list.co.uk/festival Reviews | FESTIVAL COMEDY
I
G N K L E H C A R
DIE ROTEN PUNKTE Endearing Teutonic ‘sibling’ act ●●●●●
EASTEND CABARET Dirty talk and outrageous songs ●●●●● LUISA OMIELAN Former Free Fringe diva done good ●●●●●
Whether they are a real sister / brother duo from Berlin is ultimately moot. Drummer Astrid (who brings her own bright red backdrop) is quite magnificent at commanding the stage, while Otto wins the heartstring-tugging vote. They engage us with rock’n’roll comedy, oozing talent and charm – ‘Bananenhaus’, for example, tells us that you just cannot rush the consumption of that famous yellow fruit. The ongoing sibling rivalry and petty bickering break up the musical focus in the best possible way, and the duo are bizarrely believable, managing to buffoon their way through a set list celebrating everything from vegetarian dinosaurs to their own story as orphaned runaways.
These loveable rogues make apt use of the loop pedal in their avant-garde ‘art rock’, though it isn’t just the instruments that get an outing: if you’re not rushing home to brush a pineapple then you just weren’t paying attention. Die Roten Punkte deliver a pleasant mix of tight lyrics and harmonies, combined with slapstick and something that, in another life, might pass for burlesque. (Miriam Sturdee) ■ Assembly George Square, 623 3030, until 25 Aug (not 12, 19), 8.55pm, £9.50–£12 (£8–£10.50).
The dark, debauched Bernadette Byrne and ambiguous, obsessive Victor / Victoria make up EastEnd Cabaret’s all-singing, all-sexy double act. ‘It’s all about getting nice and intimate with each other’, Byrne begins, and she doesn’t take long to straddle the audience and sex up the room. The pair’s songs are outrageous and veer perilously close to the wrong side of innuendo. Byrne (think Jessie J meets Marlene Dietrich) mixes charm with pure filth, while Victor / Victoria flits around, an overly devoted sidekick, as they purr through near-the-knuckle ditties about accidental anal sex and the dream Byrne once had about a 1980s pop star orgy on Mars. No one in the audience is safe from Byrne’s roving eye and unsuspecting punters are ‘volunteered’ to act as her Man Beast (a two-headed creature she rides across the stage).
The duo are wonderfully eccentric and painfully sharp despite Victor / Victoria’s knack with Rohypnol. Each song in Dirty Talk brings about a new wave of outrageous lyricism (think Roald Dahl on Viagra) for an exciting, if sexually confusing, evening of cabaret. (Kirstyn Smith) ■ Underbelly, Cowgate, 0844 545 8252, until 25 Aug (not 13), 9.10pm, £10–£11 (£9–£10).
On paper, this should be horrific: girl laments failed relationship, inability to stop eating sandwiches, roundness of own bottom; seeks comfort in wisdom of Beyoncé. And yet Luisa Omielan has so much talent and unborrowed style (plus excellent borrowed styles from Jamaican dancefloor boglers, wannabe mixed-race London girls, her RP-talking Polish mum) that she spins her cray-cray material into gold (probably American Apparel latex, accessorised by New Look).
She begins with fierce, mock self-belief (‘I have the opposite of body dysmorphia: I look in the mirror and I’m like, “DAYUM”!’), bursting into Destiny’s Child ‘Independent Women’ before mumbling that, actually, she lives at home, paying no rent.
Much like Destiny’s Child, her feminism has its wobbles, but she knows that. Omielan (to quote Queen B, and she regularly does) ‘keeps it real’, admitting her daddy issues, relationship cravings, and abandonment of sense when she’s, ahem, ‘Crazy in Love’. Those who cringe at forced singalongs beware: the title What Would Beyoncé Do?! attracts screamy fans, fingers aloft for the ‘Single Ladies’ bit. (Claire Sawers) ■ Gilded Balloon Teviot, 622 6552, until 11 Aug, 9.15pm, £12–£13 (£11–£12).
AIRNADETTE Singing into a hairbrush goes Gallic-galactic ●●●●●
Imagine Woody Woodpecker, Samantha Fox and Celine Dion are thrown in a dressing-up trunk of glitter, then doused in vodka that’s been pinched from a backstage tour rider. Bill and Ted, Eminem and Britney Spears are chucked in there too, and the lid is left locked for a few hours. Airnadette is that moment when the lid is lifted and the Spandexed stars pop out: adrenal, multi-coloured, high-kicking and screaming silently at the crowd, through the magic of lip-sync.
The French sextet call themselves ‘the biggest airband in the galaxy’ and take turns air drumming, air guitaring and flawlessly mouthing lyrics in time to a frantic soundtrack of fused snippets from TV shows, films and pop songs. The pace is greased- breakneck, with the booming voiceover sometimes skilfully switching to fast forward or skipping, without any of the singer / dancers missing a single shimmy or side-slide along the way.
As expert as they are at pulling cartoon grimaces, and
morphing between rock, hip hop and saccharine-ballad music styles, the daftness, mock fist-fights and constant out-looning of one another becomes hard to stomach at times. Although it’s fun to spot lines from classic movies like Spinal Tap, Monty Python and the Holy Grail or Pretty Woman, the fart gags, Carly Rae Jepsen clips and Disney romance plot seem to be targeting an audience growing up in what the group describe as ‘a time of zapping’. Airnadette’s gold body-socked character Gunther Love is a
highlight as the Freddie Mercury-obsessed, circus gymnast of the bunch. The band’s mission statement is ‘we will dub you’, but if you have a cheese intolerance, there’s a danger they might just end up bugging you. (Claire Sawers) ■ Underbelly, Bristo Square, 0844 545 8252, until 26 Aug (not 13, 19), 8.50pm, £15.50–£16.50 (£14.50–£15.50).
8–15 Aug 2013 THE LIST FESTIVAL 49