it couldn’t be beaten for gag rate or farcical plotting. So it’s a real treat to have Lee Mack in Bristol for the Slapstick Festival, talking about the history of the show. Thrilled, genuinely, to see actually never-before-seen clips from the original pilot with Catherine Tate, something I honestly never thought I’d get to see. It would have been a very different show. Well-wishing videos from Tim Vine and Sally Bretton reveal the origin of Mack’s pedantry over people saying they have two choices, which is a fun bit of minor lore I’m obsessed with. The Q&A is absolutely disrupted at the end by someone using it to propose to their partner, which tops every “more of a comment than a question” I’ve ever heard for worst instance of an audience question. Bravo. Afterwards, I get to tell Mack how much I used to love the Radio 2 show he did, which took him aback, as I might be the first person to have ever mentioned that to him. I do my best.