FESTIVAL COMEDY | Reviews
ANDY DE LA TOUR Lukewarm observations from alt-com trooper ●●●●●
There are just four years between comedy veterans Andy de la Tour and Alexei Sayle but their Fringe returns have proved to be a world apart. Last year, Sayle rolled back the years with a raucous set which had crowds breathless with admiration, while de la Tour’s comeback is a much more solemn, laid-back affair. Early on, he gets the sad bit out of the way, recalling the last time he played Edinburgh, back in 1983 alongside alternative comedy whippersnappers Ben Elton and Rik Mayall. The recent death of Mayall has clearly hit de la Tour hard and he struggles with his emotions while imagining Rik looking down with disdain on his comedy buddy. De la Tour quit stand-up in 1990 to concentrate on acting and writing, but when the idea struck him 20 years later of reinventing himself as a stand-up in New York, he half-expected his partner to totally dismiss the notion. She didn’t and they jetted off there for three months.
As a spoken word event, this would make for a perfectly relaxed hour but as a Fringe stand-up show, it doesn’t really do the job. De la Tour’s observations about the US are wildly unoriginal (America has an obesity problem as well as a tendency to produce endlessly entertaining yet ultimately dangerous Christian fundamentalist right-wingers).
When he talks about creationists not being able to satisfactorily explain the lack of dinosaurs in the Bible, all you can hear is Bill Hicks’ superior material on the exact same subject. It’s with some relief that de la Tour then remarks that a New York comic pulled him up on that very fact. But it still makes you wonder why he left it in here. Andy de la Tour is warm company but in the white-hot heat of Fringe comedy, his set will leave you cold. (Brian Donaldson) ■ Gilded Balloon Teviot, 622 6552, until 25 Aug, 5pm, £11.50–£12.50 (£10.50–£11.50).
ELLIE TAYLOR At the feet of greatness? ●●●●●
DEAD GHOST STAR A space oddity lost in a vacuum ●●●●● LUKE MCQUEEN Tense, nervous headaches all round ●●●●●
Word of mouth has spread so quickly about Ellie Taylor’s debut Fringe show that the tiny venue is standing-room only. I was lucky enough to get a seat literally at her feet, with an excellent view of her footwear. Taylor’s boots are functional-looking but a zip
up the side highlights the decorative nature of her laces. The comedy of Elliementary is similarly contradictory. As an ex-model, she proclaims herself to be a feminist icon (with a fair degree of irony) then undercuts this by admitting her all- consuming desire for a husband. She hops back and forth across the feminist line and while her material on the female experience is often insightful, she at times appears to be non-ironically falling prey to the celebrity culture and body fascism she claims to reject. Perhaps it’s all a hangover from her days as presenter of BBC Three’s Snog Marry Avoid? and its suspect definition of ‘natural’ beauty. Although it’s a fine debut, littered with comic gems, your own interpretation of Taylor’s show is a matter of perspective. Sitting at her feet it’s difficult to see where she’s coming from or indeed going, but her journey there is well worth watching. (Suzanne Black) ■ Laughing Horse @ The Counting House, 667 7533, until 22 Aug, noon, free.
46 THE LIST FESTIVAL 14-25 Aug 2014
This hour of nonsense clowning in space is a bit like Spike Milligan on MDMA, or Edward Lear doing a guest appearance at the Hacienda. Cheekykita and Mr Dinner bring their odd space odyssey to a hidden room in the flyer-covered maze of Cowgatehead, accompanied by the music of New Order, David Bowie and Yann Tiersen, with miniature green glow sticks provided. It’s a lo-fi ride with nicely shonky set and props; stardust and star juice are sprinkled and squirted over the mesmerised, baffled crowd, and boiler suits and sparkly curtains help tell the story of supernovas, black holes and a sleaze called Henry Smoothy. It’s a show that really doesn’t benefit from explanation on paper; you’ll just have to take it on good faith that an unlikely mimed lizard ballet to ‘Blue Monday’ is a highlight, thanks to charming- weirdo Mancunian Cheekykita, an oddball physical comedian.
Meanwhile, Mr Dinner floats about in slo-mo, like a grown-up Petit Prince, looking for a friend in the lonely vacuum of the cosmos. It’s alternative (read: enjoyably batshit), child-friendly comedy gibberish, for those who like an astral flight of fantasy into the very weird. (Claire Sawers) ■ Cowgatehead, 226 0000, until 23 Aug, 5pm, free.
There’s one thing you can’t accuse Luke McQueen of and that’s not being totally committed to his craft. The mask barely drops for a second as he plays a man not so much on the brink, but one who’s gone past the precipice and is hanging on by his badly burned fingers. You may have seen a pre-Fringe video of him walking into a pub during a World Cup night, and switching the TV off to perform ‘the comedy’; this is the kind of ballsy aesthetic he drags into one of the Pleasance Courtyard bunker venues, an ideal room to heighten the sense that we’re in a full-blown hostage situation.
McQueen starts under a sheet while strapped to a chair, ‘Stuck in the Middle with You’ ominously playing over the PA system. Instructions are left for audience members to activate proceedings and only then does the full terror ensue. He flirts with a woman while mildly threatening her partner, insults a reviewer’s employer and picks out a surrogate father.
It’s an intense and uncomfortable experience for a crowd in an unforgiving compact space and, you suspect, McQueen is having a pretty torrid time too. Genuine edge-of-the-seat stuff with nervous laughter your only release. (Brian Donaldson) ■ Pleasance Courtyard, 556 6550, until 24 Aug, 8pm, £7.50–£9.50 (£6.50–£9).