CHRALOTTE HUDSON 8- LEILA HACKETT
Fresh sketches and bouncy tales O...
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With ()hannel is Smack the Porn and Radio J's Recorder} for [raining Purposes on their (IVs, the pair have (:reateri an impressively slick and intelligently (lewseti show. llie sketehes eentre around strong. very English personalities. and feature sharp dialogue and elever observations. On the subject of earhon footprints an abandoned teenager hemoans. ‘I left my straighteners on for a week. so my parents couldn't take me to Australia With therii,' Although some scenarios have familiar premises. such as an overbearing parent or presumptuous blokes in a pub. their invention keeps things fresh even in the baking hot confines of a Pleasance Portacahin. (Emma Lennoxi I P/easance Courtyard. 5:36 6550. (mm 27 Aug (not 7:3). 4.45pm, £70—fl / if.‘8.5()—t‘9.50i.
RUSSELL KANE
Putting the accent on originality O...
Plucking his theme from a reView he received last year, Russell Kane decrded to take on critiCisni and explore the notion of ster'eoty pe and cliche in comedy. A risky gambit. as rt would be all too easy to simply slip into those stereotypes — the Essex man. the posh Oxford bloke — rather than sub\ ert them. Indeed. when Kane begins proceedings. talking about staying in Leith and its prOpensity for plastic tat shops. yOu wom that's where he's headed. But it soon transpires that Kane \Vl” give those cliches flesh.
EmpIOying his verdant imagination. he invigorates these ‘tired stereotypes eranOying a vocabulary akin to a more famous tat least for the momenti comic called Russell. an array of silly
REBECCA DRYSDALE
An alternative and arresting set 0000
It’s not often that a comedian invites the audience to join in a chirpy singalong about children drowning in the Titanic disaster. It's even rarer that it has the crowd in stitches. But then it's not often you see a comedian like Rebecca Drysdale. Young. American. Jewish and gay, she blew the critics away two years ago at the Aspen Comedy Festival and scored herself a TV deal with HBO. Making her UK debut in Edinburgh. she brings a multi-media set to showcase her oddball, massively likeable material. She believes that in order to understand someone, you need to look at all the different pieces that make them.
So we see Rebecca the 13-year-old delivering a speech at her Bat Mitzvah: ‘Thanks for giving me the opportunity to dress like a doily and sit in the corner in silent anger.’ There‘s Rebecca the wannabe rapper, doing a three-minute freestyle using only the words
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“9.33% Hot :.
24 THE LIST FESTIVAL MAGAZINE 9—‘6 Aug 5.); "
‘shit‘. ‘nigger'. ‘come on‘, ‘what' and 'yeah‘. We have Rebecca the confused lesbian. explaining the butch versus femme debate using a Dr Seuss-style kids poem. Her scripted stuff is deliciously un-PC. original and surprising. and her Wallace and Gromit-like cartoon grimaces eke out laughs even during the moments of silence.
After prancing about in a gladiator costume and describing a disco dancing date with a man who‘d previously tried to rape her. she has the audience in the palm of her hand. so that her jokes on AIDS. Asians and the disabled get a warm reception before the crowd has time to think whether it‘s OK to laugh out loud or not. A slightly cheesy ending veers towards therapist couch psychobabble, and there are one too many references to ‘cleansing herself' and finding her ‘inner child‘. but that aside. this is fresh. fearless. alternative stuff. (Claire Sawers)